So I was reading the re-examining your work flow thread and I'd kinda done some of the same things to speed up my studies... After reading the full post I was pretty interested to see KO2001 was able to be knocked out in a month! So I thought i'd give it a go...

Im going to be starting on Monday the 10th of August. It will probably take me about 1.5 - 2 months to finish knowing me. But I really wanna try for it in 1! The aim is take myself from 3kyuu to 2kyuu reading level. I've got the time so why on earth not?

I figure after completion is when I'm going to start working on output as a skill as well as taking myself from 2kyuu reading to 1kyuu.

Thoughts, ideas, tips, encouragements, "why oh why's?", flames, fluency debates, AJATT debates, iKnow vs KO2001 debates, price of fish, Input?

mezbup Wrote:Thoughts, ideas, tips, encouragements, "why oh why's?", flames, fluency debates, AJATT debates, iKnow vs KO2001 debates, price of fish, Input?

nothing right now... but when (if) you finish, i'm sure others will have lots to say.

mezbup Wrote:Im going to be starting on Monday the 10th of August.

You'll be starting on my birthday

If you have the spare time it is most certainly doable. If I went back and did it again I think I could do it in 20 days or slightly under. (I only started going really fast after starting the 2nd book, which coincided with me experimenting with the new SRS'ing method. So doing the first book took me a lot longer than it could have been.)

The only thing you need to ask yourself is: Could you do something better with your time?

Personally, I find it to be a lot more fun, and therefore more likely I'll keep up with it, if I read manga for the majority of my study time.

Just a little tip:
KO2001 has a learning curve. I´m currently working through it, and it´s hard in the beginning. At least it was, and still is, for me. It´s getting easier though, you get in a groove and start to improve your speed and study-habits.
Don´t get discouraged if you think you´re going slow in the beginning... It´ll get easier!
(At least that´s what blackmacros told me, when I was whining about my slow pace, hehe!)

I've been at it for bloody ages! I'm too scared to add more cards before I perfect the other ones, lest I get snowed under by reviews -_-

Nii87 Wrote:I've been at it for bloody ages! I'm too scared to add more cards before I perfect the other ones, lest I get snowed under by reviews -_-

That's not how SRS systems work, especially not structured approaches. You can't "perfect" cards, you can just let them pass through the system. The more you add, the more they reinforce one another. Sure, adding too many cards will obviously raise your daily reviews, but if your problem is that you fail cards, you should probably look to solve it another way.

^Thanks for the advice Tobberoth. It just seems that even though I'm reviewing everything with reasonably good ratings, the same number pops up every day regardless!

Nii87 Wrote:^Thanks for the advice Tobberoth. It just seems that even though I'm reviewing everything with reasonably good ratings, the same number pops up every day regardless!

If you've added for a long time, it takes quite a while for reviews to dissipate. You should decide an upper limit, then calculate how many you can add a day to reach it. For example, if you add 20 sentences each day, you will hit about 300 reviews a day in little over a year, if I remember correctly. (The exact number depends on the algorithm and how often you press fail, hard and easy.)

I wish I could do KO2001 in a month. Sadly, 5 kanji a day seems to be the magic number for me as that's about the rate at which my brain is able to internalize the readings. For those of you who can get through it super fast, you have my admiration and envy.

Tobberoth Wrote:If you've added for a long time, it takes quite a while for reviews to dissipate. You should decide an upper limit, then calculate how many you can add a day to reach it. For example, if you add 20 sentences each day, you will hit about 300 reviews a day in little over a year, if I remember correctly. (The exact number depends on the algorithm and how often you press fail, hard and easy.)

Do you have a link, or the math that shows this? Also which algorithms? I'm curious what reviews would be like in a year at different rates of adding cards each day. Of course it could also change a lot from person to person (forgetting a new card hurts a lot less than forgetting a card after it's become "mature"). However a rough estimate would be interesting to see.

I'd also be curious for personal "I added about 50 a day for a year and have about x to review each day".

I got beat up by kanji reviews today at over 500 due cards... However that's only temporary from adding lots of kanji I already know into an SRS. I couldn't imagine having 300+ legitimate reviews a day though!

I'm envious of the dedication people have on these boards...

IceCream Wrote:Yeah, i'd really like to know the maths too....
is it worth just deleting the cards at a certain point? that'd cut reviews. some cards just become redundent when you know them already, and you've replaced them with better ones.

To Mezbup, glgl!! i never finished it, but, it is a good program. really hard in the beginning though. Also, now i'm adding sentences from real things, i don't think i could go back to that again. It makes me want to delete all my smartfm/ko2001 cards forever. There's such a huge huge difference in doing stuff you like. But, if you have the time, it's probably good, cos KO2001's also a lot quicker way to pick up vocabulary than finding it yourself. If it's going to take you such a short time to complete, it's probably worth it. If it takes longer, probably not...

I wouldn't recommend deleting cards. A card is effectively deleted after 7-8 passed reviews anyway (it becomes spaced so far into the future that you'll be dead before it expires). Instead of adding tons of cards which just take up your time, only add cards which are actually worth reviewing. Remember, the increase of reviews over time stems from how much you add each day, not so much how many cards are actually in the deck. If you add 20 new cards a day and deletes 1 mature one, it won't make any noticeable impact.

Unfortunately, I do not have the links. I know some people here has made python scripts though and hosted online, so there ARE links... I just don't know them

There's a thread somewhere on this forum that simulates Anki's algorithm to figure out the number of reviews, and the code and math is explained there.

But seriously you guys are thinking too much. Just do as much reviewing as your daily schedule allows, and add cards when you run low on reviews. You'll have far more success with this than trying to stick to any artificial schedule. It's fine to challenge yourself--"let's see if I can keep up 50 new cards a day for a week!" But don't get too wrapped up in it. And for heaven's sake, don't go working out the calculus of variations that will tell you your optimum study schedule, albeit with some very big, unrealistic assumptions, when you could spend that time studying.

Zorlee Wrote:Just a little tip:
KO2001 has a learning curve. I´m currently working through it, and it´s hard in the beginning. At least it was, and still is, for me. It´s getting easier though, you get in a groove and start to improve your speed and study-habits.
Don´t get discouraged if you think you´re going slow in the beginning... It´ll get easier!
(At least that´s what blackmacros told me, when I was whining about my slow pace, hehe!)

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

With regards to the learning curve... I have a vocab of about 1500 words at the moment. Some of which has been through learning audibly before I started Heisig and a lot of it which has been gained through reading after I did heisig. How will this affect the learning curve for me? Will it make things a bit easier in the beginning?

KO can be quite difficult initially because, for someone coming in at essentially 0 prior knowledge, the density of new words per sentence can make it quite hard. By the time you get through a few hundred kanji though (around ~160 for me) this problem slowly dissapears as there are no longer large amounts of unknown words per sentence. For you it will probably be much easier, as you shouldn't have as much trouble with too many unknown words in the beginning.

IceCream Wrote:hmm, i dunno, the sentences are quite businessy. some of the sentences are easy but, its still difficult even with a decent vocabulary to start with... unless you know business and transport terms, etc to begin with.

Hmm business terms not so good with. Transport will be a bit better.

How long will the reviews go on for after I've completed it? I still get 40 or 30 rtk reviews a day.

One month seems impossible for me, since I'm doing dictation as well (I only write down the relevant part of the sentence). I'm thinking about dropping the dictation part for the second volume though... it takes a hell of a lot of time compared to just doing recognition. But the result of doing dictation really seems very useful to me. Listening comprehension + being able to write the words, a skill you don't gain from just reading.

It just feels like my fellow RTKers leave me in the dust with the recognition only approach... ^^'

Hinode Wrote:a skill you don't gain from just reading.

I think that you do, it just takes a LOT longer and is much more incremental. I don't do any dictation and initially I could read sentences just fine but not write anything. Now, though, I'm realising that my writing ability is slowly developing and I'm able to write some things now.

In 6 months time I plan to re-evaluate where I'm at, and if I'm not satisfied with my writing progress I will start dedicating time to actively practicing it. Until then, it just takes way too much time

Just out of curiosity, how do you guys go about studying KO2001? So far what I've been doing is I read through all the sentences once, then i write out all the sentences, and then I go through them and try to read what I wrote. It doesn't seem to be the fastest, nor the best for memorizing vocab, so I was wondering how exactly you guys go about getting the sentences/vocab in your head before you actually put them in your SRS.

Also, when you put them in your SRS, what do you mark them as (assuming you use anki) at first. It seems like unless I spend a lot of time on each sentence, or study them once in the morning and once at night, I'm not able to remember them the next time they come up in anki. Any advice?

sup3rbon Wrote:Just out of curiosity, how do you guys go about studying KO2001? So far what I've been doing is I read through all the sentences once, then i write out all the sentences, and then I go through them and try to read what I wrote. It doesn't seem to be the fastest, nor the best for memorizing vocab, so I was wondering how exactly you guys go about getting the sentences/vocab in your head before you actually put them in your SRS.

Also, when you put them in your SRS, what do you mark them as (assuming you use anki) at first. It seems like unless I spend a lot of time on each sentence, or study them once in the morning and once at night, I'm not able to remember them the next time they come up in anki. Any advice?

Personally, I don't do anything. (I don't study from KO2001 usually, but it's the same for all sentences, right?)

If the new words are made up of kanji I know the readings of decently well, I just input the sentence and let the SRS do its thing. If I don't know the kanji well, I find other compounds using it with the same reading, or I add more sentences with the same word. This makes sure that I get some extra exposure so I won't fail it over and over.

Another technique people seem to use is something called the Iversons method which is basically some primitive technique of writing words in lines and translating them, giving you a good feeling for lots of words quickly. It's probably a good technique to use in a situation like yours (where you add several unknown words in a row quite quickly).

Hinode, blackmacros: I've found that the recognition-only approach simply doesn't lead to good output over time (although maybe its because I don't have the shear volume of input that blackmacros does). But dictation is too slow at first for a lot of reasons. What I've found that works is to first do recognition for a block of sentences, up to a month or more, then switch to dictation, or add dictation and review both. It's more i+1 this way, and easy to do in Anki if you keep two card models and properly tag your input.

And the Iverson's method thing would be ideal for this situation. You might want to check the end of this thread.

Ah thank you Tobberoth, adding extra sentences for certain words is definitely something I can do that'll help in the beginning, especially because at the moment each sentence is at majority new vocab, if not completely. Looks like for now I'll just have to take it slow, add lots of extra sentences, and just pray the SRS does it's thing haha.

Although I suppose trying Iverson's method on top of that couldn't hurt...

mafried Wrote:Hinode, blackmacros: I've found that the recognition-only approach simply doesn't lead to good output over time

An easy and 'safer' way to output is to do recognition only, but occasionally focus on a grammar structure that you come across. So you might see a card which says something like:

寿司が好きです。

And you do your recognition thing and check it's right, etc. Then you simply look away from your computer screen for a moment and think of some other examples and say them aloud. For example, I turn away and say:

相撲が好きです。
インド料理が好きです。
漫画が大好きです。
新聞が嫌いだ。
肉が好きだけど魚が好きじゃないよ。

So you can practice without supervision if you just try to bring to mind various word substitutions, and as you can see you can even vary the grammar structure in small ways to make it more productive.

I beleive writing is a very important skill in any language despite how little it is used. However, it takes ages to do reviews outputting writing. The idea of breaking learning up into layers has worked really well for heisig so I'm guessing it should work just as well for the rest of literacy. That is to say, once you've learned how to read, learning how to write will be easier. I think this would be very true because you know all the readings and how they're used in kanji compounds. If you learn how to write while learning how to read, you don't have that background knowledge and in my experience it's an uphill battle to get it. One could learn to read much faster if just reading was focused on, then you can move on to all forms of output.

mafried Wrote:Hinode, blackmacros: I've found that the recognition-only approach simply doesn't lead to good output over time (although maybe its because I don't have the shear volume of input that blackmacros does). But dictation is too slow at first for a lot of reasons. What I've found that works is to first do recognition for a block of sentences, up to a month or more, then switch to dictation, or add dictation and review both. It's more i+1 this way, and easy to do in Anki if you keep two card models and properly tag your input.

And the Iverson's method thing would be ideal for this situation. You might want to check the end of this thread.

Hopefully you're wrong and 6 months from now I'll find my writing has progressed, but I think you're right. I'm of the opinion that you get good at something by practicing; its unreasonable to assume I will become good at (hand)writing compounds when I'm not practicing it.

So in 6 months time I'll look at where I'm at and then evaluate adding in some dictation sentences.