I just recently got to frame 500 (it took me one week or so to get there), however, after about 300 or so my retention rate drops like a mother. So, I decided to backtrack through the ones I've learned and postpone learning until I get a grip on what I know..

[Side Note: The main consensus here is to use an SRS (like Anki or the flashcard system on this site), which yes, I'm using. However, I'm finding that SRSes didn't really help /that/ much with the first two-hundred, and that I just find them extremely easy to remember without much effort. A while after two-hundred, I make a couple of mistakes, like the occasional misinterpretation or wrong primitive. When I'm into three hundred, I make a lot of mistakes. I don't even want to talk about 400 to 500, but I will anyway: I didn't recall any of those kanji when I did my review today. Ouch..]

Anyway, it wasn't until the eighteenth of July that I decided to switch to RevTK completely and just drop Anki - I like the boxes system and I like how you can browse the stories of the cards you've failed. It's really streamlined.

I'm going to ask three things:

1. Is it bad that I'm so paranoid about reviewing what I've already previously learnt and avoid learning new frames until I've mastered what I've covered? I just don't feel confident that I can give the chapters ahead my all until I get a grasp of these first five hundred.

2. When I go over a failed card and get a new story or try to re-inforce what I've learned before, I feel somewhat confident about being able to retain it. But of course, there's always a degree of uncertainty. Do you guys find that when you fail at a kanji you knew you were never good at remembering and come back to review it, it's much easier to remember the second time you see it? There's only so many times that I can re-study past cards. @__@;

3. I used to have lots of momentum at the beginning. But I sorta slowed down over time. My progress sorta went like this.
Day 0: 100
Day 1: 190
Day 2: 275
Day 3: 350
Day 4: 390
Day 5: 410
Day 6: 460
Day 7: 500

I wanna get back to my 75-100 a day (it was really easy to do that at first). Might I be able to pull that off again, or would you suggest I slow down considering my retention rates beyond 300 sucked? I dunno why I'm even asking this, considering the only person who could know would be me.

Sorry for the long post. Suggestions much appreciated!

If you are not retaining well, you are probably adding too much, too quickly. Adding 75 a day is ambitious, and the reviews start to add up quick, especially if you are failing a lot.

What worked for me, was that when I started to feel overwhelmed by big reviews and that I was not retaining well, I would take 1 or 2 days off from adding cards and just review. I focused on editing my stories and relearning the ones I hadn't learned properly. I usually found I could add cards 5 days or a week in a row before I needed to take a day or two off for reviews. That's just what worked for me.

yukkuri_kame Wrote:If you are not retaining well, you are probably adding too much, too quickly. Adding 75 a day is ambitious, and the reviews start to add up quick, especially if you are failing a lot.

What worked for me, was that when I started to feel overwhelmed by big reviews and that I was not retaining well, I would take 1 or 2 days off from adding cards and just review. I focused on editing my stories and relearning the ones I hadn't learned properly. I usually found I could add cards 5 days or a week in a row before I needed to take a day or two off for reviews. That's just what worked for me.

Yeah, that turns out to be what I'm doing right now.. in general terms of wanting to learn all the kanji, taking off time from learning to review seems detrimental, but it seems more like confidence building. There's nothing more like forgetting a bunch of cards to dampen your spirits.

But in the long run, I don't believe adding 75 to 100 a day is ambitious. It worked for a little while. Perhaps what I'm doing wrong is what you said - stories. Heisig's stories, I find, either hit or miss the mark in terms of memorization. There's even times where it hits the mark but I just can't seem to remember the kanji despite the memorable stories he prescribes.. Once I get to Part III (which is coming up soon after 500), I'll be forced to come up with my own stories, so I think that might fix my current retention issues. @_@;

The other possibility, of course, is that I'm working my brain too hard. The only reason why I insist on trying to hit 75 to 100 a day is because that I'll be headed back to school in due time - and because I'm following the methods of AJATT, it's going to be a "blast" trying to figure out how to handle school, kanji and immersion at the same time. If I can get Kanji out of the way (wrong choice of wording - I don't want to "get" it out of the way, I want to be comfortable with kanji so that it doesn't end up taking up my time for other important things), it might make the latter half of this year a bit easier to handle.

Comments and suggestions still appreciated.

Don't worry about your retention, if you can handle the amount of reviews each day it will get better. When you're in 700 area you know how many kanji from around 300 you will fail? Not that many

With SRS you want to build long term memory and makes it much easier. You push information that is easy for you far away so you can focus on your problems and also train your long term memory. Meanwhile you get bombarded with new stuff and reviews of cards that you failed but after a couple of passes they will also eventually get pushed far away.

Since your retention percentage is mainly based on new and "failed" cards its only natural that its low. I quit 100 kanji per day for a lot of reasons (retention was one of them) but ever since I did my retention gets higher and higher every day and I don't like it. It just means I could handle more cards

thurd Wrote:Don't worry about your retention, if you can handle the amount of reviews each day it will get better. When you're in 700 area you know how many kanji from around 300 you will fail? Not that many

With SRS you want to build long term memory and makes it much easier. You push information that is easy for you far away so you can focus on your problems and also train your long term memory. Meanwhile you get bombarded with new stuff and reviews of cards that you failed but after a couple of passes they will also eventually get pushed far away.

Since your retention percentage is mainly based on new and "failed" cards its only natural that its low. I quit 100 kanji per day for a lot of reasons (retention was one of them) but ever since I did my retention gets higher and higher every day and I don't like it. It just means I could handle more cards

Haha. Yeah, I've been reading a lot of threads and the general thing seems to be, "don't worry about your retention, it's natural like that for new cards". I dunno, I guess I just don't like to suck at things, it sort of gets me anxious about my progress. I'm a poor sport. XD

KaitouJS Wrote:. The only reason why I insist on trying to hit 75 to 100 a day is because that I'll be headed back to school in due time - and because I'm following the methods of AJATT, it's going to be a "blast" trying to figure out how to handle school, kanji and immersion at the same time. If I can get Kanji out of the way (wrong choice of wording - I don't want to "get" it out of the way, I want to be comfortable with kanji so that it doesn't end up taking up my time for other important things), it might make the latter half of this year a bit easier to handle.

Comments and suggestions still appreciated.

That was the reason I did 100/day, except I was actually already attending classes (about 2 weeks in) when I started. I ignored my classes and class work for basically 5 weeks while I finished RtK. It was difficult, and I slowly fell behind in class- although not too badly because I was still going to classes and listening.

But my advice is to not get too worried about getting RtK entirely out of the way before classes start. Just settle into a pace you can maintain, and try and get as much done before school starts as possible.

Why? Because, once you've finished RtK you can move so much faster than any school course can. You will quickly make up any ground you lost. I finished my 2 hour Japanese exam with an hour to spare while the rest of the students struggled with or completely skipped 'difficult' reading passages. And this, even though I didn't do any actual Japanese study for the first 7 weeks of my 12 week course, was because the knowledge you get from AJATT+this forum is very, very effective.

Fwiw, I agree with what yukkuri_kame, thurd, and blackmacros have said above. In my experience - I added card 2042 on 11 July, everything done on this site, not Anki - it is true that the SRS eventually sorts things out. Along the way often my retention rates were terrible. Some days I failed 40% or 45% of 100+ expired-cards, not a good feeling and not good for motivation, of course. My overall average through the 2042 was only 75%, although improving rapidly toward the end.

In the ten days since 'finishing' retention on 1,100+ expired cards has been above 90%, though, and those dark days of missing forty or more on a day of reviewing seem distant, even though they were only a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure the same sort of thing will happen for you, KaitouJS, if you just keep up the reviews.

blackmacros Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:. The only reason why I insist on trying to hit 75 to 100 a day is because that I'll be headed back to school in due time - and because I'm following the methods of AJATT, it's going to be a "blast" trying to figure out how to handle school, kanji and immersion at the same time. If I can get Kanji out of the way (wrong choice of wording - I don't want to "get" it out of the way, I want to be comfortable with kanji so that it doesn't end up taking up my time for other important things), it might make the latter half of this year a bit easier to handle.

Comments and suggestions still appreciated.

That was the reason I did 100/day, except I was actually already attending classes (about 2 weeks in) when I started. I ignored my classes and class work for basically 5 weeks while I finished RtK. It was difficult, and I slowly fell behind in class- although not too badly because I was still going to classes and listening.

But my advice is to not get too worried about getting RtK entirely out of the way before classes start. Just settle into a pace you can maintain, and try and get as much done before school starts as possible.

Why? Because, once you've finished RtK you can move so much faster than any school course can. You will quickly make up any ground you lost. I finished my 2 hour Japanese exam with an hour to spare while the rest of the students struggled with or completely skipped 'difficult' reading passages. And this, even though I didn't do any actual Japanese study for the first 7 weeks of my 12 week course, was because the knowledge you get from AJATT+this forum is very, very effective.

dewick Wrote:Fwiw, I agree with what yukkuri_kame, thurd, and blackmacros have said above. In my experience - I added card 2042 on 11 July, everything done on this site, not Anki - it is true that the SRS eventually sorts things out. Along the way often my retention rates were terrible. Some days I failed 40% or 45% of 100+ expired-cards, not a good feeling and not good for motivation, of course. My overall average through the 2042 was only 75%, although improving rapidly toward the end.

In the ten days since 'finishing' retention on 1,100+ expired cards has been above 90%, though, and those dark days of missing forty or more on a day of reviewing seem distant, even though they were only a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure the same sort of thing will happen for you, KaitouJS, if you just keep up the reviews.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I had a feeling that I would be told this, but it's good that I was. It really inspires me to keep on reviewing, despite how badly I'm doing at this moment.

I really shouldn't be worrying about this one thing at this point, but: what's my best direction after the end of RTK1? Some suggest replacing the english keywords with Japanese keywords in an SRS, but I just don't know where to start, and RTK2+3 seem like a worthless venture (since everyone says the best bet is to just go out and attain the rest through encountering them in the wild). Khatzu from AJATT suggests naturally learning the kanji readings through media, but it's difficult without having japanese subtitles and such, which.. are ridiculously hard to find unless you order Japanese DVDs off amazon.co.jp or something (did I mention I'm a young adult who's broke? D: ).

Maybe I should stop wondering and get back to Kanji reviewing. XD

Khatz may have delayed the release of his Quick Start Guide but thankfully blackmacros is here to save the day

Basically you can choose to complete RtK 1 and then go all native like Khatz suggests. That's kind of daunting though.

The other camp (and what is suggested by a lot of people on this forum) is to follow this progression:

Rtk1-->Tae Kim-->KO2001

Tae Kim is a basic, free, beginners grammar course with tons of example sentences available online.

KO2001 is a book/audio e-book containing ~3000 example sentences covering the main readings of the 90% most commonly used kanji.

Once you've done this you can start mining whatever native stuff you want. I did this personally and I went from 0 knowledge of Japanese to being able to play through, and understand, Chrono Trigger in japanese as well as start reading the Haruhi Suzumiya light novel.

Again I agree essentially with blackmacros. I've skipped the Tae Kim stage because I already have a decent command of Japanese grammar, having lived in the country for more than a quarter century. (I know, you would have thought I'd have learned to read properly in all that time, but never mind; Japanese reading isn't something you just 'pick up', unfortunately.) I'm also not doing KO2001, although I'm thinking probably I should when I have time to sort it out.

What I'm doing instead is sentences about topics of interest, in Anki, both recognition (i.e., can I read it aloud and know what it means) and production (i.e., can I write the main vocab either from kana or audio prompts). Mainly I've pulled stuff from Japanese Wikipedia and, for audio, from the smart.fm Japanese Core 6000 series. I'm not sure these are the best sources for this sort of thing, but they're working OK for me.

Anyway, the consensus seems to be that Tae Kim and SRS-ing sentences is the logical post-RtK1 step.

I also think I'll probably begin RtK3 on this site one of these days, although not because I think it the optimal move for improved reading ability. Rather, I can say in retrospect, despite struggling mightily on occasion with RtK1, I enjoyed it immensely.

dewick Wrote:I also think I'll probably begin RtK3 on this site one of these days, although not because I think it the optimal move for improved reading ability. Rather, I can say in retrospect, despite struggling mightily on occasion with RtK1, I enjoyed it immensely.

I have been thinking this, too. I also finished RTK1 recently and struggled with it at first. After finishing RTK1, though, I now see a ton of the RTK3 kanji on a daily basis. It boggles the mind ... knowing more means that you know how much you don't know. *sigh*

Also, to add to what everyone else has already said. Failure is wonderful because it means you have to re-review them. I suggest looking through failed cards 1 or 2 times in the day, then check if you know them all in the following morning (clicking 'learned' for all those correct). This spaces out the failed cards separate from successful cards, which I liked. You also get some good review and quiz time. It was a technique I went with around kanji 1500, but would have made my life easier if I had started early. Just a thought

dat5h Wrote:

dewick Wrote:I also think I'll probably begin RtK3 on this site one of these days, although not because I think it the optimal move for improved reading ability. Rather, I can say in retrospect, despite struggling mightily on occasion with RtK1, I enjoyed it immensely.

I have been thinking this, too. I also finished RTK1 recently and struggled with it at first. After finishing RTK1, though, I now see a ton of the RTK3 kanji on a daily basis. It boggles the mind ... knowing more means that you know how much you don't know. *sigh*

Also, to add to what everyone else has already said. Failure is wonderful because it means you have to re-review them. I suggest looking through failed cards 1 or 2 times in the day, then check if you know them all in the following morning (clicking 'learned' for all those correct). This spaces out the failed cards separate from successful cards, which I liked. You also get some good review and quiz time. It was a technique I went with around kanji 1500, but would have made my life easier if I had started early. Just a thought

No way! I've been doing it completely different. My methods are so: I timebox, as Khatzu from AJATT suggests.. so I decide to play 10 minutes of any japanese game, then do 10 minutes of review (preferably here), then I go back to 10 minutes of my game and so on. Within those timeboxes of review, I go over new/expired cards (I haven't actually done any 'new' cards per se, because I started after I got to 500) - usually within sets of hundreds (that's what I've been doing since the 18th). Once I complete a set of one hundred, I go back to all the cards I've failed within this set and find stories other people have made that could possibly work for me. I look at their story, repeat it once or twice, and then write down the kanji whilst repeating the story in mind.. then click 'learned'. I continue to do that for all failed kanji until I'm done those, then I eventually go back to a new set of cards (usually 100, as aforementioned).

I should probably take your advice and NOT click 'learned' until the morning after or so, since I might be getting ahead of myself and giving my memory too much credit. I don't think I'm engaging my long-term memory by jumping the gun like that. @_@;

blackmacros Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:. The only reason why I insist on trying to hit 75 to 100 a day is because that I'll be headed back to school in due time - and because I'm following the methods of AJATT, it's going to be a "blast" trying to figure out how to handle school, kanji and immersion at the same time. If I can get Kanji out of the way (wrong choice of wording - I don't want to "get" it out of the way, I want to be comfortable with kanji so that it doesn't end up taking up my time for other important things), it might make the latter half of this year a bit easier to handle.

Comments and suggestions still appreciated.

That was the reason I did 100/day, except I was actually already attending classes (about 2 weeks in) when I started. I ignored my classes and class work for basically 5 weeks while I finished RtK. It was difficult, and I slowly fell behind in class- although not too badly because I was still going to classes and listening.

But my advice is to not get too worried about getting RtK entirely out of the way before classes start. Just settle into a pace you can maintain, and try and get as much done before school starts as possible.

Why? Because, once you've finished RtK you can move so much faster than any school course can. You will quickly make up any ground you lost. I finished my 2 hour Japanese exam with an hour to spare while the rest of the students struggled with or completely skipped 'difficult' reading passages. And this, even though I didn't do any actual Japanese study for the first 7 weeks of my 12 week course, was because the knowledge you get from AJATT+this forum is very, very effective.

Macros don't forget to mention how doing a lot of kanji a day carries that momentum into the sentence phase, and turns people like you and I into "let's race through things that take others 6 months or more" people, which is good or bad, depending how you want to look at it.

Also fwiw, I have never used the 'learned' button on this site. Wouldn't trust myself to know whether it's learned learned or learned now and won't be tomorrow or next week.

I go through failed cards on the study page, tweaking stories if necessary, & then review them using <http://kanji.koohii.com/review/review.php?expired=1&box=1>. (Sorry, I apparently don't know how to make that an actual link.)

Yonosa Wrote:Macros don't forget to mention how doing a lot of kanji a day carries that momentum into the sentence phase, and turns people like you and I into "let's race through things that take others 6 months or more" people, which is good or bad, depending how you want to look at it.

Thats true. Once you get used to such a fast pace it gets easier, and doing something at a 'normal' pace seems slow. Still, some people can't deal with that sort of speed- or don't have the required time.

dewick Wrote:Also fwiw, I have never used the 'learned' button on this site. Wouldn't trust myself to know whether it's learned learned or learned now and won't be tomorrow or next week.

I go through failed cards on the study page, tweaking stories if necessary, & then review them using <http://kanji.koohii.com/review/review.php?expired=1&box=1>. (Sorry, I apparently don't know how to make that an actual link.)

Oh! I didn't even know you could access them like that. Thanks!

dewick Wrote:http://kanji.koohii.com/review/review.ph...ed=1&box=1

:o I ... I ... I didn't know you could do that ... so much better. How come you can't do that from the review page ... ?

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! :mad:

Oh, but thanks by the way

*edited to add the link.
Just put a link in [ url ] LINKHERE [/ url ] (minus the spaces of course)

dat5h Wrote:

dewick Wrote:http://kanji.koohii.com/review/review.ph...ed=1&box=1

:o I ... I ... I didn't know you could do that ... so much better. How come you can't do that from the review page ... ?

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! :mad:

Oh, but thanks by the way

*edited to add the link.
Just put a link in [ url ] LINKHERE [/ url ] (minus the spaces of course)

Thanks for the LINKHERE info, dat5h. I'm usually better @ technology than I am @ Kanji, but didn't know how to do that on a forum.

In case ファブリス is listening, I hope the refactored site will have an easy & intuitive way to 'review failed cards'. (Sorry if that's been discussed elsewhere.)

blackmacros Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:Macros don't forget to mention how doing a lot of kanji a day carries that momentum into the sentence phase, and turns people like you and I into "let's race through things that take others 6 months or more" people, which is good or bad, depending how you want to look at it.

Thats true. Once you get used to such a fast pace it gets easier, and doing something at a 'normal' pace seems slow. Still, some people can't deal with that sort of speed- or don't have the required time.

Definitely takes a long time...BUT !! BUT! it's worth it right!?

ふふ　
RACE TO THE FINISH!,

Blackmacros, you're lucky, I wish I could learn just one language at a time, the progress is probably awesome huh? When I first get to China I am going to severely cut the Japanese, and put it on a 2 year fluency schedule, which will be easily managed, and I will try to put a 1 year Chinese HSK fluency level due-date on, It shouldn't be a huge feat though. Hopefully within 1.5 years my Chinese is pretty solid where I can do AJATT at my apartment, and keep the Chinese to school and etc. But fluency in Chinese will be fun, I can't wait to tease the beggars...oops... I just typed that out, but nah I heard that they harass foreigners because they think we have a lot of money, and that if you give a single person any money that the others will swarm you.

Yonosa Wrote:[...] I am going to severely cut the Japanese, and put it on a 2 year fluency schedule

I love those surrealistic quotes

Hey, guys. Thanks for the generous wisdom and tips you've given me.

I got a question about my reviews: When trying to recall a kanji for a certain keyword, I sometimes find that it may sometimes be disproportionate/odd-looking but still in the same form. I still do proper stroke order, though.

I still mark these kanji as correct.. but should I? I'm not sure if I'm learning proper form if I'm letting myself get off that easily.

KaitouJS Wrote:Hey, guys. Thanks for the generous wisdom and tips you've given me.

I got a question about my reviews: When trying to recall a kanji for a certain keyword, I sometimes find that it may sometimes be disproportionate/odd-looking but still in the same form. I still do proper stroke order, though.

I still mark these kanji as correct.. but should I? I'm not sure if I'm learning proper form if I'm letting myself get off that easily.

A good solution is to get yourself some square-paper or graph paper so that you practice writing them with the right sizes and proportions. I think there are some links floating around here somewhere to some paper you can print off. Try searching for "square paper".

Yeah, I know of a site that's got some good grid templates. Should I just incorporate the graph paper for when I study new kanji and review them, or should I actually start a routine of just writing them out as well? If the latter, that could be pretty inconvenient for time. :X

Don't bother adjusting your current routine if it works for you. Just, whenever you would normally write a kanji down- use graph paper instead of normal paper.

Got it. Thanks for the advice, I wonder why I never thought of using graph paper for proportions.