Do you even it out throughout the day or do you force it down like a fat man in a buffet? I'd like to get this over with as fast as possible so please tell me how on earth you were able to handle 50+ kanji a day.

When I did it, about an of review hour in the morning and afternoon, and at night about an hour and a half of learning new ones.

I forced them down but in retrospect it was a terrible idea, my review load was so high that I pretty much did nothing in Japanese other than Anki and ended up burning out for 3~ months. I ended up quitting my RTK reviews somewhere down the line but I'm doing fine either way, kanji really aren't as terrifying as I thought when I was just starting out.

RandomQuotes Wrote:When I did it, about an of review hour in the morning and afternoon, and at night about an hour and a half of learning new ones.

That's about what I did. I didn't force the learning rate, though. I started at less than 50 kanji per day, and sped up as I got better than learning them. Did the 500 or so in 5 days, but it took me 6 weeks or maybe a bit less to get through the deck.

I did them all in one go but, my review pile just kept getting bigger, and with school on the way I barely had time to review, so in the end it took me a couple of months, and a week on wich I did 100 a day... (Definetely don't do that)
My advice? Go slower about it, and if you can handle it, then by all means do all the ones you want.

Did 40 a day until about 1600 and then the reviews were getting massive, so I focused on just review. Now I'm rushing through 100 a day to finish off. I spread them out through the day, and retention rate is still the same, more or less. I do have to put other hobbies on hiatus until I'm done though, but the benefits I've seen already make it worthwhile.

Its better not to rush it, as you will get huge spikes of reviews even months later. As for how, over time it gets easier and easier to take in more words at a go.

In an old thread, there was a general consensus that the most efficient way to handle reviews and learning is to rapidly switch between them (e.g. review 30 cards, learn 15, and repeat).

The OP held the unofficial RevTK record for completing RTK in the least amount of time for a few years (at 22 days). The OP has long since left the forum, but I remember someone had recently (within the past year) beat the record (of course, I'm assuming the record holders aren't lying). If still around, hopefully the new record holder could share some tips.

EDIT: I found the new record holder, shalazin. Unfortunately, it looks like that user has also long left the forum.

bertoni Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:When I did it, about an of review hour in the morning and afternoon, and at night about an hour and a half of learning new ones.

That's about what I did. I didn't force the learning rate, though. I started at less than 50 kanji per day, and sped up as I got better than learning them. Did the 500 or so in 5 days, but it took me 6 weeks or maybe a bit less to get through the deck.

This. Be wary of rushing... adding 2,000 cards in less than a month is pretty possible, but it's the many months after that, where you constantly have 2,000 cards demanding reviews beating down on your daily life, that'll get you...

That said, I experimented and found my concentration for new stories waned after about 20 cards. So I would learn 20 cards, take a break (do some reviews or some fun immersion or something) and then do another set of 20. Sometimes I'd do the sets and breaks all at my desk at once, but usually it was like 20 new cards in the morning, school, 20 new cards after school, and then 20 again before dinner. You can rack up your numbers like that without wearing down too much or getting bored.

But reviews!
Do you have time to review heavily for 2-3 months after you finishing cramming on kanji?
Be wary!

Quote:EDIT: I found the new record holder, shalazin. Unfortunately, it looks like that user has also long left the forum.

I believe uisukii was even faster, but alas, he too has left the forum.

All this talking about SM model/workload vs. new cards per day prompted me to script the learning process with SuperMemo algorithm (Anki uses SM-2, in case you didn't know).

Get the script below, run the simulation and see for yourself how adding 50 cards a day is going to be like. The format of the output is:
day(day-number) -> cards-to-review total-number-of-cards-in-learning

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import random

DAYS = 2 * 365 # Period under consideration in days
NIPD = 50 # New Items Per Day
SAAD = 2200 / NIPD # Stop Adding After Day
FI = 0.2 # Forgetting Index
INTERVALS = [1, 3, 7, 16, 40, 98, 245, 611, 1526]

class Item:
    pass

items = []

def review_items():
    items_due = []
    for item in items:
        item.due -= 1
        if item.due == 0:
            items_due.append(item)

    print len(items_due), len(items)
    
    due_fail_nb = len(items_due) * FI
    due_cnt = 0
    while True:
        ln = len(items_due)
        if ln == 0:
            break
            
        i = random.randint(0, ln - 1)
        item = items_due[i]
        
        # pass
        if due_cnt > due_fail_nb:
            item.interval_idx += 1
        # fail
        else:
            item.interval_idx = 0
        item.due = INTERVALS[item.interval_idx]
        
        due_cnt += 1
        items_due.remove(item)

def add_items(n):
    for i in range(0, n):
        item = Item()
        item.id = len(items)
        item.interval_idx = 0
        item.due = INTERVALS[item.interval_idx]
        items.append(item)

for day in range(0, DAYS):
    print 'day(' + str(day) + ') -> ',
    review_items()
    if day < SAAD:
        add_items(NIPD)

EDIT:
Removed [code]...[/code] markup to workaround broken displaying of code...

EDIT2:
- Restored [code]...[/code] markup.
- 356 -> 365

Inny Jan, The forum software seems to be corrupting your code. Would you mind posting to pastebin somewhere else? I'm very interested in testing out your code. Thanks!

Vempele Wrote:

Quote:EDIT: I found the new record holder, shalazin. Unfortunately, it looks like that user has also long left the forum.

I believe uisukii was even faster, but alas, he too has left the forum.

You're right. The relevant thread can be found here. Uisukii claims to have finished RTK1 in exactly 14 days.

Also, has anyone noticed that, for some reason, the "author" search function does not work for only some of the banned/retired forum users. For example, the author search function turns up nothing when I search for posts by "uisukii" or "bodhisamaya". But I get results when I search "nest0r" or "IceCream". Does anyone know why?

yogert909 Wrote:Inny Jan, The forum software seems to be corrupting your code. Would you mind posting to pastebin somewhere else? I'm very interested in testing out your code. Thanks!

I don't think the code is corrupted (it's just displayed with some mashing with other posts ) - you still should be able to copy&paste from the page here.

One option you can use is "Inspect Element" in Firefox (right-click on an element you want an info on and go from there).

Or you could turn "Caret Browsing" on (F7 key) and use keyboard to highlight the text to copy.

(I'm at work at the moment and we have blocked access to many sites that have been decided to be "counterproductive"...)

EDIT:
Anyway, I've just removed the [code] tags.

Hello
I'm new to the forum and like to share that I'm currently learning 100 Kanjis per day until I finish the end of RTK 1. I started the day before yesterday. I set up some milestones:

10:30, 25 new cards created and reviewed once
12:45, 50
15:45, 75
18:00, 100

It has become very exhausting. As a non-native english speaker, I often have to look up the english keywords in a dictionary e.g. http://www.leo.org (sometimes I don't even understand what the german word means, in this case I do a google image search). When I know the meaning of the keyword, I read what primitives are used. Then, I create the card with the Kanji on the front and the keyword on the back. If I can't come up with a story while doing this, I use this site, choose the one I like and write it on a paper, so I can quickly find it again if I've forgotten it when I do a review.

Currently I'm at #1753 (leisure)

[ファブリス]

dlgltlzed Wrote:If I can't come up with a story while doing this, I use this site, choose the one I like and write it on a paper, so I can quickly find it again if I've forgotten it when I do a review.

If using http://kanji.koohii.com 's SRS, the story is available by pressing S during reviews (and can also be edited/updated during reviews). And now you can just star a story you like and it will show up.

Inny Jan Wrote:All this talking about SM model/workload vs. new cards per day prompted me to script the learning process with SuperMemo algorithm (Anki uses SM-2, in case you didn't know).

Get the script below, run the simulation and see for yourself how adding 50 cards a day is going to be like. The format of the output is:

It's been a while but I just thought I'd mention that your python script did a pretty good job of modeling my actual workload. One tiny nitpick ...I'm guessing 356 days should instead be 365. Thanks for taking the time to create this and post this!

ファブリス Wrote:

dlgltlzed Wrote:If I can't come up with a story while doing this, I use this site, choose the one I like and write it on a paper, so I can quickly find it again if I've forgotten it when I do a review.

If using http://kanji.koohii.com 's SRS, the story is available by pressing S during reviews (and can also be edited/updated during reviews). And now you can just star a story you like and it will show up.

The online review option is great. I use it when I don't have my learning material at hand. It's also great the new feature allows me to see the favorite story when I do reviews online. For now I prefer the offline way with paper (paper feels good ). Anyway, great website!

The people who did this successfully had an IQ far above average. From the posts on this forum I believe most people just crashed and burned after a few days. Set your new kanji low and then slowly gradually add more if you have time.

You will do better in the long run. I consider my brain to be pretty average and I managed 15 new cards a day for most of the time (30min gradually building to maybe almost 90min daily review by the end)

juniperpansy Wrote:The people who did this successfully had an IQ far above average. From the posts on this forum I believe most people just crashed and burned after a few days. Set your new kanji low and then slowly gradually add more if you have time.

You will do better in the long run. I consider my brain to be pretty average and I managed 15 new cards a day for most of the time (30min gradually building to maybe almost 90min daily review by the end)

I second this.

If you look at digitalized's schedule, it looks like he's studying pretty much the whole day. That schedule isn't desirable for most people. I believe an average amount of time for getting a decent grasp on RTK is around 240 hours. So if you think you can get through it in a month or two, plan on spending 4-8 hours * 7 days a week until you're done.

juniperpansy Wrote:...From the posts on this forum I believe most people just crashed and burned after a few days. Set your new kanji low and then slowly gradually add more if you have time....

I think this is a personality specific thing. The first time I tried RtK I did 10-15/day and gave up. When I tried again months later I did 50/day, slowly escalating to ~80/180 /day (weekday vs weekend) and was successful with that.

Basically, I have a hard time putting effort towards things where the payoff isn't in the near future. Even with doing RtK in just a month, I had to occasionally visit a local Bookoff to go around recognizing kanji and demonstrating to myself that the effort was working.

It's my 4th day learning 100 Kanji per day. With my current speed, I could never handle 180. Looking up words and stories takes the most time. If I can understand the keyword, remember all the given primitives and have instantly a story in mind, it takes me only seconds to draw the Kanji on my card (and the keyword on the back), allowing me to move to the next Kanji. This happens unfortunately not often.

My goal is to end the book on saturday, maybe earlier, when I get faster in doing the same thing for hours. I'm happy it hasn't got boring yet.

Some stated they forgot the Kanji completely. In my experience, it gets every time easier and faster to relearn the Kanji.

Edit:

ファブリス Wrote:If using http://kanji.koohii.com 's SRS, the story is available by pressing S during reviews (and can also be edited/updated during reviews). And now you can just star a story you like and it will show up.

I wrote the stories down to make sure they remain in my mind. But as I get to the end and therefore more impatient, I decided to use this functionality and review the last cards online with the Free Review Mode (I miss an option to repeat the review with the forgotten ones only). My process has changed:

- Look up english words
- Write flashcards for a group of Kanji
- Search for stories and star them
- Review with Free Review Mode (if I forgot a story, I can press S. Great!)

This is faster than my previous learning method. If I would be a native english speaker, I could even be faster. I can believe now that 180 per day would be possible. But, it takes the whole day and you get a tremendous amount of reviews to do.

50+ is doable with motivation and time. I have 150 left. So, see you tomorrow at The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread

yogert909 Wrote:I'm guessing 356 days should instead be 365.

Thanks for that report - just fixed the typo above.

I just wanted to say that I learn 125-150 a day because my friend owns the book, doesn't use it, and wont let me take it home with me. I have one day of the week to learn it. I live far away from him so I usually stay the night. I'll explain.

The first day I make flashcards on quizlet. It usually spills over to the second day where I print and cut them out. Then on the 3rd day I divide the stacks into 1/3rds and spend time going over them almost in the same way Anki does, taking breaks inbetween each stack. After I feel comfortable with the stack I'll shuffle them all together. I told myself if I miss more than 5 then redo it. I've only had to do that twice so far because I was lazy. Then when I go home I use anki.

I like seeing printed progress for those who think it is a waste of time. Also, I find that I need to meditate and take my time when making the stories. I feel more rushed in Anki. And I just copy and paste my stories from quizlet into there. I hit 1,016 kanji today and I'm going to do another 125-150 next time I come over. Also my retention rate is around 95-98%. I just wish I could go faster and have my own book. I have a pdf, but really... I can't stand using it.

I used to write more kanji too, but it was slowing me down a lot. I'll worry about the writing after I finish all 2,000.

Edit: Maybe I draw a lot and can have vivid images better. But it took me 4 failed tries to realize that going 15 or 50 at a time is waaaay too slow for me. Each time I added more to the stack, the longer I would study and the more I would retain. But I'm realizing I'm like that with everything. Once I start, I can't stop until I'm satisfied.

FleetingMischief Wrote:I just wanted to say that I learn 125-150 a day because my friend owns the book, doesn't use it, and wont let me take it home with me. I have one day of the week to learn it. I live far away from him so I usually stay the night. I'll explain.

Well, that is technically 150 per week, not per day. I would sell my left kidney for your retention rate though, i have around 83%. *sad face*