I got to the end of RTK 1 (hurrah, hurrah!) but . . . well let's be honest my review retention rate still sucks. Not a shockingly poor 85% you sometimes read about but 75% or even less. Once I got 67% and it's lucky I don't live near any cliffs or I'd have thrown myself off then and there. So some tips for you all on this great journey:

1. When doing my reviews I would sometimes cut myself some slack saying 'OK I will give myself a pass on that because, really, I KNEW that primitive was on the left side . . .' Or whatever. I sometimes think I fell out of the stupid tree and broke every branch on the way down. This is not a test it is a learning aid. If you get it wrong a little bit that is just the system nudging you to revise it again so you know it properly. And now I have figured out what a stupid thing to do this is have I stopped doing it? Absolutely! Unless I get three kanji in a row wrong when I do indeed cut myself slack which in the long run is just making me fail more in future. Bakka!

2. Failing a kanji is not like bumping into an embarrassing lover from your past. All too often I avert my eyes and rush past when of course what I should be doing is taking her for coffee and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Ok so the analogy is getting stretched. Anyway, don't do what I do; instead, when you fail a kanji, really, really slow down and study it. So you won't be like me and fail, fail and fail again.

3. Some of my early kanji have rubbish stories. I didn't really get the hang of the site for the first few hundred. So do revisit any repeated fails and rewrite the story. People say you shouldn't change the underlying story too much and that is probably right but you can add more detail or change it radically if it just isn't working at all. Or try my super lazy strategy and just hope it clicks in the end - then you too can have a pathetic retention rate just like me.

Anyway just my (depressed) thoughts.

It doesn't really matter, it will stick eventually. Keep up reviewing and don't worry about how many you fail, in the long run its completely not important and noone including you will care. Then get on with actually learning Japanese!

[RawToast]

Rusty Wrote:I got to the end of RTK 1 (hurrah, hurrah!) but . . . well let's be honest my review retention rate still sucks. Not a shockingly poor 85% you sometimes read about but 75% or even less. Once I got 67% and it's lucky I don't live near any cliffs or I'd have thrown myself off then and there.

That >80% recall rate is for mature cards only. Your rate will improve now you have finished adding cards. Right now my 'new vocab' deck is sitting at 64% for young cards, whilst my mature cards for vocab have a recall rate of 88%.

Rusty Wrote:1. When doing my reviews I would sometimes cut myself some slack saying 'OK I will give myself a pass on that because, really, I KNEW that primitive was on the left side . . .' Or whatever. I sometimes think I fell out of the stupid tree and broke every branch on the way down. This is not a test it is a learning aid. If you get it wrong a little bit that is just the system nudging you to revise it again so you know it properly.

I used to do this. And like yourself, I know it is a fallacy. I stopped using 'hard' for mistakes by changing the 'new interval' field in Anki for lapses to 10-25%. So for a 60 day card failure it becomes a 6-15 day card, then if you fail it again in the same review set the card would fail down to ~1-2 days. This is much better than pressing 'hard' which would place the card at ~60 days -- where you would probably fail it again.

RawToast Wrote:That >80% recall rate is for mature cards only.

Why does everyone keep saying that? Mine is 75% (8544/11340) for learning, 91% (9701/10710) for young and 80% (1232/1538) for mature.

Vempele Wrote:

RawToast Wrote:That >80% recall rate is for mature cards only.

Why does everyone keep saying that? Mine is 75% (8544/11340) for learning, 91% (9701/10710) for young and 80% (1232/1538) for mature.

Mine stats are exactly the same: 75%(3568/4712) for learning and 91%(4326/4750) for young. I didn't get a chance to review any of my mature cards yet so it's at 0% (0/0).

[RawToast]

On a train atmo, so difficult to go and find it, but it's from the supermemo algorithm documentation.

Here:

Quote:For moderately difficult material, the average user should find they remember approximately 90% of mature cards that come up for review.

http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#reviews

That's fine, move on!!!! go learn japanese then You'll realize which kanji are more useful and used.

This post will seem overly simple, but there isn't much that needs said here. Do not worry about retention rate. It will work out if you keep the reps up. Take failed cards as an opportunity to deepen its hold in your long-term memory. If you feel something needs to be tweaked to remember it better, do it as you go, but don't let that stall you from tackling your next Japanese challenge (whatever that may be).

Congratulations on finishing RtK1. It's not an easy thing to do.