Two weeks since my euphoric "I finished" post I'm working on getting from "entered all the frames" to "I've got this down".

Here on RTK, most of my cards in the last bin, with only 250 left in One review +Two review bins. Retention of the last 500 or so that I learned (that's most of my reviews) is pretty good (over 80%) and getting better. I figure once everything is in the last bin I will go through and fail them all to put them in Bin 0 and start over.

At the same time, I've activated all 2042 RTK1 cards in Anki, and am working my way through in the other direction, starting at 1 and moving forward. All the cards are "young" and I've averaged 77% correct on the first 500. Not great but some of these I haven't looked at in months since they landed in the RTK last bin.

What metrics have others used?

ADDED LATER: Never mind. Apparently this is a stupid question. Not my first! But I did discover that the last pile actually is a collection of 4 bins, which I didnt' know before. So that was useful.

After finishing, I feel there is no need to master them the "heisig" way, since my goal is to learn Japanese. I am always glad when I get new Kanji in my vocabulary/sentences - it is some sort of mastering for me, but I don't think i am going to master them all this way.

(Yeah, I still make my heisig reviews but they have a very low priority.)

Starting over and stuff like that seems like a very bad idea... I mean, the whole point of the SRS is that after each review, you wait longer until the next review so your long-term memory is improved. Starting over just means tons of extra needless reviews.

Personally, I'm just working all the cards up towards the actual last bin (remember, there are 8 bins, not 4).I have 1990 cards or so in Bin 4 and above and I think the first kanji in the book are slowly becoming available now, ready for bin 5. It's been quite a while since I got this far though, I keep missing just enough cards from the top bin every week to stay below 2000 kanji in the top bin :/ Well, the SRS will sort it out eventually.

Personally I actually use my NDS to do all my reviewing, because it's soooo easy to carry around with me and do pretty much wherever! That way I can review anything from 100 to 500 Heisig kanji a day, at times where I could be doing little else (such as on the train, waiting for the bus, etc etc).

I'm learning them 100 a week, learnt up to 1700 right now - I think the main thing is to make the reviewing manageable (e.g. I do mine in 100s). The danger is when you have SO many to review, you try and do them all and then actually end up doing less than you would were you to break it up into manageable chunks. If you've finished RTK1 and you aren't looking to do RTK3 yet, then my advice would probably be to just keep RTK1 ticking over, alongside your other Japanese studies, and things will just start to stick! That's the hardest part about Heisig, committing it to long term memory - and that is why the SRS system on this site, Anki, NDSRS and other programs is so useful ^_^ So, reaching 'mastery' is a bit of myth really! Japanese people who move here, who you would think had mastery from their schooldays, do eventually forget kanji if they aren't reviewing them! I think it's best to see it as more of a 'keeping-on-top-of' than anything else - keeping laying over the corn tracks so they don't disappear, as it were!

On the brew I use on my DS, it tells me how many cards I have reviewed/passed/failed from each deck per day which gives me a pretty good idea of how well I'm doing. I also have the kanji poster and I get a marker pen and cross out ones I know which is quite satisfying!

Don't know how helpful any of that is, but I felt like sharing!!

ダグラス

which DS homebrew program do you have?

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally, I'm just working all the cards up towards the actual last bin (remember, there are 8 bins, not 4).

Hmm, just checked and I have 1200 in Bin 8 (which I think means they don't return for months and months....) and scanning through these I think I actually have 95-98% of them down cold....

This actually makes me feel great, because I think I DO have mastery of the ones in Bin 8, which means my mastery target is just the 842 stragglers.

I was feeling a little discouraged that my fail rate on Anki has been so high for the first 500 but the RTK bin sort tells a more positive tale.

Hashiriya Wrote:which DS homebrew program do you have?

I use NDSRS, and I have made SRS files for Heisig, in batches of 100, for RTK1 + RTK3 so I just kind of rotate them ^_^

this_is_douglas Wrote:

Hashiriya Wrote:which DS homebrew program do you have?

I use NDSRS, and I have made SRS files for Heisig, in batches of 100, for RTK1 + RTK3 so I just kind of rotate them ^_^

This is going to make me sound really stupid, but I didn't even know that was possible and now I am sooo excited to get that working on my DS. ^^

Not done with RTK yet but I think this question is weird.

How about just keep on reviewing and change nothing at all?

stoked Wrote:Not done with RTK yet but I think this question is weird.

How about just keep on reviewing and change nothing at all?

Couldn't agree more, the system has practicaly been perfected...just shut up and do your daily reviews, and it'll just happen.


5months after finishing heisig 1940 in box 5 or higher...because i shut up and just did my daily reviews.

Hashiriya Wrote:which DS homebrew program do you have?

I believe the user was referring to:
http://digital-haze.net/ndsrs.php

I haven't tried it yet though

You've mastered a kanji when you've seen it a ton of times in Japanese that you've built your own "profile" for it and have become so familiar with it you think nothing of it when reading or writing it. Takes forever.

Tobberoth Wrote:(remember, there are 8 bins, not 4).

How do you see that last 4 bins?

Vatina Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:(remember, there are 8 bins, not 4).

How do you see that last 4 bins?

At the review page, click "Detailed List" and in the Box column, you'll see the actual number.

alyks Wrote:You've mastered a kanji when you've seen it a ton of times in Japanese that you've built your own "profile" for it and have become so familiar with it you think nothing of it when reading or writing it. Takes forever.

I agree with this. Reviewing a kanji in an SRS with a system like Heisig is great for recognizing and learning to write it but it won't let you master it and internalize it fully. Only seeing it in context A LOT makes that happen, when all the readings and meanings come together into a unit of understanding. (man, that sounded poetic)

IMHO, on a scale of 1 to 10, if "I finished" is finishing RTK1 and "I mastered the 2042" is close to fluency.

"I finished" is about a 3.

In other words, don't get stuck too long reviewing - finish it and move on: learn vocabulary, readings, grammar, speaking, listening...

kfmfe04 Wrote:IMHO, on a scale of 1 to 10, if "I finished" is finishing RTK1 and "I mastered the 2042" is close to fluency.

"I finished" is about a 3.

In other words, don't get stuck too long reviewing - finish it and move on: learn vocabulary, readings, grammar, speaking, listening...

The reviewing never ends, otherwise you forget everything. The good news is though is that once you get most cards in the upper buckets it only takes 10-15 minutes a day to keep things that way.