Then I'll make this a message with miscellaneous stuff. I'm sure no one will mind my making two messages since there's so much to say, and a message with both those quotes and all this other stuff would just be messy.
WARNING: Long message!
So, after I hit ~1,000 (1,060, actually) and read
this post by alyks, I made my own victory board/poster/sheet... that was Monday last week. I decided to do 30 a day every day from then on and finish July 17th. I'm tracking my progress on the victory sheet, and also keeping track of the number of repetitions I have every day (just because I think it's interesting and I like statistics). I'll post up a picture of the victory sheet sometime once I can get a hold of my dad's videocamera. Anyway, so that was ten days ago, and I'm at 1,360 now, so... so far, so good!
Downsides:
- My retention rate hasn't been so good anymore, especially for the ones most recently learned;
- Because of this, the amount of repetitions I do every day has still been increasing. Today (which is to say, June 25th) is the top so far with 110 new repetitions;
- Since I made the sheet, I've been thinking about my kanji and my progress a lot more, and it seems like I've slowed down because I think thoughts like "I'm at 1,360 now" so many times per day that it seems like there's no advancement. And that is a little bit frustrating... like crossing down the days on a calendar before Christmas might make a kid waiting for that very special present feel like it's actually taking longer now.
Upsides:
- My retention rate still manages to get better for newish kanji that I've failed a couple of times, after some days;
- My motivation has greatly improved, and I've been going through even the many tens of repetitions I've been getting a day reasonably hassle-free so far (although at one time, I just finished three minutes before midnight... that was stressful). Even tonight, I've already done 55 out of 110 repetitions (exactly half) after midnight and before going to bed, at a remarkable pace;
- Even though it feels like I'm not going that fast, I've actually been going a lot faster than I have before, and the three weeks (and two days) before I finish really aren't that long if you look at it objectively.
I'd also like to say some things about the way I've been studying the kanji. For one thing, I never learn new kanji until all my repetitions are done, and my failed pile is empty. That's worked well for me; if I don't do that, my review and failed piles will just get even fuller and that will demotivate me greatly.
Another thing I'd like to note, in reply to people like Walden (see
this post for example), who have been expressing concern about their retention rates... many people in this thread (I've read it in full by now, btw
) have given the advice not to worry too much, to trust in the SRS and to make sure your stories are vivid and imaginative, and you can really see them in your mind. And I agree with all that strongly... but I would like to point out that vivid stories and such aren't all it takes - you still need to link the keyword with the story. That's another point where recalling a kanji can go wrong. For me personally, it's usually not that I forget a story, but rather that I don't properly think of the story when I see the keyword.
That's why it's important to strongly, consciously link the keyword with the story. You can make this easier by giving the keyword a very prominent "role" in the story so that the word is inherently likely to bring the story back to mind.
Another thing that helps me sometimes is to just connect the keyword to the story by rote memorization - it's not as bad as learning the entire story that way (or, heaven forbid, the shape of the kanji without a story). Of course, when doing the rote memorization thing in this case, you'll want to link it to the image/abstract idea of the story, not the actual words that describe it.
Yet another thing that could help is to imagine yourself seeing the keyword in the future and then thinking of this story. Through just imagining that, it might actually happen in the future once you
do see that keyword, because you'll have made stronger connections in your brain between the keyword (and especially the experience of seeing it, since that's what you imagined) and the story.
These are just things that worked for me, but you may be able to think of your own ways to make sure the keyword will actually bring the story to mind. My main point was just that besides remembering the actual story, this is another thing that is very important while learning the kanji.
By the way, I do realize the keywords themselves aren't the actual point of RtK1 so much as just remembering to distinguish and write all the different kanji, but for the purpose of doing that through the RtK-method, you'll still need to recall the stories through the keywords, obviously.
Just clocked in 700. And to time in nicely, I have a review pile of 130, which is the biggest I've had so far. Oh well, best get chugging...
That's when you are *really* 1/3 done.
