Hello everyone !

I have a little problem I hope you can help me with, by sharing your experience.

I " stopped " learning my kanjis about one or two months ago ( Don't worry, I've been making my daily reviews though ! ) , and I would like to start again. ( I'm at 1035 kanji "learned" at the moment. )

But I really don't know how to. When I'm facing new kanjis, I don't really know what to do. I also start to forget old ones.

For that, I hope you can share some advice, and I would like to know what do you do, when learning a kanji ?

( sorry if I'm in the wrong section or if this has been already posted. )

thanks in advance!

Just start, and I say this as someone who had to restart RTK about 5-6 times due to life getting in the way.
It's been awhile, but I think when I learned a new kanji in the book, I would work really hard on making my story as memorable as possible, then I would write it out once (or a few more times if it was difficult), and then review it the next day when it came up in my kanji reviews. If I forgot it, the reason was usually that my story needed to be crazier, so I'd revise it.

Hopefully some of this helps. Good luck!

Typically I go through one whole chapter at a time, writing down each new kanji and reading a few of the stories for more difficult ones. I check stroke order and alternate keywords for kanji I'm not sure of in the Yamasa Online Kanji Dictionary.

After a short break (10 minutes to an hour) I will give myself a test in the study section, covering the picture with my hand and writing the kanji for each frame. I do this multiple times throughout the day, making note of which kanji I will have trouble with in the future.

I do one final test before bed, and then add the new cards for the day, so that the first thing I do the next day when I log in is clear the blue pile of new cards.

Don't get stuck trying to learn every frame perfectly. Let the easier kanji move up through the decks, and let the software tell you which ones need more attention. In my experience, it's better to add 50-100 cards a day than to add smaller amounts, like 5-20. A lot of the kanji reinforce other kanji.

I don't advocate writing kanji all day to memorise them, but I find always writing for reproduction tests to be extremely helpful in cementing the image.

Thanks to you two ! I will try doing that now. What time do you spend(ed?) learning kanji everyday ? And what time on each one, approximatively ? Do you work directly with the site, or do you work only with the book and later with the site ?
Sorry for the questions and thanks in advance again

I spend a few hours a day, using this website and an anki deck for the hiragana.

Don't spend too long drilling an individual kanji. You'll remember it by repeatedly trying to remember it, not by keeping it in your short term cache. In a way, sometimes you need to forget a thing to remember it. If I forget a kanji, I'll either remember the story I had upon seeing it, or jump down to quickly read a few users' stories and something will trigger the recall the next time I test it. Either way, it is being reinforced.

Something I've noticed is that my mind is eager to remember good memories. Add some humorous imagery to your stories and your mind will be more apt to remember it. It's Pavlovian; give your mind a giggle every time it gives you a correct answer.

I have a pretty similar routine to what geminimonk does, just without those extra tests in the study section, and it proved itself to be the most efficient. I did in one sitting even the longest "hand primitive" chapter. When learning try to come up with your own story/image/saying first. At the point you are in (over 1000 kanji) I wouldn't worry about inventing your own names for primitives, preferably people. The best way to remember a character is to see in your imagination all of the primitives and the key word interact with each other. Logic, common sense, knowledge and decency are irrelevant in this exercise A few characters that I remember very well as a reference:
点 - "spot". That one was quite difficult initially (keyword was too abstract), but then I remembered Sheldon Cooper from TBBT and his "this is my spot!". So I just imagined Sheldon Cooper being burned at the stake, screaming "I am not a witch, I hate this spot!!!". And it worked.
滋慈磁 - you don't have to imagine anything. It's just so offensive. Magnet story is the only story on this site that really should be removed, but it's still the best story ever, and has provided a very useful primitive for an otherwise difficult kanji. I have never forgotten it so far. Just be careful with sex-related stories, because there can be too many of them. Not every kanji is so good for this as 隻
圥 - this primitive has a great story chain about travelling seedlings. Even if a primitive is usually immobile, imagine it moving!
発 - no imagination needed. Just saying words "nasty discharge" makes me remember this one. A memorable phrase is actually easier to get, than an image, so look for them too.

Quote:Don't spend too long drilling an individual kanji. You'll remember it by repeatedly trying to remember it, not by keeping it in your short term cache. In a way, sometimes you need to forget a thing to remember it.

I agree with this completely. Most kanji need less than 1 minute when learning them, and that time includes writing them down, and (at least for me) checking the meaning of an english keyword.

So don't worry about forgetting. The number of kanji I have never failed is about 500, and I still expect to fail some of them in the future. You will get it eventually.

It's important to NOT recall the story when you review. The story should only be used to create the image in your mind. It is that image which you must then see in your mind when you review and it gets smaller and simpler over time until it's just gets lost somewhere but the ability to remember the kanji stays. For example, the kanji 輩 which is jail cell + car = comrade. Don't make up places and objects for the story, it usually doesn't work. So for this, a specific, actual, existing car and a jail cell will be needed.

The thing below is complex and not something you could efficiently remember in words, thus it needs to be turned into the "image form".
The story: There was a police station in my home town which was converted into a bar, it's used as the jail cell in my stories. I'm sitting on one of cells, which were open for customers to enjoy their drinks in. Since I'm drunk, I need to call a friend to drive me home, but before I get the change to do it, Vladimir Lenin drives a car (not just any car but my brother's horrible old Suzuki) through the wall. With Russian accent: "Hurry up, comrade, I'll get you out of here!"

So as I think that, I concentrate on seeing everything as images in my mind, not just words. Then I pick up the key moment, which is in this case the car's front half on my side of the brick wall with Lenin's yelling face inside. I take a minute or two just "looking" at this image and saying "comrade, comrade, comrade.." in my head and after that I draw the kanji.

Then when I see the word "comrade", the image flashes trough my mind and I can write the kanji based on that. As months pass, the image gets "smaller" and for many everyday kanji it just disappears completely. It's only half a year since I finished RTK so I guess all the stories will be gone some day.

I hope this helps!

Yes, this helped a lot !

I will get to it starting today! It means going through almost 70 kanji to finish the " lesson 27 " , but I hope to do it properly.