Especially the often failed kanji.

My normal way of doing things at the moment is like this; Every morning I review the cards I learned yesterday, if I fail any of those I'll take a look at the failed ones and leave it at that for the moment.

I'll review the due cards, and fail somewhere between 5~15 cards. Now, most of the failed cards will be 'newly failed', I failed them maybe once before, or it's the first time. Those aren't the problem... I don't even look at the story, because most often I will remember the story when reviewing (after I click on show kanji... oh well, I do fail them, but don't go over the stories again).

I do this for all the failed kanji, but the real problem is with the ones I failed more than 3 times, up to 6 times for some of them...

After an hour or 2/3, I return to my computer and 'review' the failed cards (write them down, check kanji, write next one down before clicking 'learned' if it's correct). ...

I used to do it the same way for 'newly failed' kanji and kanji I repeatedly fail...

If I failed any of them, I would go over the story, and try again a few hours later. And click 'learned' if I got them correct.

Now, I'm thinking about trying something else for the 'hard' kanji (the ones I fail too often...) instead of clicking 'learned' when I *do* remember them, finally, I think I should leave them in the failed part until the next day... And review them at the same time as the newly added cards. ...

Any chance that would work better? ^_^;

Yea, I would definitely leave those problem kanji in the failed stack until the next day. Even if you keep on failing a kanji over and over, you should still eventually get it, because once you have reviewed it so many times, you will learn it by sheer rote memorization.

When I am having problems with a particular kanji, I also try to think about it throughout the day. I'll think about the keyword, and the story, and how to write the kanji. I find that this usually helps.

One thing that's worked really well for me is that if I fail a kanji more than a few times, I change the story or spend some time adding to my image. I find that if I do that, I don't need to worry about it ending up in my failed stack in the future.

I start with the red stack. Then when I go through the orange/blue stacks, if I miss one, I go directly to the story in another tab. I review the story and change it a little if need be. Then I won't quiz the red stack again until the next day. Cards stay in the red stack until I can remember them after it's been 24 hours or so. (basically it is like adding one more stack).

I just review the kanji, make sure I still have the story and image in my head, and move on.

If I have the story and image in my head: I just go ahead and hit "learned" and let the SRS do the work.

If I don't have the story or image firmly in my head, then I spend a good 30 seconds~1 minute to review as if it were a new kanji.

Just finished a horrible review session - 21 failed kanji. Bad day for me today.

Thanks for the replies

Hmm, this weekend I'll be away (Friday until Sunday) and I'm wondering how to cope with that. No internet access at all, so no chance for real reviews.

I thought about not adding any new kanji on Wednesday (those would have to be reviewed on Saturday, right?), but adding kanji on Thursday and Friday anyway (write the ones for Friday down and take them with me so I can at least look at them on Saturday).

I will be back on Sunday, but I'm a bit scared because I have to do more reviews now everyday (80~90) and I don't want to think about doing two days of reviews worth at once. In reality though, it's only one day I'm missing so I probably shouldn't worry too much

But, what's the best way to do this? Not add any kanji for a few days to get the reviews down? ... I don't want to finish half a month later than planned...

Savara

Your recall rate won't be that bad after just two days away. Just keep going as normal and if you fail a few more when you come back, you fail a few more, thats it. And, for me anyway its the day before's Kanji which needs reviewing most urgently, so just write down the words or take the book with you and review the old fashioned way.

I'm having trouble with RTK at the moment.

27 failed cards today, not so bad as Sunday or Monday though (47 failed cards). I had to review 106 cards today, average is 60~80. Is all of this just after effects of 1 day away?... (And I didn't add as many cards last week and this week, as normal, as well).

Right now, I'm honestly scared what would happen if I did go on a holiday with my parents for more than 1 day (it would be like, 5 days).

And I'm also having a crazy amount of difficulty with remembering/learning new kanji. Maybe just a hard point in the book, or a mental block, or another after effect of the weekend (maybe everything combined).

I started somewhere last year, gave up after 100 kanji or so. Now I'm at 900-something, after really starting back in February/March. Then I'll read someone who has been going for a few *WEEKS* and is at the same point. I feel like a failure at the moment. For the first time since starting learning Japanese last June, I feel like giving up.

I won't, I can't even really imagine giving up. Reviewing words, sentences and kanji just has become such a habit, it would probably be hard to break Still... Maybe I just need to read another chapter of D.Gray-man or watch the last two eps of Hero Tales, and forget to worry about what I don't understand and just enjoy it for a moment?

...

Savara Wrote:I started somewhere last year, gave up after 100 kanji or so. Now I'm at 900-something, after really starting back in February/March. Then I'll read someone who has been going for a few *WEEKS* and is at the same point. I feel like a failure at the moment. ...

Don't worry about it. I've been doing this for 2 years and I'm still only at 1080. The way I see it, it is not a race.

Yeah, man, don't worry about it. It's not a race. Some people are just crazy and/or have much more free time and/or are overly suited to this style of learning. How long it takes you shouldn't be TOO much of a consideration. Even if it did take you a comparatively long time (and the time you've spent isn't comparatively long), it's likely still quite a lot faster than it would be on the traditional route. You're still saving time.

About failing cards. I think that probably warrants a review of the stories associated with the things you're failing, perhaps finding new stories or a new way to go about them. Try constructing your stories differently. If you're mostly relying on the words of a story, try to focus more on images. If you're focusing mostly on images, try to focus on clever little wordplays instead. Swap to keywords in your other language? Or even finding a different time of day to review them. My reviews are negatively affected by two things: being tired, and being stressed. The second one is most unfortunate, because it means after I miss a couple I get stressed and start missing ones I'd get otherwise.

But, that aside, try not to worry about it too terribly much. I started out with a near perfect review rate, and that set up pretty horrible expectations for myself. My reviews have since plummeted (only a little objectively, but like I said, bad expectations) and it makes me furious. But I have to realize it doesn't matter, and it's not a race to get cards into the fourth box and I still know the card more than I did before I learned it. Most importantly, forgetting IS a part of the learning process too. Everything you do here, including failing, is working toward your success.

Also, I can't quite remember exactly because I'm one of those fast ones, so I don't get my head on the specific numbers, but I'm pretty sure 900 was a hard area for me too, and I think I've heard others mention that as well. And I found some of the stuff either leading up to or crossing over 1200 (again, can't remember exactly) to be really awful as well. There's a lot of rough patches like that, some shared with most users of the book and some personal. Just tough it out. Even if seems like you're not internalizing them very well while you're learning new ones, that just means they'll be in the failed box later and you'll do a little bit more work on them then. As above, you still know them more than you did before; it's still working toward your success.

And have some fun with the language, too.

Ok I guess I managed to motivate myself a little, and your replies certainly helped as well.

I just watched an episode of Hero Tales and once again understood more than about a week ago. I'm still improving, I'm still learning new words, grammar things and most of all, new kanji.

I think that it's just that at times it seems so impossible to ever reach a place (with anything, but even more so when learning languages) that will make you content. (After all, even in your native language there will always be new words/things to learn.) ... But just realising that I can at the very least watch an episode of a random anime, without subtitles, and follow (most of) the story (while missing a lot of detail, but ... still!) makes me happy.

I couldn't do this a year ago, I couldn't even read hiragana a year ago... ... Just keep going... right?

... And now off to learn the new kanji for today. (18 (my daily goal), no cheating and only doing 10 >_>)

Don't feel bad about failed kanji. You're asking your brain to remember over 2000 chinese characters. You can't expect to be flawless.

If you're having trouble with new stories, don't fret too much. Everyone hits that "kanji wall" every now and then. My advice is to take a breather from new stories and focus on those orange and red stacks. Close your eyes and visualize your stories. Follow Heisig's advice in Lesson 11. The chore of reviewing will quickly bore you so badly you'll be fit enough to devour those new cards.

Another thing about failing kanji, the idea is to wait until you *almost* forget it before you review it. That's the most efficient use of your review time. Well, that's a guess. Hopefully you catch 90% of them *before* you forget it, and that implies that you won't catch 10% of them until *after* you forgot them. And it's a guess, so you may hit a group where you forget more than 10% of them. You just review them, re-learn them, and they automatically start getting reviewed more frequently for a bit. If you miss your daily reviews, you can expect to miss that optimum review (and have to fail) more of them. It's natural, normal, and really is okay.

I agree with CharleyGarret and akrodha - you will get some Kanji wrong, don't stress about it.

I've had a day with 50+ failed kanji before, and it's not that bad.
Failed kanji don't usually require as much effort as learning a new kanji.

But I think it's very important to clear your failed stack each day.
If you let them build up you will lose all the work you put in before they failed.
I think of it this way - the sooner you get them out of the failed stack, the sooner they will be in the 4th stack!

I found RTK a lot easier once I realised I could trust the SRS.

I just reached kanji nr 1000. ^_^ (yes that was worth a post )

Woooo!