Greetings all,

It seems I've run into a bit of a problem with the rtk method and this site. Allow me to explain a little.

So, I first study a given lesson's kanji, and I try to fix the story in my mind and imagine it as visually as I can...which I think is the right way to go about it. I then practice writing each kanji once or twice to help me get a bit of a feel for it. Then I get up, walk away for at least an hour, and return to add the flashcards on the site.

In the following quiz, I usually get 100% or close to that retention. So short term is ok.

The problem is 3 or so days later. My retention is terrible. Usually I can start to piece together the story, but I don't quite remember enough to complete it. Or I mix up elements (for example, the big water kanji versus the drops of them). and I usually end up failing like 40% of them.

To help promote memory, I specifically avoid reviewing before the cards expire in box 2. And all the stories are memorable enough that it's no problem on the same day or so. Yet...obviously a number of them aren't sticking :(

So...anyone have any advice on how to deal with this? Specifically when you're ok in the short term yet longer time periods present a lot of trouble? I'm not really sure I can make the stories any more memorable than what I've done already, or naturally I'd have done that...

but any and all advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.

How soon after you add new cards do you review them?

It might be best to wait 1 day before doing the first review. Just test yourself on paper on the day you learn the kanji, then do your first review on the site the next day.

When I was doing RTK I would review the day's kanji in KanjiGym once before sleeping, but leave the proper revtk review until the next day.

meolox Wrote:How soon after you add new cards do you review them?

Sorry, should have been clearer--immediately after adding them. Bu~ut, I think I'll try what the other two posters said and see how that works.

vosmiura Wrote:It might be best to wait 1 day before doing the first review. Just test yourself on paper on the day you learn the kanji, then do your first review on the site the next day.

That's also my advice.

All the suggestions above are great, but I usually just review the added kanji the next day and then go off to the next bunch on the same day. So far I haven't seen terrible scores. By review I mean review them from the book not on the site.

I actually had two accounts on RTK. On one account I just clicked on the pile of cards regardless of whether it was expired or not, I'd do that 2 or 3 times a day. The next day or 2 days, I'd add it in the other account which did proper srs'ing.

How far in are you? How bad is your error rate? Some of this will likely sort itself out. 水, for example, never shows up in the same spot as 氵, and vice versa. As long as you remember water and where it is, in time that'll be enough to choose the right primitive. In other cases though you may need to modify stories to explicitly remember the variant used (手 vs. 扌 comes to mind).

mafried Wrote:How far in are you? How bad is your error rate? Some of this will likely sort itself out. 水, for example, never shows up in the same spot as 氵, and vice versa. As long as you remember water and where it is, in time that'll be enough to choose the right primitive. In other cases though you may need to modify stories to explicitly remember the variant used (手 vs. 扌 comes to mind).

Not too far, high 300s now--will break 400 tomorrow.

In the short term, I couldn't be happier with my scores. In the longer time though...70% success...60%...once a little less than that even :X (Not all the time, sometimes I do manage 80%+ retention, but the lower scores happen enough to concern me).

At any rate, I'll make a post once I've had to chance to try what was suggested before--waiting a day before testing the added flashcards. (I'm going to do that with the ones I added today).

Thanks again for the advice and help guys

I test newly added flashcards immediately after I've added them, i.e. I add 20 sentences, review them, have a break, then maybe add 20 more and review.

This quickly lets you know which stories are weak, and helps all of them solidify in my mind.

If you're only passing 60% 3 days later, well that's actually a pretty decent passrate. Just don't worry about failure rates, that's the whole point of SRS.

aphasiac Wrote:If you're only passing 60% 3 days later, well that's actually a pretty decent passrate. Just don't worry about failure rates, that's the whole point of SRS.

Agreed with aphasiac. As I was posting earlier in the day on another thread, my review rates were abysmal on and off through the 2042, and of course it is difficult not to grow discouraged when you've missed 45 of 101 or such, but the SRS will sort it out.

Stop adding cards for a few days and the retention rates will go up if you have time to keep up reviews. This would be true in the 300-400s, and in my experience it is true also, thankfully - I was as worried about it, as you are, Winterfell - at 2042.

dewick Wrote:

aphasiac Wrote:If you're only passing 60% 3 days later, well that's actually a pretty decent passrate. Just don't worry about failure rates, that's the whole point of SRS.

Agreed with aphasiac. As I was posting earlier in the day on another thread, my review rates were abysmal on and off through the 2042, and of course it is difficult not to grow discouraged when you've missed 45 of 101 or such, but the SRS will sort it out.

Stop adding cards for a few days and the retention rates will go up if you have time to keep up reviews. This would be true in the 300-400s, and in my experience it is true also, thankfully - I was as worried about it, as you are, Winterfell - at 2042.

Also think about it this way! 60% of 100 kanji! that is 60 kanji that you learned! that's great, dont worry about the failure till later, just keep getting the easy wins.

Winterfell Wrote:In the short term, I couldn't be happier with my scores. In the longer time though...70% success...60%...once a little less than that even :X (Not all the time, sometimes I do manage 80%+ retention, but the lower scores happen enough to concern me).

Those were about my rates all the way through RtK1. On one particularly ugly Monday I failed 47% of 157 cards.

Finished now, or finished adding to 2042, anyway, not terribly long after that depressing Monday, and review percentages have been 90%+ within two weeks of adding 2042. I hope that lasts. I'm pretty sure it will as long as I keep up reviews.

I think it is true, as others have said and at least in my own experience my own experience confirms, that you can trust the SRS long-term. Don't worry unduly about how many you're missing in the short term, counterintuitive as that seems on a bad day.

Personally I find the percentage failure a bit of a double edged sword; on the one hand it is good to know how much you are retaining, on the other that little bar (on anki it is a colour coded bar, not sure if it's the same on this site) which moves around whilst answering questions can be a real distraction and generally makes me feel worse and not better.

bandwidthjunkie Wrote:Personally I find the percentage failure a bit of a double edged sword; on the one hand it is good to know how much you are retaining, on the other that little bar (on anki it is a colour coded bar, not sure if it's the same on this site) which moves around whilst answering questions can be a real distraction and generally makes me feel worse and not better.

Yeah, that bugs me with Anki, too. I wish one could toggle little bars on & off.

This site is poor about tracking statistics, which I think probably a good thing all things considered, but I've tortured myself nonetheless with an expansive Excel sheet that reminds me of every awful day of reviews I've ever had, sometimes in real time for days at a stretch.

Even that shows clear progress, tho, so I guess I won't trash it.

My worst day was 11% recall of kanji added the day before. Not sure what happened, guess I wasn't concentrating when I was studying.

My reviews now flit between 70-90%. Long term it doesn't matter.

Maybe we should start a 'doing-less-than-a-ton-a-day-&-with-crap-percentages-but-managing-anyway' thread, aphasiac, Winterfell, many others, I'm sure, to counteract the effects of our 'finished-RtK-in-20-days-94%-recall-&-will-be-reading-Mishima-by-year's-end-after-learning-the-kana' brethren & sistren.

(No offense intended to anyone. I have come to believe that some here have indeed finished RtK in twenty days or so with good recall and have prospered since. I envy them the time they have had to devote to it.)

I agree with other posters that it's best to try not to worry about failure rate (even though it drives me crazy if I have a bad day). My method is: Review in the book 15-20 new cards, usually at night. Review those cards the next day, and learn 15-20 more that night. Everyone has their own methods though.

I usually have between 20-40 reviews of old cards per day and I usually fail around 4-6 of them on average. It does bother me :/ Upon reviewing newly added cards, I've had great success where I may get 19/20 correct, and I've also had days where I'd fail the first 5-6 and be completely clueless. In those cases, I just call it quits and review those 20 new cards over again and try again the next day. The worst thing you can do IMO is keep rushing to meet your daily goals if you don't have a decent grasp of newer kanji you just added.

As others have said, let the SRS be your friend. While it does hurt to see 50-60% success rate sometimes, the SRS will sort it out. Those failed cards are gonna keep showing up every 1-3 days until you do get them right... eventually it will be drilled into your mind. I've had issues where I'd add a new card and fail it the next 5-6 times I review it that week. You will get it eventually, I think it's just an inevitable part of RtK. Everyone is going to have a few kanji that just don't "click" with them.

Offshore Wrote:I agree with other posters that it's best to try not to worry about failure rate (even though it drives me crazy if I have a bad day). My method is: Review in the book 15-20 new cards, usually at night. Review those cards the next day, and learn 15-20 more that night. Everyone has their own methods though.

I usually have between 20-40 reviews of old cards per day and I usually fail around 4-6 of them on average. It does bother me :/ Upon reviewing newly added cards, I've had great success where I may get 19/20 correct, and I've also had days where I'd fail the first 5-6 and be completely clueless. In those cases, I just call it quits and review those 20 new cards over again and try again the next day. The worst thing you can do IMO is keep rushing to meet your daily goals if you don't have a decent grasp of newer kanji you just added.

As others have said, let the SRS be your friend. While it does hurt to see 50-60% success rate sometimes, the SRS will sort it out. Those failed cards are gonna keep showing up every 1-3 days until you do get them right... eventually it will be drilled into your mind. I've had issues where I'd add a new card and fail it the next 5-6 times I review it that week. You will get it eventually, I think it's just an inevitable part of RtK. Everyone is going to have a few kanji that just don't "click" with them.

You'll get to the point where you regularly go through and miss just one or two or zero of upwards of 100 kanji, just wait and see! Hang tough.

lotta replies this morning.

dewick Wrote:Maybe we should start a 'doing-less-than-a-ton-a-day-&-with-crap-percentages-but-managing-anyway' thread, aphasiac, Winterfell, many others, I'm sure, to counteract the effects of our 'finished-RtK-in-20-days-94%-recall-&-will-be-reading-Mishima-by-year's-end-after-learning-the-kana' brethren & sistren.

(No offense intended to anyone. I have come to believe that some here have indeed finished RtK in twenty days or so with good recall and have prospered since. I envy them the time they have had to devote to it.)

Heheh...well, I'll admit that I thought the low recall was an anomaly and a problem...Doesn't help that after reviewing cards, if you get less than a certain % the site says, "check out the forums if you're having trouble!"

Actually though, right now I'm generally spending most of my day on this--Right now I'm on summer vacation, but when I return to school for fall semester, they're going to teach kanji the traditional way...writing it over and over again until you have blisters on your hand :P...So I'm trying to do as much as I can before then, make it less painful.
But even with this much time, I can't really seem to come close to the ones that complete it in a month (in either speed or accuracy, heheh).

Anyway, decided to hold at 395 for a day or two (partly cause the next lesson in 80 kanji x.x), and just review any expired cards that come up. Seemed to help a lot, although still not quite 90%. Now to tackle lesson 18...

Thanks again to all of you, for the encouragement and advice :)

Not to necro a thread or anything, but I'm interested. How's your RTK progress Winterfell? My pass rate is generally lower than everyone else like you and Dewick. Did you sort it out and become better?

dewick Wrote:Maybe we should start a 'doing-less-than-a-ton-a-day-&-with-crap-percentages-but-managing-anyway' thread, aphasiac, Winterfell, many others, I'm sure, to counteract the effects of our 'finished-RtK-in-20-days-94%-recall-&-will-be-reading-Mishima-by-year's-end-after-learning-the-kana' brethren & sistren.

I'll all for this.

dewick Wrote:Maybe we should start a 'doing-less-than-a-ton-a-day-&-with-crap-percentages-but-managing-anyway' thread, aphasiac, Winterfell, many others, I'm sure, to counteract the effects of our 'finished-RtK-in-20-days-94%-recall-&-will-be-reading-Mishima-by-year's-end-after-learning-the-kana' brethren & sistren.

(No offense intended to anyone. I have come to believe that some here have indeed finished RtK in twenty days or so with good recall and have prospered since. I envy them the time they have had to devote to it.)

That's funny! I finished RTK in about 3 months with crappy recall rate, went straight into KO and am doing just fine. 90% recall is NOT the goal or RTK. The goal is to get thru it and get on to the biz of learning Japanese. I'm sure 90% is pretty sweet, but no one has proven that it is directly corlated to mastering Japanese in the later stages (not yet anways....)

I'd say you SHOULD be worried at 60%, there's no reason your retention needs to be that low. 60% is enough to keep you moving forward, but there's a lot to consider.

1. High amount of failure = loads of extra reviews
2. If you fail 60% in 3 days, the risk is quite high you will fail even more in a month or two.
3. It can usually be fixed quite easily.

From what I gather, most people are in the 70-90% gap of retention. I'm sure different people learn differently so some people will always have worse retention, but I'd say you have a needlessly low retention if it's below 70%. Try mixing around how you do your stories. You say you've went pretty visual for now, why not try going for a more story-based approach where you write pretty long stories with lots of detail and simply read the story over and over. Another nice pointer is to spend extra time connecting the actual keyword to the story so you at least always remember the correct story, even if you might not always remember everything about it. Make sure to space your first review longer... study in the evening, review in the morning is a good schedule. If you need extra reviews, create real flashcards for the first day.

The less you fail kanji, the less effort you have to spend on RtK.

zazen666 Wrote:

dewick Wrote:Maybe we should start a 'doing-less-than-a-ton-a-day-&-with-crap-percentages-but-managing-anyway' thread, aphasiac, Winterfell, many others, I'm sure, to counteract the effects of our 'finished-RtK-in-20-days-94%-recall-&-will-be-reading-Mishima-by-year's-end-after-learning-the-kana' brethren & sistren.

That's funny!

Is funny.

Tobberoth Wrote:I'd say you SHOULD be worried at 60%, there's no reason your retention needs to be that low. 60% is enough to keep you moving forward, but there's a lot to consider.

Nah, no need to worry. Is a lot to consider, but 60% is enough to get a good back rub off Takeshita-dori if you can scribble 腰 on a cocktail napkin at the right moment. Depends on what 40% you're failing.