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+--- Thread: Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 (/thread-435.html)
Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 - amthomas - 2007-03-15
Hey, I'm just approaching the halfway point, and I'm wondering if anyone has any insights on the progression of difficulty in RTK1? I'm currently doing 20-30 new frames every day, with reviews of about 20-50 kanji per day.
Have people noticed that they slowed down quite a bit near the end of the book? Do the kanji and keywords start to get really abstract / difficult to make stories for?
I'm trying to set some goals as to when I'm going to finish the book, but I'm not sure if my current pace is reasonable for the rest of the book... thoughts?
Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 - JimmySeal - 2007-03-15
Eager to finish the book, I sped up as I went through it, doing more than 80 kanji per day towards the end. I don't think that the second half of the keywords is more abstract than the first half, but there's a good chance you may run into some difficulty as you accumulate more keywords with similar meanings. It helps to come up with puns (the way Heisig often does in Parts 1 and 2) to help you tie the story to a specific word and distinguish it from other similar keywords, but generally I say come up with a simple story and if you can't keep it separate from other kanji, rework it until it sticks.
Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 - Christoph - 2007-03-15
When I hit the 1600's I started to slow down (partly due to JLPT study), I was frequently hitting huge review days (200, 300+), and that really started to make me worry that (if I kept adding cards) I was gonna come away at the end with a really bad retention rate... but that just didn't happen.
I agree with JimmySeal that they don't really get any more difficult, the odd one might be difficult (lack of good story ideas or whatever) and then the similar keyword kanji:-
[弔 condolences 1233] + [慰 consolation 1096]
[秘 secret 904] + [密 secrecy 775]
..they can be a struggle, but they'll all sink in after enough reviews.
Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 - dingomick - 2007-03-15
The kanji get easier because the practice is embedded. I solidy stories after just a few seconds focusing on an image now, instead of the minute or so at the beginning. The second half eats more time though since you're reviewing more.
The main difficulty is in all the similar keywords.
I averaged 50 kanji/day for the whole book, 60-70 for the first half.
Thoughts on the progression of difficulty in RTK1 - amthomas - 2007-03-15
Well, that wasn't what I was expecting to hear, but I'm always happy to be pleasantly surprised. *grin*
I cheated a little bit right after I posted that question, and read the intros to each remaining chapter of the book and randomly glanced at some primitives, and I think you guys are probably right. There are some primitives near the end of the book that I am already quite familiar with, so hopefully I won't need to spend as much time working through my stories and I can spend the time making sure that my stories are distinct.
Recently I've really started to get in the groove of making stories tailored to my personal experiences, rather than making fictional stories up that are related to the meaning of the keyword, and that seems to be helping quite a bit.
Thanks for the comments! It's really motivational not to hear "it starts to suck really hard right at frame #NNNN" .
-ang