Hi,

I am in my third attempt with RTK, and in my first two attempts I was doing pretty much like what it seems everyone does. Adding cards, reviewing them immediately and next day, reviewing again before adding new cards.

I found this way too boring cause I felt like I was going too slow. Last days i've been trying just adding cards for a while. Now I do feel like i'm progressing and also see my motivation up. My idea, keep adding till I reach the 2042 and then start reviewing them. I think about that, cause as I said, this is my third attempt and when I came back to this site, even though after something like 6 months or so, I could remember many of the cards, and my reviewing process was much faster than adding new cards, so I feel like reviewing every day is holding my progress.

I also realized that while adding new cards and stories you have to "review" the previous ones to build a new store, in doing so, you somehow review them.

What do you think? Is that a problem? Has anyone tried this?

I never skipped a review even if it was boring, it serves an important role and I personally think it's counter-productive to stop. Being on your third attempt, you may think that it's easy because(I assume) you're remembering cards you already learned before. But once you reach the point you stopped at your last attempt, you will most likely burn out by the time you decide to review.

I would think not doing your reviews properly is a very, very bad idea. But as long as you start every day by completing all your reviews I also do not see a problem with adding lots of cards every day. If you are willing to spend a lot of time you can definitely go through the whole book in 3-4 weeks without skipping your reviews, but whatever you do I think the most important thing is to make sure that you do all your reviews every day, and that it takes priority over adding new cards.

EDIT:
But I do think your approach is interesting though, so if you decide to go for it do update about how it went. Because I admit that I don't have any solid facts to back up my post with, just that it feels like a bad idea.

EDIT2:
I can also add that I did RTK in 3.5 weeks (and did my reviews daily), and I had a shitload of reviews to do every day towards the end and still have quite a bit every day now, so I can only imagine how much there must be if you save them all towards the end. You will probably have forgotten a lot of them too because of not reviewing, so a lot of them will probably keep showing up for several days in a row, so be prepared for a massive task once you've added your cards.

Rsun1 Wrote:...Adding cards, reviewing them immediately and next day, reviewing again before adding new cards.

I found this way too boring cause I felt like I was going too slow. Last days i've been trying just adding cards for a while. Now I do feel like i'm progressing and also see my motivation up.

I'd recommend against not reviewing. The initial "learning" is worthless if you just forget it due to not reviewing it and if you don't think early reviews are neccessary because you can remember it anyway, you aren't hitting "easy" on your SRS often enough.

It sounds like the real problem is that you're spending too much time on reviews. I think I was spending upwards of 30seconds per review when originally doing RtK and didn't even realize that my friends felt slow when they spent 6 seconds (ie usually 80% less than me). And they were physically drawing everything whereas I was merely visualizing the stroke order mentally.

One of the ways I worked on improving this was to use a timer (this is why I created the "Audible Timer" Anki plugin) which very quickly brought me to the 6-10sec range. I think a large part of it was having a warning timer at 6 seconds added a sense of urgency I lacked before, and a cutoff timer at 10 sec prevented me from wasting time on cards that were "on the tip of the tongue" and I'd waste 30seconds trying to force recall in order to avoid failing them.

I should also note that I no longer use an audible timer (my cards all have sound/video anyway) but it helped instill good habbits and I no longer need one, so don't avoid using one during RtK just because it might be less feasible in the future.

blankkor Wrote:I never skipped a review even if it was boring, it serves an important role and I personally think it's counter-productive to stop. Being on your third attempt, you may think that it's easy because(I assume) you're remembering cards you already learned before. But once you reach the point you stopped at your last attempt, you will most likely burn out by the time you decide to review.

Yeah, makes sense that i can remember them easily because I've already learned them. But I don't know if I didn't make myself clear. It's not really stopping but making a pause on the reviews while studying the book and adding stories.

AlgoRhythmic Wrote:I think the most important thing is to make sure that you do all your reviews every day, and that it takes priority over adding new cards.

EDIT:
But I do think your approach is interesting though, so if you decide to go for it do update about how it went. Because I admit that I don't have any solid facts to back up my post with, just that it feels like a bad idea.

I think of this attempt as "dividing even more to conquer" faster. I see the reviews as something "permanent" or, at least, as something that I'll have t live with for a long time, even after i start studying grammar, vocab and so on.

So, I'll give it a try till I reach thousand kanjis, right now I'm reaching 600 hundred so I think it is worth try it till there. Better than regret not trying . So, after that I write my first impressions here.

overture2112 Wrote:

Rsun1 Wrote:...Adding cards, reviewing them immediately and next day, reviewing again before adding new cards.

I found this way too boring cause I felt like I was going too slow. Last days i've been trying just adding cards for a while. Now I do feel like i'm progressing and also see my motivation up.

It sounds like the real problem is that you're spending too much time on reviews. I think I was spending upwards of 30seconds per review when originally doing RtK and didn't even realize that my friends felt slow when they spent 6 seconds (ie usually 80% less than me). And they were physically drawing everything whereas I was merely visualizing the stroke order mentally.

I actually spend time on making stories. Heisig's often talks about how important building up a good image/story is. And when reviewing I do not spend so much time, I would do so when restudying them. Always trying to get a better story.

So, now, I am totally focused on the stories and not worrying about time to reviews.

As I said, I will review them but it will have to wait just a bit more.

overture2112 Wrote:One of the ways I worked on improving this was to use a timer (this is why I created the "Audible Timer" Anki plugin) which very quickly brought me to the 6-10sec range. I think a large part of it was having a warning timer at 6 seconds added a sense of urgency I lacked before, and a cutoff timer at 10 sec prevented me from wasting time on cards that were "on the tip of the tongue" and I'd waste 30seconds trying to force recall in order to avoid failing them.

I should also note that I no longer use an audible timer (my cards all have sound/video anyway) but it helped instill good habbits and I no longer need one, so don't avoid using one during RtK just because it might be less feasible in the future.

Yeah, moving quickly through your reviews is very important. The Audible Timer plugin for Anki 1 was great for getting me in the habit of moving quickly. For the most part my review times are still short because of it, but sometimes my mind just begins to wander. (I have a short attention span I guess.) If you ever get around to it, I would love an update for Anki 2, especially if it can have different options for different decks. ^_^;

Rsun1, what you're suggesting isn't "learning the Kanji". It's basically reading the book once, with very little benefit, before starting to learn it. After you're done reading, you're gonna have to start from the top, and learn it. You will have solved nothing.

A good trick to make it easier on yourself (that I discovered about halfway through) is to break your day up into 3 steps:
1. do your pending reviews first
2. then learn however many Kanji you learn,
3. add them and review them in order right away, when you have no other Kanji mixed in, to confuse you;
(this will achieve two things:
1. make your reviews significantly easier than if you learn Kanji first and then do both the pending reviews and the newly added ones at once
2. since you're doing the reviews first, your motivation is going to start weaning during the learning stage - which you're finding more enjoyable- instead of during the review stage; step 3. is too easy to matter that it's at the end).

More importantly: If you don't have the motivation to do 2042 Kanji, that's fine. It's understandable (most people wouldn't), and not that big a big deal, actually. Do that light version I've seen a few threads about around here(sorry, don't have a link for you, maybe someone is kind enough to post one). It's 75% as good with 50% of the effort (yes, I made those numbers up, and yes, I'm basing them on absolutely nothing, which means they're wrong: but it's x% as good with y% of the effort, where x is significantly greater than y). Then, later on, you can add Kanji to the deck as you encounter them in your further studies, making it much easier. You'll still need to learn most of the Heisig Kanji (though not all) eventually, but there's no pressing need to do it right away.

Just as importantly: feel free to skip annoying ones (just make sure they're not primitives);

Twice as importantly as the two before: add hints to your questions, if the story looks iffy to you; don't give away the primitives, but explain the meaning of the keyword, and possibly copy/paste the first few words of the story; this isn't necessary for every Kanji, but if you do it for the 20% most difficult ones, it makes the reviews way easier.

Daichi Wrote:Yeah, moving quickly through your reviews is very important.

Why?

You can consider to flip you cards to make reviews easier (kanji --> keyword).
It is against heisig's philosophy, but if you do not care about writing it is ok.

KanjiNoKami Wrote:You can consider to flip you cards to make reviews easier (kanji --> keyword).
It is against heisig's philosophy, but if you do not care about writing it is ok.

That doesn't make it easier, it makes it harder. I know, because I tried. But he could try adding hints. That does make it easier.

Modifying keywords is important. There's some that can be really obtuse, and if you can come up with a more accurate keyword or one that's a better trigger for your story then you should do it. You might run into some collisions later, but Anki makes it really easy to sort that stuff out. Whenever I change a keyword I do a search to make sure I'm not doing something too similar to another keyword in the deck.

Stansfield123 Wrote:That doesn't make it easier, it makes it harder. I know, because I tried. But he could try adding hints. That does make it easier.

You stated it like it was an absolute truth.
I also have tried it and I found it easier because when you read real japanese text, you see the kanji and not the keyword.

Hey Guys,

First of all, thanks a lot for your answers and I am really sorry for disappearing .

Well, it did not work so well. I actually was doing fine while studying every day but I stopped studying RTK(Again!!) for a few months and last month when I returned to my studies it was a total mass. Lots and lots of cards to review which I had never reviewed before.

Terrible rates in my reviews. I do feel I was doing fine while studying every day because as I had to read the stories in the book to make new stories I was somehow reviewing but I can't really assure this as I didn't keep on this way. It is just a feeling.


@Stansfield123 - I am basically doing your three steps now and it is working pretty well. For my luck my reviews here on the website are always scheduled in the evening, so I add new stories early in the morning and make my reviews in the evening or before going to bed.

Thanks!