TerryS Wrote:

AdamLeliel Wrote:450!

I started doing this last week (I think?), for motivation:
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i5/nec...0014-2.jpg

It now has the number "400" on and four sheets instead of two.

The picture is too small to see clearly online... what did you do? Are you printing out something with all the kanji, and checking them off? Or did you write the kanji you've learned on the sheets?

Oops, my bad: http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i5/nec...0014-2.jpg

I've started again though as I've realised, like you said, I need to go at a much slower pace. I'm going at 20 a day.

Raichu Wrote:It's not a good idea to review kanji before they are due. The whole point about RevTK is that it uses spaced repetition. It's best to review kanji on the day they are due to maximize your mind's ability to remember them.

If you want to leave some to the next day because there's too many, that's not so bad. But leaving them for several days or doing them before they are due is likely to hinder rather than help.

If you point is that it may screw up SRS timings by increasing its duration too much before seeing it again, then you are perhaps correct (though over time this would solve itself anyway). If you are saying that seeing a Kanji (in any context) before its due is bad, then that's nonsense.

The more exposure the better, whatever the form

Past the halfway mark now... all downhill from here. It's amazing how well the stories and the SRS work! Keep going everyone!

NightSky Wrote:

Raichu Wrote:It's not a good idea to review kanji before they are due. The whole point about RevTK is that it uses spaced repetition. It's best to review kanji on the day they are due to maximize your mind's ability to remember them.

If you want to leave some to the next day because there's too many, that's not so bad. But leaving them for several days or doing them before they are due is likely to hinder rather than help.

If you point is that it may screw up SRS timings by increasing its duration too much before seeing it again, then you are perhaps correct (though over time this would solve itself anyway).

Yes, it will definitely muck up the timing. The following time, the interval will be too long and you're likely to forget it by then.

Quote:If you are saying that seeing a Kanji (in any context) before its due is bad, then that's nonsense.
The more exposure the better, whatever the form

I've had mixed experiences.

Sometimes I've found the odd extra encounter of a kanji or word has helped reinforce it. As you say, it's more exposure.

On the other hand, if it's exposed too much, then I've found it too easy the next time it comes up in the SRS. It doesn't tax my brain enough for positive reinforcement to occur. Then if I don't see it at all for the following, longer period, I forget it.

It seems one's ability to memorize a kanji or word is a complex function of many variables...

Due to general complete craziness of my schedule...I haven't learned any new kanji at all the last 2 weeks (at least not via RTK, I still pick up new kanji while writing). However, upon doing my reviews twice this week, I only got 2 wrong. And one I really did know, it was just a dumb "slap yourself upside the head" kind of oversight. Still, wrong is wrong -- if a kanji is a little bit wrong, it's totally wrong.

At least I'm happy I'll have time to do 10 new kanji each night. Thanksgiving week I expect to be too exhasted most days, so after that I'll have to start doing 15-25 a day for a while to catch up.

What a wonderful idea, sharing our progress here and encouraging each other -- it helps to know I'm not the only one getting off-track sometimes.

activeaero Wrote:The was another bonus I forgot to mention from my encounter with my new Japanese buddies. When they wrote Kanji that I haven't learned yet my brain instantly started assembling all of the primitives that I recognized. That above anything shows the true power of this method. Instead of my brain just going "what the heck is that, just looks like a jumbled mess of lines that I've never seen before" it instead found the "new" Kanji completely familiar and simply lacking in a key word.

I notice that a lot! Even with kanji I already know.

Heisig's method is only about a million times better than learning a long history of etymology (sp?) and convoluted mnemonics based on said unmemorable etymologies (as in "A Guide to Japanese Characters").

TerryS Wrote:At least I'm happy I'll have time to do 10 new kanji each night.

Ha! I just got a call saying not to come into work!
Extra 25 kanji tonight!

I normally wouldn't be happy about losing hours, considering I only work part-time...but I'll make up for the lost hours next week anyway.

(It's the economy -- we are lucky our business is so good, it took us an extra month to slow down, compared to other people. Geez, I hope our holiday season doesn't SUCK too bad. At least I know ahead about some business coming our way on Thanksgiving, and we'll be prepared for these people this year -- unlike last year.)

Up to 96! (Sounds better than 71.)

Congratulations on using your time off so well, TerryS!

I took a dangerously long break from the site earlier this autumn, but I am back to reviewing and adding kanji every day. I have 1416 cards now, and my failed and expired stacks are clear. I switched to the RTK lite option after #1346, so I just have 252 lite cards left. I'm hoping to reach the end of the lite sequence in the first half of December so that I can slow down a bit over the holidays without stopping entirely. I plan to pick up the pace again in January and go on through RTK 3 this spring.

If having this many cards in your last stack doesn't encourage you, I don't know what will!

Just finished lesson 23... so sick of hands. Just wanted to say THANKYOU to the community for the wonderful stories as well as the support on the forums.

Keep up the good work everyone, we can do this.

Quick aside.. maybe its just me, but I truely believe that if this site didnt exist I would have quit after 100 or so.

126! Planned to do 25 tonight, but did 31 because it ended the chapter.

I don't think I'm as ambitious as that other person who created a poster of all the kanji they did -- and that would take more extra time -- but I'm going to start taping up a sign in my room every night with the latest stat.

Congradulations, playadom, on 1721!!!

KristinHolly Wrote:Congratulations on using your time off so well, TerryS!

I took a dangerously long break from the site earlier this autumn, but I am back to reviewing and adding kanji every day. I have 1416 cards now, and my failed and expired stacks are clear. I switched to the RTK lite option after #1346, so I just have 252 lite cards left. I'm hoping to reach the end of the lite sequence in the first half of December so that I can slow down a bit over the holidays without stopping entirely. I plan to pick up the pace again in January and go on through RTK 3 this spring.

That is great! It is frustrating not to be able to get to it every day. Hey, even if you do less than 15 a day, you'll be done with those 252 in 20 days!

Transvestor Wrote:Quick aside.. maybe its just me, but I truely believe that if this site didnt exist I would have quit after 100 or so.

Seconded! I thought I could never truly "learn" all the kanji. I would go through my kanji dictionary the traditional way -- reading the etymology, writing it over and over, writing some compound words to try to help me to remember them. But all I ever remembered were ones which I wrote, wrote frequently.

Now, the kanji STICK! When I do get a kanji wrong, it's usually because I forgot a minor detail, or the story wasn't good enough for my mind to recall it and get the story started. (It's not hard to remember a story if you remember the beginning.) Tonight I only got 2 wrong out of 31 on my first review.

One of them I did just go totally blank on, but I think that's because, doing 31, I should have reviewed immediately after 六課 ("~ka" means "lesson~" or "chapter~") to make sure the stories were stuck in my head before I started 七課. The only other one I marked wrong was CAVITY, and only because the "drop" primitive should aim up in this case.

So far I can probably confidently write and identify the meanings of 200 kanji.
I am not proud of myself, yet.
I miss out too many days due to exam pressure GCSE's... I am not dedicating my time to KANJI! I feel crap seeing all you guys succeed and stick your head in there and do it while I sit here and do....nothing.

My plan at the beginning was to do 30 a day, and be finished in 52 days, not working out at the moment, I either can't find the time, or I am just not bothered to do them. I know I have to do them, and that those reps have to be done. But after a tough day at work, school, exams, I can't bring myself to sit down and do it. I try to compensate by keeping my audio input as japanese as possible.

Someone tell me what a failure I am and I will study harder!

(time of the months, boys. red carpet.)

askayacha, is it at all possible to tweak your schedule so you go to bed a little earlier, get up a little earlier, and do your rtk before classes? I tend to do my rtk before work in the morning, and it keeps me regular. On days when I'm not able to do it in the morning, I am more likely to blow it off entirely or to have a really bad time with remembering late in the evening or whatever, when I'm tired. I'm also more likely to maybe just do reviews/fails and not add new cards.

I could use some advice, if nobody minds.

Frame #1905. You'd think I'd be quite excited about the whole thing, since I've got under 200 to go, but it's all catching up with me. I now have just over 75 in the failed pile and 50 more still to review today. I'm not going to move on any more because I know I need to fix the failed cards, brush up my stories and really let the ones I've already added sink into my memory...

But I'm fed up. Fed up of reviewing every day, fed up of the time it's consuming, and (especially after having a very bad review today), fed up of the whole thing. It doesn't help that I'm pretty busy with other things too, I guess. Hah, sorry if this post seems very negative, by the way. Any advice or motivation would be cool and would help a great deal.

Come on dude, you're at 1905. Letting your failed pile build up to 75 was your main mistake (I clear my failed pile every day before I add new kanji) and it's a mistake you're going to have to live with now.

My main advice is this: Sit down, now. Do your 50 reviews (shouldn't even take you 15 minutes if you concentrate). Clear your failed pile. (Don't work on the stories, just look at them, visualize them, then click learned. It doesn't matter if they didn't stick, they will be in the first pile in 3 days so you'll see them soon and the ones which didn't stick will simply be failed again).

After you've done that, add 20 new kanji. Wait 4 hours or so (or to the next day), then review the blue pile. Add 20 new kanji. Repeat. You should be able to add over 50 new kanji each day, you'll be done in just 3-4 days. Then you'll have zero stress. Do your reviews every day, work on the failed pile when you feel like it.

You main goal should be to finish RtK as FAST as possible, it will take a huge burden off your shoulders to have all the kanji in the system. Don't worry about the reviews, they will dwindle quickly once you've added all the kanji.

Stopping or pausing now is a really bad idea, it won't really affect the amount of work you have to put in every day, as soon as you start adding kanji again you'll go back to the same amount of reviews every day. Don't waste time relearning stories NOW, you have all the time in the world to do that once you're finished with the book.

Hah, wow, 91 failed after my reviews (they had already built up to 60 before the start of the day though)!

Thanks for the reply Tobberoth, you offered great advice and encouragment, and I'm about to start work on my failed pile now. Thanks mate.

Back in the day, I had made it up to the high 1400s in kanji. This was on my most successful attempt at RTK (all attempts worth mentioning were thanks to this website in the first place, by the way). Anyway, that 1400+ attempt kind of dwindled down earlier this year. In September or so, I started up again from square one. It was pretty easy going, since I knew a lot of kanji already. However today, I finally have made it past where I had left off, adding more than 1500 kanji (though I still need to test today's blue pile later on).

I suspect now it'll start getting more difficult, as I'm finally starting to learn completely new kanji again.

Perhaps many other people have made several attempts at RTK before finishing it... Just gotta keep on working, I suppose! Don't lose hope if you flunk out once (or many times, like I did), just try again. At the very least, it'll be easier each time.

[edit: Er, actually, I'm at only 1494 kanji, but it's still more than I had been at before this round.]

askayscha Wrote:So far I can probably confidently write and identify the meanings of 200 kanji.
I am not proud of myself, yet.
I miss out too many days due to exam pressure GCSE's... I am not dedicating my time to KANJI! I feel crap seeing all you guys succeed and stick your head in there and do it while I sit here and do....nothing.

My plan at the beginning was to do 30 a day, and be finished in 52 days, not working out at the moment, I either can't find the time, or I am just not bothered to do them. I know I have to do them, and that those reps have to be done. But after a tough day at work, school, exams, I can't bring myself to sit down and do it. I try to compensate by keeping my audio input as japanese as possible.

Someone tell me what a failure I am and I will study harder!

(time of the months, boys. red carpet.)

No, you are not a failure, but I have some advice (being a student myself):

1) You will not be able to do any kanji at all some days. It sucks, but you are not lazy, so just suck it up.

2) Do even a few kanji or just come here and do review when you can. It will help you retain and you will feel better.

3) A day you have time off, do 25 kanji once in a while if you can.

4) Don't worry about days you can't do any. It will happen, but you will still learn your kanji. Don't compare yourself to others.

150!

I meant to do kanji the last 2 days. but had problems with my computer and wanted to back things up, just in case things get worse before I figure things out. That's not simple, since it takes, like, 3 DVDs -- after compression which takes forever.

In fact, I got behind on my review of newly-added cards (still only got 4 wrong). But I'm working later tonight than I thought last week, so I got some in today. And I'll have time to review tomorrow, as well as do 25 more, before I get back to "computer stuff" (other things I wanted to do before I got pulled away by the pressing need for backup). So I will be at 175 by tomorrow!

@askayscha: See, this is what I mean...even if things don't go as you plan, you can still "git 'er done"...just keep going. Don't give up!
[EDIT: And I meant to say, this after more than 2 weeks off. I first started this site around October 20th. I expect to be interrupted now and then, but if I do extra sometimes, I hope to still hit my goal -- finish RTK 1 between mid-to-late March. Even if I miss it, aiming for it will get me there sooner or later.]

At 100 kanjis today =) Can't believe i've learnt that much in 5 days. so quickly!! Sure I probably cant produce them all at once, but slow and steady will get me there =3

The other day I was telling my dad that I'd almost finished RTK3. He asked me "Well, do you get a certificate or something?" and I said "hmmm, noo". But it got me thinking, maybe it'd be nice to have a certificate as a symbol of my achievements. So I whipped up these two certificates based on the JLPT certificate. If you're doing self-study, doesn't it make sense that you give yourself your own certificate? Well I thought so. You could use it for further encouragement too.

http://users.on.net/~drneale/RTK1cert.doc
http://users.on.net/~drneale/RTK3cert.doc

Cameron, that's such a nice idea! I've been using your kanji wallpaper for my desktop, too. Thank you for putting this together; it's one more reason to push through the book sooner rather than later.