How fast are you going through RTK1? Heisig recommends something around 20 to 25 characters per day, more if you're fully dedicated to learning kanji.

Me? I'm doing "Speed RtK". I'm going through one lesson every day, minimum. This means studying up to 130 kanji (lesson 23) in a single day. Do I manage to actually remember everything? Of course not.

In my first review after a large lesson I can often guess around 70% of it's content, but I've had reviews as low as 40% and as high as 100%. What I've been doing seems to be very different from what most people are doing, but so far it's working for me.

Going this fast requires a different mindset. My goal isn't to immediately remember each and every one character I come in contact with, but to be exposed to a reasonably large number of them, forcing my mind to stay active and working on many novel stories every day. With the larger workspace, I can create more interactive stories that cross references multiple characters and have a lower chance of being ambiguous later.

I need to tolerate frustration as well. Or rather, I can't feel frustrated if I miss over half of my frames. This is natural. It doesn't matter if I miss now, every review is another chance to get in contact with kanji, and sooner or later they will stick. So far, most characters stick after the second missed review, with a few requiring four or more mistakes to stick.

In the end, after factoring in the longer review times due to too many cards on the lower decks and lots of repeated reviews, I'll probably take just as long as everybody else to actually finish the book. But maybe, just maybe, it's going to be more fun.

What about you? How fast are you going through RtK? Do you have any special method to study?

Hey I did the last 500 (1800 now) at 80 a day and still working on it
I do 30 kanji in the morning and 50 after lunch and for now this working for me
the retention is from 70 to 85 working with the fabulous stories of this site
For doing 80 kanji took me from 2 to 2,30 h,but this when I'm concentrated and ,not happen every day(^^)

pazustep, you are living in everyone's dream.

Just be sure to make all your reviews and clear up your failed pile everyday. If you dont do this, it will catch you later.

I believe RTK is perfectly doable in a month at your speed, but it is only worthful if you do all your reviews.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I believe RTK is perfectly doable in a month at your speed, but it is only worthful if you do all your reviews.

My feelings exactly. My reviews are usually in the 150~200 kanji ballpark. If I skip even a single day, it's going to pile up and then I'm screwed. Luckily, I've been quite idle at work, and the extra time has really helped me. I'm studying kanji almost 8h/day if I count the time I spent not working at work

P.S.: Hopefully my manager isn't trying to learning kanji as well. Ah, the joys of pursuing obscure bits of knowledge.

pazustep Wrote:What about you? How fast are you going through RtK? Do you have any special method to study?

50 a day without fail. My methods differ very much from the average RTKer, but we won't go into that here. Learning kanji is easy now. Two minutes per kanji is pretty easy. The reviews are what's killing me now...

alyks Wrote:My methods differ very much from the average RTKer, but we won't go into that here.

Why not?

pazustep Wrote:

alyks Wrote:My methods differ very much from the average RTKer, but we won't go into that here.

Why not?

Oh fine, might as well.

Because I go completely out of order from heisig's book, I don't even own it.
Because I don't use stories, I use a solid location for each one and put images in it.
Because I've been learning the onyomi readings for all the kanji I've been learning, without having to study them or create mnemonics for them and always remembering them.

Between my wife, kids, owning my own business, putting in enough hours to cover the mortgage, chores around the house, running around thirty miles a week on average, etc. I'm doing about ten kanji a day, more or less.

Seems to be working out fine so far, and reviews are cake

Hi alyks,can you explain in detail your method to study kanji? seems interesting!

Off topic: pazustep, where did you find your kanji-avatar anyway? checked the fishy kanjis in RTK3 with no luck.

Murten Wrote:Off topic: pazustep, where did you find your kanji-avatar anyway? checked the fishy kanjis in RTK3 with no luck.

That's ぶり, the japanese amberjack (yellowtail). I found it looking for kanji that could be used to write my family name (Brito, ブリト). Quite selfish, I know. It's a somewhat obscure kanji, not featured in any RtK books, I think.

To come back to alyks' method, I might be completely off, but it sounds like an attempt to describe Kanjitown, which groups kanji by on-yomi. Note how LittleFish (who I believe is LittleFishChan on these forums) in the example for cactus land (the Dec. 08, 2005 entry), as well as in that for oasis on another forum, annotates keywords with small descriptions that tie the primitives together. So the mnemonics are still there, they're simply embedded in a bigger story. Whether this coupling is beneficial or not is something that perhaps those who tried can tell.

This would still leave us in the dark as to in which order the kanji were learned. It occurs to me that grouping them by on-yomi would not easily lend itself to a constant 50 per day, or does it?

It's pretty easy to learn kanji out of order from Heisig while still using his method. He claims the big thing is the order, where they build upon each other, but it's actually the mnemonics that make RTK work.

Kanjitown is different from kanjichain only in that you do it after RTK, not to actually learn the kanji. But I don't chain, and I certainly don't try and weave 'towns' together.

But yeah, you can do it out of order at the same pace as a normal RTKer.

So it is really one location per kanji? Care to give a few examples?

alyks Wrote:

pazustep Wrote:

alyks Wrote:My methods differ very much from the average RTKer, but we won't go into that here.

Why not?

Oh fine, might as well.

Because I go completely out of order from heisig's book, I don't even own it.
Because I don't use stories, I use a solid location for each one and put images in it.
Because I've been learning the onyomi readings for all the kanji I've been learning, without having to study them or create mnemonics for them and always remembering them.

Hmmm...interesting.

I'd ask you to divulge a bit more, but I think reworking might require me to start over from the beginning.

Ah what the heck...tell us more.

Edit: snoring getting louder. Must leave room.