Haven't reviewed anything for 3 days and my retention rate is about 60% for every pile. Please tell me this is normal.

How many new cards are you adding daily?
If it's a lot that could be why.

^^ and also make sure you're also doing the visualisations/stories as the RTK method intends. My retention rate for reviews was in the 60s without it. Now it's between 85-95+% (lower recall when I go through a lot of new cards the day before).

Oh and if you're anything like me, your study methods will naturally change/improve over time. I do 100-150 cards at a time after reviews (started with 20, then jumped to 60, etc.). I take at least a couple short breaks.

Haven't added anything in a week, life is getting in the way and my reviews kept piling up(well, they WERE).

I still don't really understand how your studying works, whether you're visualizing when you add cards, whether you're writing your character on reviews, which direction you're reviewing...

Still, whatever the case, if you fall badly behind, it's also normal for your retention to plummet on recently learned cards. On older cards, the difference between reviewing at 31 days and 37 days isn't going to matter, on newer cards the difference between reviewing at 1 day and 7 days is tremendous.

If you build up a backlog, you'll probably start failing half of your newer cards just because you're reviewing them at several times their natural interval. That's going to drag your average down quite a lot.

I pretty much do everything the way everyone else does it.

I write out all my reviews, I visualise the story and images in my mind when learning new cards and again when I fail. I go through the stories and adjust them, focusing on images and such, and usually get them correct up until the 3rd sheduled review.

Some of my 4th pile cards also seem to be slipping through the cracks and those are ones I was certian I had down. I mean, I'm pretty sure if I see them in the wild I could recognize them, but writing them from memory either gets the radicals mixed up or the character mistaken for another charcter somehow. I'd say about 15% of my failed cards end up being completely forgotten, where I don't remember all the radicals.

Gonna post my time spent on the site SRS. If it helps.

Getting through a review of 60 cards in Piles 1-3 takes about 15 mins. This is with writing them out ofcourse. A few fails were of mixed up radicals, about 2 were completely blank when called to write them out. 75% retention.

EDIT: Going through the Study section just now. 30 studied kanji in 30 mins roughly a min spent on revisualizing each kanji and writing it out, then glacing at the keyword again.

I have 150 more reviews to go ATM, going to do them in 30 min chunks to refill pile 1 all over again.

To be honest, I think that 75% retention at this stage sounds fine. I know it's frustrating to have cards you feel you should know being failed again and again, but honestly, I think it's fine. I think they will get in there eventually. For me, language isn't about being 100%, it's about being 80-90% there (unless it's English... Then I'm pretty damned pedantic, what with it being my native tongue and all :p).

I think you're letting this get to you more than you should. Just relax, and your memory will sort it out eventually^^

I could only hope that THAT is what it is, because it if it turned out I was doing the method wrong, or worse, it wasn't working for me, I'd do on a rampage killing many Pichus and Bidoofs.lol

I think I'll start adding again tommorrow, only 15 a day though, since apparently I can't "blitz" through this, like the title says.

Finally at a point to add kanji again. 1266.

You're past half-way! Gambappe!

I had hit 1742 about a week ago, "something" came up in my life, and I didn't add the 25 kanji for that day, and missed my reviews, and have been constantly reviewing 200 or so kanji total every day for it. I'm at 142 kanji that need reviewing right now and my retention seems to be 65-75% at the moment though I have scored some 85's on older card reviews. Keep in mind that my review pile was at 350+ for one day, so that was fun.<_<

I do have a problem with mixing up kanji of similar wording sometimes though. I wrote out the kanji for "shout" when the SRS called for the kanji for "yell". So, I dunno if that's a good thing that my brain is recalling similar kanji on it's own, or what.<_<

I was gonna start adding again today, but that 142 reviews is making me wary. I could comfortably add new kanji and not be too far behind if I added 25 a day(80 reviews), but I'm so close to the end, I want to add them all and just be DONE with the adding.

On Kanji 1970 right now. Winding down......

Good job, almost done : )

I cannot for the life of me get most cards past the 5th review box on the site's system. I currently have 195 cards to restudy with a 70% retention rate. Not sure what to do to solve this problem, it's been like this for awhile.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:I cannot for the life of me get most cards past the 5th review box on the site's system. I currently have 195 cards to restudy with a 70% retention rate. Not sure what to do to solve this problem, it's been like this for awhile.

Cards take about 2-3 months to expire from the 5th box, to be tested and put into the 6th, so don't worry...

Also, when I was still going through the book, my rentention rate was around 70%, but after I finished, I found it's been more like 95%, so I think you might see the same thing happen?

Just let it be.

I no longer bother myself to try to attain a high retention rate for RTK. Now that I am done with it, I just keep on reviewing whenever I can. Pass or Fail a card, I do not care. If I have 70% - OK, 80% - better, 90% - woot much better... Whatever the numbers or graphs tell me, it doesn't matter now. I know some Japanese learners will disagree on this but this helped me on moving forward. If I keep on being bothered with all those statistics for RTK, I don't think I will be doing Kore deck and Grammar now.

bimspramirez Wrote:Just let it be.

I no longer bother myself to try to attain a high retention rate for RTK. Now that I am done with it, I just keep on reviewing whenever I can. Pass or Fail a card, I do not care. If I have 70% - OK, 80% - better, 90% - woot much better... Whatever the numbers or graphs tell me, it doesn't matter now. I know some Japanese learners will disagree on this but this helped me on moving forward. If I keep on being bothered with all those statistics for RTK, I don't think I will be doing Kore deck and Grammar now.

I'll second this thought. Once you've gone through RTK, as long as you continue to write Japanese, those kanji aren't going to suddenly fall out of your mind. RTK builds up a nice familiarity with the internal structure of kanji and how to write them with ease. The sooner you complete it and start writing actual Japanese, the stronger said familiarity with kanji will become.

Many disagree with this, as you half mentioned. Then again, while people are disagreeing; others are using their kanji studies in actual context. To each their own, I guess.

Well, right now I have close to 300 cards that need to be reviewed, and kinda getting sick of the story reviews honestly. I think I'm going to just use this site until I get the last story in there, go through that pile one last time, and just switch to Anki for this. 75% retention if it matters.

As long as I get through the book and start reviewing the kanji, I don't need the story method anymore? Even if I didn't review the last lessons as thoughly as the rest of the book with that method? I can just ditch it now and just focus on other things? Because I kinda figured I should review by the site for a month or so after reviewing just to cement them in their with the story method( but, it's like, not even going to matter so why am I fretting over it?)

Going through the review pile now.

I'm currently debating on what to do now when I finish adding. Biggest things to do now are:

Route 1)
Stick to improving Listening comprehension:

-I feel I can make out just about everything that I'm hearing. Or at least the sounds of it anyway. UNDERSTANDING is still a good 40% I suppose. I have not tried Shadowing yet. I could focus most of my time ACTIVELY listening and spend the time in the morning and night SRSing RtK for 30 mins and refresh myself on kana(specifically katakana) writing. I can read them with no problem.

Thing with this is, I got a bunch of audio courses and phrasebooks. Should I try to shadow them in addtion to listening actively? Seek out Pimslur now?

OR

Route 2)
Grammar:

-I have the ItMJ textbook, Japanese the Manga Way, and I should go through Tae Kim all the way this time. I could focus on Grammar full time and SRS RtK on the side in Anki. Continue listening sparsely every other day until my Grammar is strong. Right now my grammar is, I suppose, decent. Not great, but not bad either.

OR

Route 3)
Anki Vocabuary Dive:

-I plan on doing this after getting a firm grasp in both of the above, honestly, but I intend to go at a pace of 50 new words a day using Core in additon to an RtK Deck if I do this. I do have a bunch of decks I've neglected after all and don't feel pressured to pick them all up again at once.

^Neither of those options are not mutually exclusive, and there is no reason why you cannot do all three at once.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:Well, right now I have close to 300 cards that need to be reviewed, and kinda getting sick of the story reviews honestly. I think I'm going to just use this site until I get the last story in there, go through that pile one last time, and just switch to Anki for this. 75% retention if it matters.

You shouldn't really need to run through each kanij with its story every time you review it (only when forgotten). What should be happening about now is that you see the keyword, and an image immediately pops into you mind, holding the key to how to write the kanji.

Usually for me at this point I see the keyword, and the kanji itself pops into my mind, but sometimes it doesn't, but there's an image there, and if I follow that image through to that story, then most of the time, I can remember it fine.

I've been neglecting kanji lately, I have 1000 ish reviews due T_T and I haven't been doing my onyomis with anki either... T_T I'll have to force myself to do them today because it's just getting ridiculous :p

I could make a long winded post about how it was long and exhausting but it's finally done, but I'll just say "Done".

U mad bros?=p

ktcgx Wrote:

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:Well, right now I have close to 300 cards that need to be reviewed, and kinda getting sick of the story reviews honestly. I think I'm going to just use this site until I get the last story in there, go through that pile one last time, and just switch to Anki for this. 75% retention if it matters.

You shouldn't really need to run through each kanij with its story every time you review it (only when forgotten). What should be happening about now is that you see the keyword, and an image immediately pops into you mind, holding the key to how to write the kanji.

Usually for me at this point I see the keyword, and the kanji itself pops into my mind, but sometimes it doesn't, but there's an image there, and if I follow that image through to that story, then most of the time, I can remember it fine.

I've been neglecting kanji lately, I have 1000 ish reviews due T_T and I haven't been doing my onyomis with anki either... T_T I'll have to force myself to do them today because it's just getting ridiculous :p

Yeah, I rushed through the last few chapters and I'm having problems with the images compared to Chapter 54 where I thought I was God the next day.<_<

And that sounds crazy. Then again, my Anki decks look about the same, but I'm not rushing back to them just yet. I deleted two last night actually and trying to decide on a good deck to SRS RtK from.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:I could make a long winded post about how it was long and exhausting but it's finally done, but I'll just say "Done".

U mad bros?=p

Congratulations. You may now start your Japanese studies.