I'm halfway through RTK1 and going about changing my Anki review process from slow/deliberate (30+ seconds per card.) to fast and way more willing to fail cards. I started failing every kanji I can't recall from the keyword within 4-5 seconds, and I'm only going to write out kanji during reviews if it's a newer primitive I haven't used much. My reviews today were probably 20-25 seconds per card, and obviously they can be way faster, but I'm not sure what parts of the review process to cut out from here. Could someone who blazed through their reviews deconstruct their thought process when they look at a card?

If you can go straight from keyword to primitives for a kanji you know well, do you just remember their relative positions and pass the card, or do you take a few seconds to let the mnemonic play out in your head even if you don't need it? Do you visualize writing the strokes out, or just flip the card and pass as soon as you trigger the recall of the primitives?

I want to try to get the leanest review process possible, but it's pretty much the complete opposite of what I've been doing so far, so feedback about what worked/didn't work from some of you guys who did the whole book this way would be great.

Thanks!

For me it depends on a lot of things. My average time for cards is 3-20 seconds.

New kanji/primitives always get written out carefully and thoughtfully. These are 20 second cards. I don't necessarily repeat the entire story to myself, but I usually try and create some sort of mnemonic that recalls the whole story if I need it.

Example:

戯 - frolic

"Japanese have a tradition of throwing a frolicking fiesta on the eve of death. There the soon-to-be-deceased, who may or may not end up in the void for eternity, celebrate their remaining days frolicking at the fiesta. That way if they do go to the void, their last memory will at least be pleasant. The aged of Japan frolic at Void-Fiestas."

If I know a card very well and I am doing reviews without paper and pencil I will either write it with a finger in my palm or just imagine the primitive locations. I haven't really noticed a difference in retention between actually writing and using my finger/imagining primitives. These reviews only take a couple seconds per card.

That said, I would not give up on writing completely. Getting primitives well ingrained in your muscle memory not only makes your writing less stilted, it seems to help with recalling as well. Frequently my hand will be writing faster than my mind is thinking, because whenever I have time I still try to do my reviews on paper. Writing is a skill, and like any skill you actually need to perform it in order to keep it.

I'm in a similar position to you (same place too I think), taking a similar amount of time per card. I prefer writing them out to get myself as well as my hand used to the kanji I'm learning. Things also tend to stick a bit better for me when I write them out as well. I know that it's longer but it works for me.
That being said, I don't really pay attention to handwriting (some of my primitives look pretty bad these days), I'm just aiming for the general shape and image

However, recently I have been attempting to speed things up. I used to write things out more deliberately, now it's just scribbles and a few I just think of the primitives in the rough spatial order they are in. So far it's been working, although I've hit a rough batch of kanji combined with school studies which have slowed reviews down again.
One thing I like to do is just say the key bits of my story, kind of like a 3-4 word summary of the sentence. So, if a story was "the cow jumped over the moon", I would say cow-jump-moon instead of going through it all.
I definitely agree with the handwriting advice given above, I'm way faster with writing kanji than I was a year ago, and more importantly way more confident when writing

In the end, and this is still a process I am working on, you probably only want to go through the whole story of ones you feel you are having trouble forgetting or you know you are having trouble with. When I see something like 水 - water I know what it is and "Easy" it immediately. But with something like 壊-(can't remember the english right now, I just think of こわす) I like to go through it as I know it's been problematic before.
I also find using known Japanese vocabulary can help speed things up pretty well as it creates a nice strong link to a word already known, but this of course needs prior vocab knowledge to be of use

I agree about muscle memory being useful, both for retention and just being able to write legibly. I don't plan on giving up on the writing aspect, just switching to more palm scribbling and visualizing of the primitives on kanji that I'm already really familiar with.

Good call with regards to summarizing long stories down into a few words that get you to the primitives faster on familiar cards. I edit some stories like that, but I could do it more often.

The more I think about it, half of my problem with review time is probably just that I've been relying on taking 10-20 seconds to recall on a lot of the kanji from the beginning, so weak memories get passed too often and never really become strong ones. Things should speed up when I re-learn all of those and grade new cards more strictly in the future.

As a side note, just experimenting with different methods is making reviews a lot more fun in the short term since I have micro goals and challenges to focus on, I should have thought of this sooner.

Thanks for the replies.

Long stories make me impatient. I want an "ahh" moment as soon as I hit Fail and see the back side with the story. One glance is usually enough to push it back into memory.
Only if it doesn't and my performance is generally not affected by lack of sleep or fatigue or something, I rewrite it, and all my stories are short. As short as possible. I also tend to only remember the gist of some stories, which then is enough to come up with the Kanji.
I also write with the finger in my palm, but when I do stuff at school (during classes, when the others are learning the stuff there), I write them out.

mc962 Wrote:...I also find using known Japanese vocabulary can help speed things up pretty well...

+1 This has been the single largest benefit in reviews for me.

ehhhh Wrote:The more I think about it, half of my problem with review time is probably just that I've been relying on taking 10-20 seconds to recall on a lot of the kanji from the beginning, so weak memories get passed too often and never really become strong ones. Things should speed up when I re-learn all of those and grade new cards more strictly in the future.

You're right on the mark here, and it's something I struggle with as well. Some cards I know I can recall, but I have to sit there for 20 seconds to see it through. I can recall them, so I hate to fail them. But like you said, weak connections just get weaker and eventually I just fail the card anyway. So now I'm stricter with myself: if I don't think of it in less than 10 seconds or so, even if I later recall it, it's a fail. It's helped a lot and probably saved me time in the long run.

i'm not so sure about the weak memories getting weaker. the point of RTK is not to link kanji to stories, it's to familiarize you with kanji. when you then, after finishing RTK and doing real japanese, stumble upon real vocab that uses the kanji in question, the point is moot. you build a total new memory from scratch, using the kanji as a memory hook. for that, it only has to be there. i know that こわい uses 怖, but if i was asked which english keyword it was or how the story went, i'd pull a blank. so yeah, i don't see the point in being overly perfectionist. i'd only fail a card if a kanji won't pop up at all. even if it takes you 20 seconds, it proves you do have the kanji itself in memory, it's just the link to the story that's weak, and that is superfluous later anyways.

andikaze Wrote:...the point of RTK is not to link kanji to stories, it's to familiarize you with kanji...

I suppose that's fine if you don't intent to write them. Or if your visual memory is so good that you can recall one of thousands of kanji on the spot (possibly in a very stressful spot) and reproduce it perfectly. My memory is pretty damned good, but it sure as hell isn't that good. And I do frequently find cause for writing--nearly daily. I'd make the further claim that being able to write it off the top of your head is also going to mean you'll spot it that much quicker. The stories and keywords may be superfluous to speaking Japanese, but they're a God-send for writing it.

see, i'm still using RTK and i'm still learning them, too. i also see them all day long, as i'm living in your neighborhood, just over the mountains to saitama, so i guess we're in a very similar situation, so i can totally see where you're coming from. i also intend to be able to one write them all with native fluency, as this specific skill is one of the promises heisig made in his book, and it's a phantastic and very useful skill for people living here.

that being said,
what i do is, i remember the primitives of the kanji, not the story. the story only in the beginning, but it's the first thing to eradicate. after a while what sticks is "ahh this is old woman, so wave and woman" instead of "an old woman has skin like waves, full of wrinkles" or something. i know "seize" was something about a greenpeace ship or so, but the story escapes me at the moment. you can see the wild dogs, flowers and a vessel here, right? 獲
that's what i have in mind: wild dogs + greenpeace vessel, then i write it out. i know "antique fingers" is "aunt".
there are stories i still remember somewhat, like the one with frodo and and sam whose 初time outside of the shire it was, for example, but only vaguely. but they're already vanishing and the step from seeing the keyword happens in an impulse. that's why i think the story itself is not that important, just get "into the flow" with the parts, and that's not a specific thing to train, it just happens over time thanks to the repetition.

andikaze Wrote:...i'm living in your neighborhood, just over the mountains to saitama... what i do is, i remember the primitives of the kanji, not the story.

Then we're not really in disagreement, as I do the same thing. But it's disingenuous to say that you don't use the stories, because even if you're not recalling the story itself it's what ties those keywords together for you. Later, if you run into trouble recalling it, or you're writing a complicated kanji in front of people and get halfway through before realizing you can't precisely recall a stroke, then, with your keywords, you can recall the story completely if need be.

However if it's taking you 20 seconds to recall the story, it's clearly not in your memory in such a way as to facilitate fast recall. Failing the card will improve those links, and it only takes seeing it 4-5 more times (a total cost of 30-60 seconds) to re-cement it in memory.

And I know exactly where Kumagaya is, I use Honjo station semi-frequently and I drive through Kumagaya itself every time I drive down to Tokyo. Hell I used to live 15km away in the southern part of Isesaki along the river! Actually, come to think of it, the other month I was talking to a dude in Kumagaya on 4chan--you're not him, are you?

Nope

What I'm having trouble is, keywords are quite similar a lot of the time (think of chastise, admonish and the like), which is even worse because English not my mother tongue, I'm a German. If you use "scold" I get what you mean, but come on^^ "Don't chastise me!" ^^

I could theoretically draw all the kanji with similar meaning/keyword in my hand, but that's a bit over the top. Likewise, many of the stories take the English keyword and use it in a way it's not meant to be used if you look at the kanji, a good example would be all the stuff with 毎. I know it from 毎日、毎月、毎晩、毎回, but "behind every good taskmaster stands.." is just a different thing, so I might actually be "polluted" here. In such cases a story does nothing for me but confuse me and I end up using something like 各 instead, which would be "each" in Heisig's book but is much closer to the stories.

I'm actually a bit in trouble sometimes, only ANKI and its repetitions eventually plant them in my memory in some cases. I never got certain primitives or rather, got them wrong for a long time, like "double back", because I had no image to connect it to. It eventually stuck, and with it all the connected kanji. Sometimes there seems to be no other way than to abandon the story idea and just brute force it in. This is not intended, but what can you do?

andikaze Wrote:What I'm having trouble is, keywords are quite similar a lot of the time (think of chastise, admonish and the like), which is even worse because English not my mother tongue, I'm a German. If you use "scold" I get what you mean, but come on^^ "Don't chastise me!" ^^

If it helps, they're not actually synonyms (even though Heisig implies otherwise, what on Earth was he thinking?), it's admonish as in "caution against something" ("caution" as a noun also works).

Actually, "caution" doesn't seem to be used as a keyword, so I'd just rename the kanji.

That's a great idea. I should revise all the problem radicals and check them against the lists in the book to not use the same thing twice.

Quote:What I'm having trouble is, keywords are quite similar a lot of the time (think of chastise, admonish and the like), which is even worse because English not my mother tongue, I'm a German. If you use "scold" I get what you mean, but come on^^ "Don't chastise me!" ^^

That's why I started with RtK in German. I would say that my English is good, but I just do not get all the nuances of a word. I don't know how far you are with the book, but switching to German could be an option. Especially since there is the book in German and an Anki deck (without stories though). However, it might be too much work.

A third option for dealing with similar keywords, which is what I use, is just to plug in a Japanese field on the front of the card. There you put any Japanese words (in kana) you know which use the kanji to help you keep things straight. If you have two similar keywords for which you don't know any Japanese vocab, it's a trivial thing to learn one Japanese word to put on one of the cards. This helps keep things like stomach/abdomen (胃・お腹), soft / tender (軟・柔らか), etc differentiated--especially when Heisig chooses odd keywords.

I'm only lower intermediate and I found I knew vocab for about half the kanji in RTK1.

I did 940 Kanji with RTK so far, and I'm living in Japan, so getting my hands on a German version is not easy, probably costly and, the main point, I think I'd have to start over, which I don't want to do now, that I'm this far in (almost halfway through).

Yes, I did add a Japanese field for stuff like that, and entered words such as けいさつ for 警 (admonish). I don't do that for all words tho. Sometimes I feel extremely stupid for not noticing that the damn think I could not memorize because the story was so strange was actually the very simple 持. "hold", and then some stuff about holding up a temple with a finger or something. When I did notice it, I never failed this card again, just because it's such a frequent thing. Maybe the fact that I enlarged the font of the Kanji to clearly see what's going on led to the Kanji totally not looking like it'd look "in the wild", where 持 and 待 always looked like the same thing to me with a 10/12pt font

I'm a 整体師, so I memorized 軟 as なんこつ and 柔 is just the good old 柔らかい. I totally agree that this helps with a lot of rather obscure keywords.

Some of the radicals, however, don't do it for me. I still always think about how to write "double back" or "mandala", and instead of "spool" I just went with the "dirty crotch".