So I got my book and started it! Woo-hoo! SO excited. I'm doing about 40 kanji a day, and I'm finding that a lot of these kanji are really easy to remember...or that I have already learnt them before! So that ups the number I already know thanks to learning 200 or so from Japanese class...

...I'm just worried that doing 40 a day will overwhelm me. But after seeing that some of you do 100 a day, I feel lazy! In general though, it's very easy. I'm just worried about the kanji I have to learn for class that I'm not at in the book yet slipping through the cracks.

@Lycan. Did you finish?? Congrats!?

Here's some exciting news- finally up to the day where I can choose my 'person' radical!!!
Been looking forward to this since buying the bookbin October, but still not decided who to choose... Gonna have to make choice today- any advice??!

Almost broken the back (of first book at least!)

Hi everyone! Just started doing RTK1 since January 12th of this year. I saw all the encouragement posts and, man, am I feeling behind! I'm currently at #323. I don't have a set number of kanjis to study per day - but I do one lesson per day. I was doing 2-3 lessons in the beginning but I soon realized that I got bombarded by the review piles later on (should have read the forums first, but oh well). So I had to calm myself down and just do 1 lesson a day. I do reviews of expired kanjis first, then review the forgotten kanjis from the day before, then learn a new lesson, then review those new kanjis afterwards. If I forgot some, then I study them but I don't review them until the next day. It was trial and error but I think this ritual worked for me. Oh, and I just started Anki which gives me that extra boost of memory-solidification!
Kinda curious, but can anybody share their own ways or rituals when studying RTK1? maybe I can pick up some great techniques for memory retention. Best of luck to everybody! and to me of course!!

Currently at 760 kanji.......

Keep plugging at it. That's the only way to get the number down.

I'll give myself 31 days to finish this shit. That makes it exactly 120 days since the creation of my RTK deck.

1404 down, 638 to go. It's pretty incredible, a while ago I was thinking I have 1700 left...

I'm burning with manly passion. 押忍！

I started RTK on the 6th. It's taking me awhile to get into the groove of learning these kanji, but I'm plugging away at it. 155 done!

Good luck, everyone.

Well done Winterpromises. Im sure you'll have fun. I am still just under the thousand mark, but finally decided on my 'person' so ready to push on again. Mind you, ちょっと時間がないん。。。

Gah. Catchup after a month away from this is brutal. 350 reviews pending really plays havoc with motivation.

Down to hundred-something now after a few weeks. A day of solid effort should get me back to where I feel comfortable adding new cards again.

WolfOfCampscapel Wrote:Gah. Catchup after a month away from this is brutal. 350 reviews pending really plays havoc with motivation.

Down to hundred-something now after a few weeks. A day of solid effort should get me back to where I feel comfortable adding new cards again.

A week ago I missed one day

I had 350 reviews due.

Got it done by the end of the day


Taking time off sucks, and regular attention is necessary to stop this from happening!

WolfOfCampscapel Wrote:Gah. Catchup after a month away from this is brutal. 350 reviews pending really plays havoc with motivation.

350 reviews is nothing, in and of itself. The real killer is that it's 350 reviews nearly a month _overdue_. I've honestly enjoyed days with over 2000 reps but after I took minor break just 30 reps that fail drastically more than what I'm used to causes the immediate death of all motivation.

I found these tips to help during the times I've slacked on reviews:
1) Timeboxing very small bursts

2) Sometimes do reviews in 'largest interval' order, since cards with long intervals are less effected by being overdue, thus you fail less, thus you don't lose motivation as fast.

3) Play with failed card delay / timebox settings so that you do failed cards in batches throughout your regular reviews for similar reaons to above, namely, that reviewing a failed card is far easier than a very overdue card. Usually I set show failed cards at end and do a few sessions and then set failed cards back to soon/10min and do a session of those for a nice motivation boost.

4) Don't watch your accuracy stats' inevitable decline.

Pleased to announce I now have 1000 cards on Rtk, and 555 of them are in pile 4!!
Also made a little booklet of on yomi groups so I can make up stories to link the kanji together. (kanjitown?)

Best encouragement is when u can read and understand things so took trip to library today too. But remember to enjoy the ride- that's a great waybto stay motivated je pense...

But just dome more reviews and see that my stories have become lax..
I therefore commit to make good stories again from here on even if in the short run it takes longer. (-;

michaeltrew Wrote:But just dome more reviews and see that my stories have become lax..
I therefore commit to make good stories again from here on even if in the short run it takes longer. (-;

Rule 1. Don't fix what isn't broken. Aas long as you successfully recall and it's not causing interference, don't change stories sans correcting typos, formatting, or minor wording modifications.

Rule 2. Stop worrying and love the SRS. An extra 2 minutes to come up with a better story is like 10+ reps, so you could instead fail your first 9 reviews until an "inferior" story sticks and still come out ahead- plus it's easy to accidently spend far more than 2 minutes dreaming up the "perfect' story.

Rule 0. All other rules are to be _judiciously_ ignored if you stop having fun. Sometimes I would come up with extra creative stories during my "breaks" if I started getting bored (because less efficient is still better than completely stopping for the day), but usually it was far more effective (timewise and funwise) to instead add 100 new kanji that day and then wander around a bookstore to observe how much more I could recognize.

"Trying" Heisig's book for the third time. 1200 kanjis right now. Thanks for the encouragement thread

overture2112 Wrote:The real killer is that it's 350 reviews nearly a month _overdue_.
I found these tips to help during the times I've slacked on reviews:
1) Timeboxing very small bursts

Thanks. Good tips. Boxing off 30 minutes helps.

At 402 and moving again.

@overture- good advice, thank you! There is obviously value in not taking oneself too seriously. Just enjoyed adding another 12 this morning before work to take me to 1077, and like what you said about SRs as a friend not foe.

Almost at the altar primitive, then thread can't be far away either...

1702.

Now I'm glad I didn't add much cards for a few weeks when I hit the half-way, my reviews aren't bad at all now.

Just hit 766...
I need to start marking more cards as easy. Sick of these 150+ mornings! Im around 90% recall rate but mark most cards hard unless there way easy. I'm just afraid of forgetting them. I think I just need to not worry so much.

565

I have gotten slower ever since entering part III of RTK1. I promised myself to do one lesson a day but it seems I have to break that one. There are about 80-100 characters per lesson and that just takes too much time at one sitting. So I decided to plug in 30/day and I would have to extend my finish line for another month and a half. Oh well, the turtle ended up beating the rabbit by a long shot, LOL.

皆さん、こんにちは！｀

I've been on and off Japanese learner for about two years now, and it was true for me to say that the hardest part was the kanji - I can't imagine how I tried to learn the characters with plain rote memorisation, before going with the RTK method. Oh God, those mysterious squiggles!
Well, I can't say it's all honey cakes even now, because memorising is still memorising (and reviewing!) but at least I can hope to start sensing the light at the end of the tunnel... :lol:

Frame 960.
Wish me luck!

Going good lantan almost halfway!

I'm going steady at 670 but have noticed emotion keywords like pleasure,remorse, accustomed etc are much more difficult to get down the first time.

Looking forward to 1000!

jonokon Wrote:Going good lantan almost halfway!

I'm going steady at 670 but have noticed emotion keywords like pleasure,remorse, accustomed etc are much more difficult to get down the first time.

Looking forward to 1000!

Jonokon, you are reading my own thoughts - those Kanji (especially after that one lesson on "arrows" and "fiestas" and "parades") did seem like pieces of concrete in otherwise edible porridge. What I recently found out that it might be worth marking those Kanji "favourite" in Anki, and then from time to time going over just those "favourited" characters to ensure specific drilling... Have to say that over time (not much - about a week) and over considerable amount of reps in Anki they start making sense. Weird one. Kind of.

Anyway - persevere, japonise (all hail Khatz :lol and succeed!

You've probably already done it, but I found giving the "state of mind" primitive a knew name made them alot easier. I chose ghost, because it kind of looked like one.

Hi everyone
I started studying the kanji at the end of last summer, but when school started up again my reviews slacked off for a few months...but over Christmas break, I caught up on all my reviews in a single day (that was a painful 6 hours) and I haven't missed a day of studying since! I'm currently at 925 kanji, and adding about 10 every day. Not many high school students can say that

I'm just curious, but how many of you are following the AJATT method?

I found AJATT when first beginning my Japanese study, which in turn led me to here. AJATT was very helpful in terms of introducing the concepts of SRS and also pretty inspirational. I do SRS-ing, watching J-doramas. But true All Japanese All The Time, meaning tossing your bed for a mattress on the ground, throwing away your English language books, listening constantly to JP audio even while sleeping and conversing w/ people... I don't immerse myself to that degree!