Well, you could also argue that the earlier a kanji is back in the normal review cycle with a due date, the better. And the fastest way to get it back there is cycle elimination. Also, if you forget the story/picture of a kanji after only 1 day it's an epic fail anyway. Seriously. We're talking about something like 24 hours here. It hardly makes a big difference.

The "all reviews done + empty failed stack" feeling is greaaat tho and I get it every day!

I confess I have a few epic fails but we are not robots, I mean, sometimes you are tired and you just want to end the reviews quickly. It happens.

Actually, we are talking of less than 24 hours probably, but still, that little spacing is better than nothing. I understand that goes against your empty failed stack policy. But it's the best I can do to bring the two worlds down in one.

In Anki, you could just press "2" if you get a failed kanji right.
That way, you'd see it again in less than 24 hours anyway...

stoked Wrote:In Anki, you could just press "2" if you get a failed kanji right.
That way, you'd see it again in less than 24 hours anyway...

Auch!

Should I have used Anki from the beginning? Well I will never know. But I will understand when I use it for mining sentences.

I share things in common with some of you. I did the best I could, and got to 1000 kanji by New Years Day. It felt great. I don't remember exactly when I started, so no comparisons vs. you kanjimonsters. I took a break from adding new kanji, enjoyed my vacation time watching anime, celebrated the 4-digit milestone, and somehow fell out of the groove.

I also tried an experiment. I stopped clearing my failed pile. I let it build up to 100 or so before I tried to hack it down some. I wonder if just the sight of that big red pile was demotivating me or what. My daily reviews were over 100 for a long time, and that was no fun either. I came back to this site every day, reviewed all the expired kanji, but I wasn't adding 80, 40, or even 20 every day anymore. In the past 90 days or so, I have not missed a single day of review, but I haven't been adding the new cards very well at all. Today my notebook is up to 1325. That's something like 3 cards per day since 2009 started. Usually in the form of a 1-hour weekend session for 15 or 20 new cards. Maybe 4 new cards before work some days. The reviews are finally down below 50, and it's like I can breathe again. The hours I have available for study has become loose and enjoyable again, not a race against the clock at every second.

So this post is inspiring, and I can really relate to everyone's comments...
Hit 1000 and the reviews are overwhelming? I hear you! If you can keep adding cards through that period, good for you! Some of the cards I had the most trouble remembering are coming in as primitives only recently, and that really helps.

Clearing the failed pile every day? That is the single best thing that you can do. It is how I made it to 1000 so merrily. When I stopped clearing the failed pile every day, RTK became a new monster for me. Maybe someone will come and advocate leaving the failed cards to fester, but I support the position that failed cards must be cleared as regularly as possible. I dont have a named technique, but when I can't remember the kanji, I flip the card, copy the kanji, try to remember the story, and move on. At the end, I look at the failed stack by keyword, and use the Learned button on any kanji I know the story and therefore writing of. I make new stories for all the ones left, and use the Learned button on them too. Works well for me.

100/day? Wow. That's like 20 times better than I've been doing this winter. Ambitious lad! If I pulled that sort of stunt, I would be done by the end of the week! That sounds frighteningly good. Winter was winter, but now it is spring! I will see how many I can do today. Thanks. Good luck! I hope we can remember our kanji well in summer. :lol:

Not only the failed pile, but the study pile, well, piles up too. Reviews are fast compared to studying which often involves tweaking or changing stories.

I broke down adding cards to starting at a new basic kanji (used in subsequent frames), or a *primitive, and adding all the kanji that followed until the new basic kanji or * primitive. Usually this averages about 8 kanji a day, all related. That helps a lot, too. If I have more time I'll add another group. It's a variable amount, but I know that if I add them all together, I'll remember them better. Also, if I don't add too many groups built off different primitives, I'll remember them better. I'm not Kanjimonster, but I am at 1770 now. Chugging along!

KanjiMood asked about the most difficult kanji ... those are probably the ones that arent related to the same primitives that you are learning in that chapter. I've read various techniques on this board, like making the state of mind primitive into data from star trek, and then building all your stories around him doing different memorable things. plumage is right.

Anyway, I forgot one more thing mentioned here that I totally agree with, and that's the choice of a grid-ruled notebook. Here's a terrible picture of mine:

Barely worth the upload, you can almost make out what is going on. Each line goes,

Code:

|Frame no. | key-     | KA- | story story story story story story
|          |    -word | NJI | story story story.

For better or for worse, this is how I learn.

Reflection: When we finish this struggle, when we actually finish, this won't matter anymore, we will tell everyone we learned Kanji using Heisig and a little bit of this and that but we won't remember the hard ones, we will forget about failed stacks, cycle learning and difficult Kanji will be a thing of the past, we may even forget Mr. T and maybe pissing off for figuring that Data was state of mind after you have already crammed all the Kanji with state of mind anyway will be forgotten as well, but that won't matter by then, we will be "done". So here is my motivational thought for everyone else pursuing this remarkable goal, keep fighting, if the method is not working keep fighting, jammed all those Kanji somehow, cheat, bypass the rules, spend a weekend doing it the old school way, break the rules again, repeat 10 times more than you do, let your thumb wore out and swallow (I know it has happened to me) for good, eventually it will, it has to, end and then we won't give a damn if it was Heisig's or not, if it was the way it was supposed to or not, we will only know we did it.

Cheers!

Quote:Should I have used Anki from the beginning? Well I will never know. But I will understand when I use it for mining sentences.

Naw, I started out with RevTK as well. It's great. I just prefer having everything in one deck: Japanese, French, Greek Mythology, etc. I love random changes in review sessions, they keep me focused. So for me it's Anki. It looks like this:



2 is the shortcut for hard. If you fail a kanji and then get it right in the second round and press 2, you'll see it again the next day, even with cycle elimination...

stoked Wrote:2 is the shortcut for hard. If you fail a kanji and then get it right in the second round and press 2, you'll see it again the next day, even with cycle elimination...

However, remember that pushing 2 tells Anki that you think the kanji is hard, so it will raise the difficulty level meaning that it will make the intervals when you press 3 a little smaller. I personally doubt it matters all that much, it isn't lowered by any huge margin but it might be worth thinking about.

Interesting. I didn't know that.

Well the whole discussion is moot anyway. I'll stick to cycle elimination just because it's a good feeling to have an empty failed pile at the end of every review session. I can't prove that it's a better method than others though. In any case, there's hardly a big difference.

So, yeah. Whatever.

stoked Wrote:

Quote:Should I have used Anki from the beginning? Well I will never know. But I will understand when I use it for mining sentences.

Naw, I started out with RevTK as well. It's great. I just prefer having everything in one deck: Japanese, French, Greek Mythology, etc. I love random changes in review sessions, they keep me focused. So for me it's Anki. It looks like this:

[image]

2 is the shortcut for hard. If you fail a kanji and then get it right in the second round and press 2, you'll see it again the next day, even with cycle elimination...

If you have a deck for everything then you must have thousands and thousands of items... how many reviews you get in total? I think that is a very interesting idea but I would like to know from your experience first before messing up a deck.

KanjiMood Wrote:That does makes sense if your on a tight schedule, yes. However, if you had all the time in the world, would it not be better to immerse one's self completely in Japanese characters? Of course this would ultimately mean reviewing more frequently.. Would doing this have no benefit at all or perhaps even put you at a disadvantage?

Your memory is a plank of wood. Each kanji is a nail. Over time, that nail (once it is hammered in; learned) loosens. The trick is to only hit the nail when it begins to loosen, and not a moment before, otherwise, you're just hitting the wood (which can start to damage it and make it harder for the nail to stay in).

KanjiMood Wrote:I think I'll let the SRS apps decide the intervals, though I'll still do a few reviews of my own for the most recent Kanji, once after a batch of 25 then again before the end of day, I think that works best for me. I'll scrap the three day thing, not because its inefficient but because its unnecessary. I was just worried I wouldn't be able to harvest everything I grow on the rice field

Currently on frame 375.

If you're really reviewing newly-learned kanji twice in the same day you learn it, you're wasting a lot of time and hitting the nail too often. Either learn the kanji in the morning and review them that same night, or review them the next day.

jorgebucaran Wrote:If you have a deck for everything then you must have thousands and thousands of items... how many reviews you get in total? I think that is a very interesting idea but I would like to know from your experience first before messing up a deck.

Well, not really. I have not finished Heisig yet. About 1300 RTK1 kanjis + 100 French sentences + 50 Greek Mythology cards only. So far. But it will grow. Reviews are mellow.





Highest amount of reviews I ever got was 198. My deck is still small. Totally bearable.

jorgebucaran Wrote:1. How many times you write (practice) the Kanji when you review it? I write them about ~10 times each one.

2. How much time you spend making up stories? I often use the stories in the Study area but at least 30% are my own stories so I do spend some time creating them.

3. How well you remember the Kanjis when you remember them? I make sure the stroke order is correct and every primitive is there (drops and everything wink) I also make sure I remember the story even though the earlier stories have been fading away and the Kanji sticking in the back of my head so it comes out naturally.

4. How do you handle the failed stack? My average best is 80% and my average worst is 60% so in my routine I study and restudy my failed Kanjis a lot in order to have the failed stack as closest to zero as I can.

Hey Jorge.

1. When I first see a character I never really write it more than 3 times. It was slightly different when I first began because I wasn't used to writing Kanji but now my stroke order is better so its a lot quicker for me to remember how to write it.

When I review the character with an SRS app I try to write them down if I have time, not sure who said it but sometimes it helps my "mechanical memory" come into play also. For example, I can hardly remember my online banking password unless I'm actually on the website at a keyboard, I asked my wife to check my bank over the phone once and I just couldn't remember the password. So its always good to keep both types of memory consistent with each other..

2. I try not to spend too long or too short a time on each story when I first create it. When I first see a character in RTK I move onto the next as soon as a story clicks into place. I don't think I need to spend more time than that when first viewing the character as I can develop the story further when I review all 100 characters from my notepad at the end of the day. It also gives your mind time to build a more solid story for the character over time.

I guess this is kinda like using spaced repetition itself for the actual developing of the story, once when I first see the character, another time after a batch of 25 characters and then again at the end of the day. I prefer this method as I can get through a lot more kanji rather than trying to build the ultimate story for each character. Though its worth noting when I create a decent story of my own then I don't really need to develop it as much but I don't think you can do that for every character consistently while doing 100 kanji a day.

3. I remember 90% of the 500 characters so far to the last detail. The 10% mostly being comprised of newly acquired kanji. This morning I had 71 expired Kanji and failed 2. However I failed 20 of the 100 I learnt yesterday. I don't really consider it an epic fail, for me this is just "character development", tomorrow or in two days I will only fail 3 or 5 of those same "problem characters".

4. I go to the failed stack straight after the review. In RevTK I simply go to each character's page checking the stories while comparing them with my own and then I click learned. I don't really feel I need to actually test myself straight away. Though sometimes I do because I like to use both Anki and RevTK which means adding new cards to both.

vgambit Wrote:If you're really reviewing newly-learned kanji twice in the same day you learn it, you're wasting a lot of time and hitting the nail too often. Either learn the kanji in the morning and review them that same night, or review them the next day.

I kind of like Pimsleur's learning schedule for vocabulary, wasn't it like 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days. Characters are a bit different but I think - reviewing 1 or 2 hours after learning the character (basically after my batch), a very brief recap after 6 hours followed by a thorough end of day review AND then adding the cards to the SRS app the next day - is a good way to learn a character.

Yeah, isn't it funny that so many people on this board love SRS but hate Pimsleur? D'oh!

stoked Wrote:

jorgebucaran Wrote:If you have a deck for everything then you must have thousands and thousands of items... how many reviews you get in total? I think that is a very interesting idea but I would like to know from your experience first before messing up a deck.

Well, not really. I have not finished Heisig yet. About 1300 RTK1 kanjis + 100 French sentences + 50 Greek Mythology cards only. So far. But it will grow. Reviews are mellow.

[image]

[image]

Highest amount of reviews I ever got was 198. My deck is still small. Totally bearable.

Yes it does sound bearable considering the mix of flavors you have in there. I couldn't help to chuckle on the 50 Greek Mythology cards but only because I think it would be a great companion. I wonder if it's a good idea to keep everything in the same deck.

KanjiMood Wrote:

jorgebucaran Wrote:1. How many times you write (practice) the Kanji when you review it? I write them about ~10 times each one.

2. How much time you spend making up stories? I often use the stories in the Study area but at least 30% are my own stories so I do spend some time creating them.

3. How well you remember the Kanjis when you remember them? I make sure the stroke order is correct and every primitive is there (drops and everything wink) I also make sure I remember the story even though the earlier stories have been fading away and the Kanji sticking in the back of my head so it comes out naturally.

4. How do you handle the failed stack? My average best is 80% and my average worst is 60% so in my routine I study and restudy my failed Kanjis a lot in order to have the failed stack as closest to zero as I can.

Hey Jorge.

1. When I first see a character I never really write it more than 3 times. It was slightly different when I first began because I wasn't used to writing Kanji but now my stroke order is better so its a lot quicker for me to remember how to write it.

When I review the character with an SRS app I try to write them down if I have time, not sure who said it but sometimes it helps my "mechanical memory" come into play also. For example, I can hardly remember my online banking password unless I'm actually on the website at a keyboard, I asked my wife to check my bank over the phone once and I just couldn't remember the password. So its always good to keep both types of memory consistent with each other..

2. I try not to spend too long or too short a time on each story when I first create it. When I first see a character in RTK I move onto the next as soon as a story clicks into place. I don't think I need to spend more time than that when first viewing the character as I can develop the story further when I review all 100 characters from my notepad at the end of the day. It also gives your mind time to build a more solid story for the character over time.

I guess this is kinda like using spaced repetition itself for the actual developing of the story, once when I first see the character, another time after a batch of 25 characters and then again at the end of the day. I prefer this method as I can get through a lot more kanji rather than trying to build the ultimate story for each character. Though its worth noting when I create a decent story of my own then I don't really need to develop it as much but I don't think you can do that for every character consistently while doing 100 kanji a day.

3. I remember 90% of the 500 characters so far to the last detail. The 10% mostly being comprised of newly acquired kanji. This morning I had 71 expired Kanji and failed 2. However I failed 20 of the 100 I learnt yesterday. I don't really consider it an epic fail, for me this is just "character development", tomorrow or in two days I will only fail 3 or 5 of those same "problem characters".

4. I go to the failed stack straight after the review. In RevTK I simply go to each character's page checking the stories while comparing them with my own and then I click learned. I don't really feel I need to actually test myself straight away. Though sometimes I do because I like to use both Anki and RevTK which means adding new cards to both.

That's an incredible retention rate. I oscillate between 60 and 70. My best around 80 and my worst around 50. However once you do the Kanji it doesn't matter if you fail it, it will fall into place eventually.

Have you tried RevTK before or studied some Japanese prior to this? I see you have a count of 500 Kanji but only 787 reviews which is striking considering you remembered them all. You are one interesting case and I would like to know what is your development as you hit the 1000 wall. If you can manage to maintain such retention with so few reviews then you either knew the Kanji already, have some special super ability (like Dr. Manhattan) or have a great deal of good luck.

In any case keep me/us posted on your advances. I remember that I started 3 months ago and got to 100 characters in a week but I didn't know how to use RevTK (and didn't bother to learn ) so I ended up screwing up the piles. Like a week later I decided to give it a second try and started over so I already sort of knew a bunch of characters.

stoked Wrote:Yeah, isn't it funny that so many people on this board love SRS but hate Pimsleur? D'oh!

Well I have it but I just can't get myself used to use it.

jorgebucaran Wrote:That's an incredible retention rate. I oscillate between 60 and 70. My best around 80 and my worst around 50. However once you do the Kanji it doesn't matter if you fail it, it will fall into place eventually.

Have you tried RevTK before or studied some Japanese prior to this? I see you have a count of 500 Kanji but only 787 reviews which is striking considering you remembered them all. You are one interesting case and I would like to know what is your development as you hit the 1000 wall. If you can manage to maintain such retention with so few reviews then you either knew the Kanji already, have some special super ability (like Dr. Manhattan) or have a great deal of good luck.

In any case keep me/us posted on your advances. I remember that I started 3 months ago and got to 100 characters in a week but I didn't know how to use RevTK (and didn't bother to learn ) so I ended up screwing up the piles. Like a week later I decided to give it a second try and started over so I already sort of knew a bunch of characters.

I do have minor exposure to the language through video games and I did try and learn the hiragana/katakana like 8 years ago (kanji seemed very scary back then) but I was never very serious about it and have forgotten 99% of it. This is my first organised attempt at learning the language. I'm using Anki in addition to RevTK, I'm not sure what stats are displayed here but they're only half of them.

I think what helps the most is I don't try and complete the character on my first try. I build up its completeness in my mind step by step. You can't try and learn everything about a character in one go, its a gradual process. I'll try and keep you up to date with my retention rate as I progress, I guess it will fluctuate a bit.

As this is only day 6 I'm still in the process of making kanji learning a habit rather than a short term thing so anything can happen. But I do feel progress in this respect - I'm beginning to enjoy the more tedious characters like "sow", it feels like my brain has developed new ways to handle these type of characters.

I'm currently on frame 575. I'm enjoying the story creation process of part 3, the ones on this site are a good laugh also.

stoked Wrote:Yeah, isn't it funny that so many people on this board love SRS but hate Pimsleur? D'oh!

Just because it somewhat uses an SRS system doesn't mean it's automatically good. You can make an Anki deck full of unnatural/awkward/creepy (I swear the target market is sex tourists) dialogs and review it way too slowly if you wanted to too. You could then proceed to throw several hundred dollars down the toilet for full effect.

Plus it's not really an SRS because the tapes don't know if you missed something or not, they'll just repeat stuff (or not) as was decided by the publisher.

KanjiMood Wrote:

jorgebucaran Wrote:That's an incredible retention rate. I oscillate between 60 and 70. My best around 80 and my worst around 50. However once you do the Kanji it doesn't matter if you fail it, it will fall into place eventually.

Have you tried RevTK before or studied some Japanese prior to this? I see you have a count of 500 Kanji but only 787 reviews which is striking considering you remembered them all. You are one interesting case and I would like to know what is your development as you hit the 1000 wall. If you can manage to maintain such retention with so few reviews then you either knew the Kanji already, have some special super ability (like Dr. Manhattan) or have a great deal of good luck.

In any case keep me/us posted on your advances. I remember that I started 3 months ago and got to 100 characters in a week but I didn't know how to use RevTK (and didn't bother to learn ) so I ended up screwing up the piles. Like a week later I decided to give it a second try and started over so I already sort of knew a bunch of characters.

I do have minor exposure to the language through video games and I did try and learn the hiragana/katakana like 8 years ago (kanji seemed very scary back then) but I was never very serious about it and have forgotten 99% of it. This is my first organised attempt at learning the language. I'm using Anki in addition to RevTK, I'm not sure what stats are displayed here but they're only half of them.

I think what helps the most is I don't try and complete the character on my first try. I build up its completeness in my mind step by step. You can't try and learn everything about a character in one go, its a gradual process. I'll try and keep you up to date with my retention rate as I progress, I guess it will fluctuate a bit.

As this is only day 6 I'm still in the process of making kanji learning a habit rather than a short term thing so anything can happen. But I do feel progress in this respect - I'm beginning to enjoy the more tedious characters like "sow", it feels like my brain has developed new ways to handle these type of characters.

I'm currently on frame 575. I'm enjoying the story creation process of part 3, the ones on this site are a good laugh also.

Well don't faint nor give up amigo! We are all here with one goal! Now I want to understand what the Kanji chains are all about!

Thanks. I'm still going strong I think frames 500 to 600 were a lot easier compared to 400-500. I reviewed 265 cards in Anki this morning, I got 88.3% of them right. So far Anki is telling me I've got a total correct score of 86.7% (747 of 862). I'll add the 100 I did yesterday to RevTK this evening.

As far as new kanji I'm on frame 625 right now. Its going to be a hard day as I have so much other stuff to do but I'll make sure I do 100 in the same consistent way.

I'm on frame 700 now, I had to take a rest for two days because I got the flu (what a time!). It was kind of scary at first because I thought I would forget some characters but I did a review of 100 or so cards on Monday and got a good retention rate so I think they're in my long term memory.

Though the bad news is I have 153 expired cards/200 new cards in RevTK and 203 reviews due in Anki. It's going to be a long day tomorrow.