Hey, long time reader =]
It's been a great ride so far. I started learning Japanese last march.
since then I finshed RTK, Tae Kim and right now I am plowing through core2k.
but...(there's alwatys a but)
I want to wear off RTK.
I still have about 80 reviews a day ( I finish last july...) It's really annoying these days.
It's ,like these kanjis holding me back from studying more vocab.
what is your number of reps? what do you think I should do?

If the reviews are getting tedious, just stop. Do something that you enjoy. At some point, you can go back if you need the review. That'll be annoying for a bit, but not that bad, in my experience.

You're still at 80 reviews a day after half a year? What SRS are you using? What's your retention rate like? If my Anki forecast is to be believed, two weeks after I finish (at 2050 now, been doing 50/day so my reviews are nuts at the moment) I'll be at less than 50 reviews a day, and since I have my interval capped at two months it should eventually average to ~35 day. That's about 5 to 10 minutes.

As a comparison my sentence deck has over 3000 cards in it and I only see about 50 a day, and that's mainly due to adding a few hundred new cards a couple weeks back.

Just confused as to how you have so many reviews yet!

80 a day does sound a bit high and that could be a retention problem. You should add more information to the front of your cards that is relevant to what you're learning now. Like vocab readings, on yomi, kun yomi. That will help you narrow it down, hopefully. I wouldn't advise deleting the deck, since that is how you ensure you keep the results of all your hard work. It's easier to lose than you might think.

Haych Wrote:...You should add more information to the front of your cards that is relevant to what you're learning now. Like vocab readings, on yomi, kun yomi...

This is something I have been advocating as well, and something that has worked well for me. I have a 'Japanese' field on the front of my cards with all the vocab I know that use the kanji. This makes telling keywords apart a lot easier (stomach/胃 vs. abdomen/お腹 for example), and also provides a second prompt for recalling the kanji.

I'd stick with RTK a bit longer, to be honest. I stopped pretty quick and I regret it. I can't write kanji really at all anymore, although I can read just fine. If I stuck with RTK a bit more I imagine I'd be pretty good at writing characters still.

If it's been half a year and you're currently working on Core, I'd recommend ditching the RTK deck. Personally, I've found that my vocabulary has replaced RTK for recognizing kanji, so I recommend spending more time studying Core and only focus on difficult kanji in the context of vocabulary (if it's been half a year and you're still having trouble with certain kanji, using some different mental links could help clear it up).

Personally, for several months (more like a year, since I burnt out and quit for a couple months), the only Anki deck I used was the Optimized Core 2k/6k vocabulary deck. Now that I've gone through that, I'm trying to get myself to make cards for some words that show up while I'm reading, but I still haven't started adding cards.
Anyway, the point is I only focused on vocab once I got to it and I'm not regretting it at all. You can get a lot more done if you're only worrying about one thing at a time and, by this point, RTK should have little use left for you.

[s0apgun]

Tzadeck Wrote:I'd stick with RTK a bit longer, to be honest. I stopped pretty quick and I regret it. I can't write kanji really at all anymore, although I can read just fine. If I stuck with RTK a bit more I imagine I'd be pretty good at writing characters still.

+1

I recently have been wishing I had stuck with RTK a little longer than I did, going against my previous views on it. It helps with many things down the road that you don't expect.

What I'm doing with my RTK deck, is starting to add a Japanese vocab word in kana under the English keyword (one that has a similar meaning), with the word in kanji and meaning (if needed) on the back. So, I'm not replacing the English keywords, more adding an extra hint. It's helping a massive amount with not mixing up keywords, which had become my main problem and why I still have so many RTK cards hanging about, and just generally made the cards feel more useful and interesting.

I'm using wrighttak's spreadsheet from this topic to help choose which words to add, though have picked a fair few myself, too:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=929

thank you all.
usually it's a problem with the keyword being mixed with another keyword, or misplacing a certain radical. really small problems.
if you show me the kanji I will be able to recognize it not problem.
I will try to stick with RTK.
my algorithhm with anki is the basic one.
my retention rate with core is quite good, but my RTK have some kind problem maybe...
dunno.

This problem is the reason I customized my Anki deck too, and I have made it available here:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11444

I do believe there's value in making your own deck and customizing your cards with Japanese words that are relevant to your studies and help jog your memory. For some of the more rare kanji the word I have chosen was one that stuck in my brain for me, but maybe it wouldn't be the case for everyone.

I think that kind of customization is key and a good part of the learning process.

Also, to help you maybe pull through this rough patch... you will get faster at writing kanji. 80 reviews a day used to take me a long time. Now that amount would take me between 10-15 minutes.

Yea, I write them quite fast.
I think your last offer was really good..
But I really don't have time to edit these things. I just do my reviews, +10 new words and immerse as much as possible.
I just want to get to a decent amount of sentences a day. that's it.
Maybe I do need to put some more active time, but I just don't have the time for it right now (university, exam period...) =[

[s0apgun]

You could limit your RTK reviews to half of what you're doing in Anki. At this point the intervals shouldn't make a difference. By all means do more vocab, just don't drop RTK completely.

Z30G0D Wrote:But I really don't have time to edit these things. I just do my reviews, +10 new words and immerse as much as possible.

Yeah, because it would be quite time consuming otherwise, I just edit my cards while reviewing them. For instance, I got the keyword for rebuke mixed up today, so I just edited the card there and then to add さとす to the front as an extra hint. After all, there's no need to change the ones you're not having trouble with. I'm getting through my reviews a lot faster now (and not hating doing it, which is pretty important too), so it frees up more time to add sentences - the time spent editing cards is worth it in terms of eventual payoff.

I do agree with not dropping the RTK deck, I dropped it and really regretted it, ended up redoing it. At this stage you've already put so much work into it, it's probably worth keeping it up.

Delete your deck.

I kinda agree with what TheVinster says above me. You probably want to replace RTK with something else. If you still think writing is important, you can easily just start writing practical vocab words down for your reviews.

If you don't delete your deck and your getting mixed up on certain similar kanji, these are ones you specifically want to replace with vocab review first.

Other things specific to Anki:

I'd consider increasing your interval modifier so cards get spaced out quicker. (Look it up in the Anki docs for a formula.)

Also be sure your "New Interval" on lapses is at least 10%, if you fail a card you shouldn't start over at zero.

Just keep in mind RTK isn't real Japanese, why not start focusing on learning the actual language now?