I've just finished the first 4 lessons and have already read the introduction (+that foreword) twice in Heisig's book. I've had a few questions (few of which i forgot already) but here's a couple.

Q:
How long do you guys study a set of kanji before adding them to the review section? How many times do you go over them? Because i found out that the first set i did - i didn't study them as much as i should have (by 3rd day i forgot a few of them). Is this the time to really cram?.. Recently i've been doing something like this:

1) Read the lesson memorizing stories and associations
2) Cover the left side and go over the keywords to see if i remember the stories and can derive the kanji (if not - open and see)
3) Some time later in the day write out my own stories here in the study area.

and only after that i add them to the review section and start reviewing. With this i still manage to forget some kanji ))) - just can't get anything out of the keyword (although many kanji are a great success).

Q:
So i really CANNOT review kanji anywhere else if i want to follow Leitner's system? Because i'll be very likely to come across those that i don't need to review today - reviewing ahead of time - pushing them to short-term memory. Is that not how it turns out?

The idea is to not go out of your way to review flashcards more than once per day. If you see them other places, that's awesome.

First question: You get a feel for it after enough experience. Not something anybody else can answer for you.

Second question: Don't worry about it.

Yo, I'm with alyks.

1) You'll learn how to learn by yourself. What you must do is "understand" the kanji, find a reason for its existence. After that you can memorize it with less trouble. That's why it is so easy to memorize kanjis you like (so, sadly, you'll see them not as often).

2) Dont worry about it.

3) If you review here in RevTK, the review on the first day is on you. The importat thing is not worry on how much you fail, but on how much you can _review_. Try to optimize your method so you can add more kanjis/day, not on how many kanjis you can remember in the first 3 days. My retention rate is about 60% in the 3rd day, but even with that I could add 30 cards/day.

Okay, i'm trying to figure out what you mean by not worrying about reviewing kanji other times:

"don't worry about short-term memory stuff - review them anytime you like"

or

"don't worry about the infrequent reviews here - kanjis will stick anyway"

(sorry i didn't make a clear question in the first place )
Thanks again

Both. They will stick if you just let the flashcard system do the work. But don't worry if you review extra, either. (However, reviewing too much is repetitive and a waste of time)

Dont worry about reviewing kanji to keyword. This comes later.

oRis1024 Wrote:Q:
How long do you guys study a set of kanji before adding them to the review section? How many times do you go over them? Because i found out that the first set i did - i didn't study them as much as i should have (by 3rd day i forgot a few of them). Is this the time to really cram?.. Recently i've been doing something like this:

1) Read the lesson memorizing stories and associations
2) Cover the left side and go over the keywords to see if i remember the stories and can derive the kanji (if not - open and see)
3) Some time later in the day write out my own stories here in the study area.

and only after that i add them to the review section and start reviewing. With this i still manage to forget some kanji ))) - just can't get anything out of the keyword (although many kanji are a great success).?

Great initial review technique. I would encourage writing out the kanji (if you do not already do it) each time you review this manner and during later reviews.

You're still going to miss kanji, don't sweat it, it's part of the process. Failing can just be an indication that you need to improve your story which wasn't obvious the first time around. Getting 80% every review will add up in time. I looked at my fail/success rate overall all (since June last year) and it's at 76% out of 24000 reviews. Yet I have 2000 cards in my last stack.

Bottom line, keep up what you're doing with initial reviews.

oRis1024 Wrote:Q:
So i really CANNOT review kanji anywhere else if i want to follow Leitner's system? Because i'll be very likely to come across those that i don't need to review today - reviewing ahead of time - pushing them to short-term memory. Is that not how it turns out?

I live in Japan, it'd be impossible not to see kanji. More importantly it's not the point of the Leitner system. You're not learning kanji via SRS to pass reviews 6 months down the road in the SRS (That's doing the system for the system). You're doing this to use it in real life. SRS is a processed system, so it's BIG!!!! benefit is making sure you review things that you WON'T get the necessary review out in real life. Yeah, that one rare kanji that just did not pop up in the newspaper the SRS will remember to show you.

Think about it: Sun keyword/kanji will pop up DAILY just because it's in alot of other kanji. Have you weakened your ability to recall Sun to strengthen Sparkle? Actually, you've strengthened both. Don't overinterpret the process to defeat your goals. I still review on RevTK in addition to doing sentence work (and reading, and watching TV, and walking around town) that drowns me in kanji (which, hey cool, I know).

That said, don't create other review processes that duplicate the Leitner system you are using (ie Using Anki, and RevTK and Memosyne). That's just being redundant.

Yeah, but I would kinda avoid studying kanji any other way. Just for reasons of efficience. If you have time to study more japanese, do something different.

Thanks for the quick replies,

Nukemarine, thank you for extensive insight. Unfortunately i don't live in Japan and have almost NO exposure to kanji in my daily life - but i do agree that it's such a good reinforcement to see one kanji appear in another, you feel like you've reviewed two at the same time

As for reviews besides RevTK - i think i will at least review the keywords some time during the day and see if i remember the kanji (really small cards with only keywords on them ). Because i think i've been too strict on myself (when a keyword comes to my mind - i push it away because "it's not time yet" for review) )

I guess the other guys were right - the techniques will come. It's just that i'm a person who follows directions, don't want to recreate the wheel that somebody's created already

Every once in awhile, if I want more drilling, particularly on a characters in a chapter that didn't stick as well, I'll review an entire chapter on KanjiGym. Reviewing a set of related Kanji (those in the same chapter) is a good way of getting the whole chapter down, since it'll allow you to review the components introduced in that chapter, which appear in that chapter's kanji.

plumage, i wish you posted this an hour earlier! ))) I just manually put in the kanji for the first 4 lessons to the anki so that i could quickly review the keywords/kanji when needed. KanjiGym looks much better for this purpose - thanks!

I had forgotten about KanjiGym. Just downloaded it now. Thanks for the reminder, Plumage.

oRis1024 Wrote:Q:
How long do you guys study a set of kanji before adding them to the review section? How many times do you go over them?

I go over each kanji generally once, for a period of one to three minutes, then it goes into the review section. The exception is characters or primitives that have some complexity but which appear to form the basis for a large number of others; not remembering most characters means you forget that character and maybe a small number of others, but not remembering a foundational character or primitive can cause a huge number of cascading memory failures.

I've noticed that when I get above 70 or so characters in a day, this system starts breaking down; your mileage may vary.

~J