I printed out an excel listing of all of the 2,042 keywords sorted in random order, without the kanji, and then I wrote in the kanji by hand beside each keyword. It was 89 letter sized pages long. Took me a couple of days to complete. Then when I was finished I checked my work.

The result? I got them all correct except for 93 kanji which I will now separately review. It shows RTK1 really does work! I was surprised I was able to remember more than 95% of them. Included in the 93 I didn't get are some where I was missing only one stroke, some where the primitives were in the wrong position etc. There were only a handful where I had drawn a total blank.

So yes I can warmly recommend RTK1...yay!

I had planned to do something similar when I finished RTK but I never got around to doing it. I was so tired of it by then that I decided to reduce my number of rtk reviews to ~100 per days.

anyways, congratulations on your results

Linval Wrote:I had planned to do something similar when I finished RTK but I never got around to doing it. I was so tired of it by then that I decided to reduce my number of rtk reviews to ~100 per days.

anyways, congratulations on your results

Thanks.

If you know the kanji really well it doesn't take long to do the test I did. There were some pages where I knew every single kanji almost by reflex and I whizzed through those pages quickly. There were other pages where I had to pause and think and take my time. (e.g., "no wait, "formerly" isn't the one with "waitress" in it; the one with "waitress" is "previously").

One thing that I've decided not to do right now is proceed to study the remaining 1,000 kanji in RTK3. I figure right now I only barely have enough time to keep the RTK1 kanji planted in my brain. I'll proceed to RTK3 only after I have all the RTK1 kanji down cold.

Follow up: I haven't done any RTK1 reviews for months and months (I was focused on reading and learning vocabulary after completing RTK1) and last week I was on vacation and decided to go through the whole RTK1 book from start to finish and see how many I still remember. This involved: keeping the kanji covered; looking at the keyword; writing the kanji; then sliding the card down the page to see if I was correct.

I went from #1 to #2,042. It took me from Monday to Saturday to do it, a couple of hours or so a day. It's nice doing the whole thing in a compressed time frame like this because you can more easily see the interrelationships of various kanji with each other. Also the similar keywords seem to jump out more (e.g., tracks vs. animal tracks; these lists I studied from proved helpful: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11732)

The verdict? I could get around 85% right off the bat and the others I had to review the kanji and the story again. Overall I was happy with the result. There was only one spot that for some reason didn't stick at all. The two pages about the "sign of the bird" (whiskey bottle). It's amazing though how well most of the stories work. The "Chuck Norris" and "Spiderman" chapters stuck really well (though I didn't use those two in my stories).

Doing the whole book in one week like this made me form a theory as to why so many people bog down at around the 1,000 mark. I could really notice at that point that I had to deal with a lot more primitive elements than earlier in the book. Plus the kanji themselves seem to get more and more abstract. But then around 1,400 (stamp/chop seal) it seemed to get easier again. Then all the rest was downhill.

Now I'm going through the book again but kanji to keyword. This is faster because I just look at the kanji and say the keyword out loud.

I think based on the above I'll do a complete review like this maybe once or twice a year. I'm thinking about starting RTK3 soon.

john555 Wrote:I printed out an excel listing of all of the 2,042 keywords sorted in random order, without the kanji, and then I wrote in the kanji by hand beside each keyword.

I liked a lot your idea of making a review of the whole book after finishing it. I think I'll do the same after I catch up with my due reviews.

Sebastian Wrote:

john555 Wrote:I printed out an excel listing of all of the 2,042 keywords sorted in random order, without the kanji, and then I wrote in the kanji by hand beside each keyword.

I liked a lot your idea of making a review of the whole book after finishing it. I think I'll do the same after I catch up with my due reviews.

The thing I like about reviewing the whole book all at once is that the "easy" kanji help reinforce your memory of the "difficult" ones.

Mind giving some details about how you did the reviews? I'm thinking about doing it myself, but I'm not feeling the whole 12+ hours of reviewing Kanji part of it. Wonder if it's possible to do it really fast.

john555 Wrote:The thing I like about reviewing the whole book all at once is that the "easy" kanji help reinforce your memory of the "difficult" ones.

I don't know which review method is more beneficial for learning and retaining Kanji (yours could very well be it), but random order would of course be a more relevant test of that knowledge...with Japanese people stubbornly refusing to write their Kanji in the correct, Heisig approved order and all.

So, if you want to actually test your Kanji knowledge, in a couple of months you should do a few hundred random reviews, see what percentage you get that way.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Mind giving some details about how you did the reviews? I'm thinking about doing it myself, but I'm not feeling the whole 12+ hours of reviewing Kanji part of it. Wonder if it's possible to do it really fast.

john555 Wrote:The thing I like about reviewing the whole book all at once is that the "easy" kanji help reinforce your memory of the "difficult" ones.

I don't know which review method is more beneficial for learning and retaining Kanji (yours could very well be it), but random order would of course be a more relevant test of that knowledge...with Japanese people stubbornly refusing to write their Kanji in the correct, Heisig approved order and all.

So, if you want to actually test your Kanji knowledge, in a couple of months you should do a few hundred random reviews, see what percentage you get that way.

I reviewed using a card with a notch cut in one corner so I could cover up the kanji but see the keyword. Then after I wrote the kanji I would slide the card down to see if I was correct. I proceeded through the physical book this way.
If I got the kanji wrong or couldn't remember I would go back and review the story (and possibly tweak the story).

Now having finished that I'm doing the same thing but kanji to keyword.

I agree with you that random testing is better. This time I wanted to review the kanji in order because at the same time I wanted to review how the kanji are built up in sequence (according to Heisig). At some point I'd like to do another test but completely random.