I've just started RTK after a long time of avoiding it. Its been really fun! I've been in Japan for 10 months and can read/write JLPT3 level but Ive decided to step up my kanji as I'm exposed to them all the time! I want some advice on pace/speed.

So far, in 2 days Ive managed the first 150. But theyre the easy ones. basically im putting together a study plan for summer and Id like to pace RTK into July and August too. Is 20 or 40 daily (2x20 blocks) too ambitious? I DO have the time this summer to attack this, but Im sure my pace wont be consistant throughout. Id love to get this finsihed by Sept 1st.

Cheers

alphie Wrote:I've just started RTK after a long time of avoiding it. Its been really fun! I've been in Japan for 10 months and can read/write JLPT3 level but Ive decided to step up my kanji as I'm exposed to them all the time! I want some advice on pace/speed.

So far, in 2 days Ive managed the first 150. But theyre the easy ones. basically im putting together a study plan for summer and Id like to pace RTK into July and August too. Is 20 or 40 daily (2x20 blocks) too ambitious? I DO have the time this summer to attack this, but Im sure my pace wont be consistant throughout. Id love to get this finsihed by Sept 1st.

Cheers

Assuming a couple hundred in the hopper, 30 a day ought to get you done by September. It's not a leisurely pace, but certainly doable if you have the time for the reviews, which will build as you get into the project.

There are people on this forum that have gone as quickly as 100 per day or more, so 40 per day doesn't seem overly ambitious. You will, however, quickly find your own pace once your SRS of choice starts giving you reviews back - make sure to clear all your outstanding reviews, then add enough characters to keep you on schedule and see how much energy you have left. I found roughly 75 per day to be appropriate for me when I did RTK for the first time (over a summer as well, actually), but I also devoted at least 5 hours a day to it.

You will probably find that while the first couple hundred are easier than average, there are also other blocks that tend to fly by once you have a good, personalized image for the primitive that ties them together. I remember the イ primitive going extremely quickly despite the intimidatingly large number of them (I used Captain Picard!).

Is 40 a day too ambitious? I'm one of those CRAZY guys that do way more, 40 is a bad day ^^

What can I say, 40 is certainly attainable given the results many people here have seen, plus your previous exposure to kanji will help as well.

Good Luck ^^

2 x 20 blocks is what I did per day, and I'm a 720 at the moment. It was a great pace, you really see fast progress, but definitely doesn't swamp you. However, I've been on pause for a week or two, and next week I'm starting at 100 per day (now that I'm on holiday). Check out the 100 kanji per day thread if you want to! Although it's definitely not necessary, 40 per day is fine.

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:Is 40 a day too ambitious? I'm one of those CRAZY guys that do way more, 40 is a bad day ^^

What can I say, 40 is certainly attainable given the results many people here have seen, plus your previous exposure to kanji will help as well.

Good Luck ^^

Time is the variable. Some have more, some have less. 40 per day would be a reasonable, even light, load for some. For others, stupidity.

What I would sincerely suggest to *anyone* is that they start out on the lower end of what they think they can do. Increasing is easy. Backing off less easy.

Try varying amounts, and see what feels best. I started out at about 20, then went up to 30-40, and did a few days at 60-70. I've levelled out to about 50 now. On some days where I feel really motivated, I can get though 70+.

It's all just a matter of finding your comfort level.

Personally, I only did 40 kanji a day for the last 200 kanji. It was simply too much for me to do the whole time. 20 was IMO perfect. It keeps reviews low even if you do 20 from the very beginning. It's also quite a lite load to learn 20 new kanji each day.

I did between 15 and 30 a day, sometimes none at all, sometimes 40. Any pace that you feel good at is juuuuust right. Aim for having fun by making up (fun, grotesque, silly, scary) stories, not for a set number. At least when I tried to do that I was freaking out all the time when I was short one or two cards by the end of the day.

I was like Evil_Dragon. I've only just hit holidays and now I'm catching up. I could never do more than 50 a day I found, my retention rates the next day were horrible, of course it did depend on the set I was working on.

But like most people here said, you will find your own pace which will vary from time to time, just keep at it and before you know it you'll be posting in the 1/2, 3/4 milestone threads

26.9 kanji a day. That's what I did so it must be good.

And the official Codexus Canine Klingon pace is 291.86/day. :-)
[edit: referring to an earlier post...]

I did around 20/day and took four months and felt that it was not too fast. I finished last week and still have a lot of reviews to plow through. If you go faster, you will probably end up taking longer (or as long) to master them as if you went slower.