woelpad Wrote:Cruel case of Baader-Meinhof. Had to find out how to read 嚢腫 (のうしゅ, cyst) just yesterday. It's a big world, eh. You're into medics?

I'm way too much into Wikipedia. Actually it's just part of RTK3 which I'm going through at a ridiculously low speed.

duder Wrote:i do not use mnemonics for rtk - while not finished, i nearly am -1900

the reason that i did it was because when writing japanese, it takes too long to remember a story. if you're thinking about a kanji story, its hard to think about what you're writing - i just srs'd until I burned the image in my head - now i can picture the entire kanji in my head- much like anyone can do with the alphabet...

I could be wrong on this, seeing how I'm only 450 into things, but I think the stories eventually fade away for any Kanji that study and write with any sort of regularity. So far there are plenty of Kanji that I don't even begin to think about the story for when it pops up in the SRS. It's just there and I know it. Then when one pops up that I don't have internalized the story comes through as a support system.

I am a horrible speller in English (even though it is a major portion of my job...curse you spell check), and I find that if I'm writing things out on paper I often times dumb down my vocabulary due to a lack of confidence in writing words I have difficulty spelling. With this, even if I forget how to "spell" a word, at least I can use a story to remind me of the stroke order.

But hey, if just using brute force is working for you, then I say go for. Everybody should stick to what is working for them, and at 1900 it looks like it most definitely is.

My theory though is this: you are some form of robot. Memorization from sight, and stroke order. Sounds very to-the-point, very clean cut...almost too clean cut. Just how a robot would do it. Well, a robot or the Borg.

dont get me wrong, they arent all perfect. i make plenty of mistakes every time i review. i just bash them in my head like the kids I teach - except using an srs makes me bash myself more efficiently. if you go this way, you have to be ok with higher fail rates. i just view it as letting the srs do its work. Just because you fail a kanji 8 times in a row, doesnt mean that you wasted your time. One day it just clicks.

rather than trying to cover a set number of new kanji a day or week, i have these 400 square writing papers and i try to fill one up everyday- including reviews- with frequent manga breaks- 2 sheets if ive got nothing to do. it really has been effective

there is certainly nothing wrong with mnemonics- as long as one keeps trying -you'll get there

duder Wrote:i just bash them in my head like the kids I teach - except using an srs makes me bash myself more efficiently.

You bash the kids in the head?!

duder Wrote:Just because you fail a kanji 8 times in a row, doesnt mean that you wasted your time. One day it just clicks.

That depends on what you mean by "waste your time". If I can learn 10 kanji in a week, and I instead learn 2, I consider that a waste of time. If I can learn a kanji without failing it once, I consider it a waste if I have to fail it 8 times. It means TONS of extra time and effort spent.

yukamina Wrote:

duder Wrote:i just bash them in my head like the kids I teach - except using an srs makes me bash myself more efficiently.

You bash the kids in the head?!

the language abuse that i give out is awful -

Tobberoth Wrote:

duder Wrote:Just because you fail a kanji 8 times in a row, doesnt mean that you wasted your time. One day it just clicks.

That depends on what you mean by "waste your time". If I can learn 10 kanji in a week, and I instead learn 2, I consider that a waste of time. If I can learn a kanji without failing it once, I consider it a waste if I have to fail it 8 times. It means TONS of extra time and effort spent.

maybe i should amend that to "not a complete waste of time" - the goal being not simply to recall kanji- but to be able to recall them quickly. I think that the mnemonic people would get to that point eventually, but the reality is that that time is long after they "think" they learned the kanji

not using mnemonics gives me a better understanding of how well i know those kanji in my list.

the number of kanji learned in a week is arbitrary and not even worth mentioning- some are more difficult than others, some weeks im better at studying. i think the number of repetitions done in a week is important, but the actual number of new kanji is not. while its nice to have goals of a certain number per week - its best to maintain the same mental strain imo.

Personally I'm not sure that using stories will slow down your writing. It could really be the opposite; someone who has built a strong memory with a story could remember the kanji quickly as a whole compared to someone who has less structured memory of the kanji.

When thinking about speed of writing the time required to remember what kanji to use for each word is important, so finishing RTK in the quickest time so that you have more time to practice words is important. The time spent learning,failing, re-learning, writing out lots of kanji over & over is time that can be spent doing other things.

Urg, did chapters 16 and 17 today, they were a bit of a pain　with all the similar ones (taken me about an hour, will probably do another 20 minutes practicing too). I guess it's only natural they get more complicated into the book.

On frame 556 now; know a total of ~1040 now so just 1000 to go. =D

Anki's saying I have a 91% retention rate on young cards, so not too bad.

Hmm. Congratulations. 91% is a good number, not too high, not to low. But, wait, you're only reviewing 556, not the ~1040 you estimate you've learned, right? Not to pooh-pooh your success, but I don't think you're in the clear yet.

The killer thing in any large memory project is memory interference: when you learn similar things, one will keep trying to replace the other. If both are in an SRS you'll notice (e.g. when you confidently write a perfectly correct character that doesn't match the answer). But, if you haven't been reviewing the 500 or so characters you started with, you won't have noticed forgetting them.

So, keep it up. This is very interesting and not something I can experiment with myself anymore (RtK changes people...). Good luck.

Well, I'll be adding those 500 eventually when I come to them anyway, so it's no big deal even if I have forgotten a few. At 723 now~

dizmox Wrote:but any rate, we all learnt the 26 letters of the alphabet visually (I assume).

The good part of RTK is that it allows you to study as an adult, not as a child.

What I remember from my lessons learning how to read and write in primary school, was having to write the letters over and over again, first tracing them and then writing them on my own. I still have the writing books to prove it. XD So that's still cramming.

Also, none of our 26 (52 if you count capital and lower case letters) have more than 3 or 4 strokes. I can learn Kanji with 3 or 4 strokes without mnemonis, easy.

But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

Koos83 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:but any rate, we all learnt the 26 letters of the alphabet visually (I assume).

The good part of RTK is that it allows you to study as an adult, not as a child.

What I remember from my lessons learning how to read and write in primary school, was having to write the letters over and over again, first tracing them and then writing them on my own. I still have the writing books to prove it. XD So that's still cramming.

When learning cursive in 3rd grade (which I've long since forgotten how to actually write myself beyond signing my name, haha) there was lots of repetition as well as making little pictures based on the letter as what I now recognize as a mnemonic device. i.e. a cursive e we'd turn into a bird.

duder Wrote:also, I read an article that stated that people who use mnemonics actually score lower than those who don't on kanji memorization - someone linked it here on the site before

I won't even ask you for the article link because I believe you. But realise that the higher scores are most likely due to the fact that tests are timed. Brute memorisation gives you speed, that's probably the only benefit, whereas with me I'm usually rummaging through for the story of the character so it takes a second, or two, or five longer than a guy who learned characters by brute force to write a character.

As of now I'm not too concerned about speed, I know I'll be able to write faster with more study and practice. The stories are just for never forgetting, speed can come later.

lerris Wrote:

Koos83 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:but any rate, we all learnt the 26 letters of the alphabet visually (I assume).

The good part of RTK is that it allows you to study as an adult, not as a child.

What I remember from my lessons learning how to read and write in primary school, was having to write the letters over and over again, first tracing them and then writing them on my own. I still have the writing books to prove it. XD So that's still cramming.

When learning cursive in 3rd grade (which I've long since forgotten how to actually write myself beyond signing my name, haha) there was lots of repetition as well as making little pictures based on the letter as what I now recognize as a mnemonic device. i.e. a cursive e we'd turn into a bird.

I can still write cursive. XD
We used to turn a cursive 2 into a swan... And 5 into a dog... Oh there were so many things. XD

Koos83 Wrote:But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

There's no such thing as photographic memory, only rare people with eidetic memory that lasts minutes only after exposure, or people who use mnemonics extensively. Every other claim is anecdotal or debunked. Sorry! I actually can't find any proof of that limited definition of eidetic memory either, hmm. There's also this supremely rare condition, but it's for autobiographical/episodic memory: http://www.answers.com/topic/hyperthymesia - I think we had some articles about that posted here last year or something. Scary!

ruiner Wrote:

Koos83 Wrote:But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

There's no such thing as photographic memory, only rare people with eidetic memory that lasts minutes only after exposure, or people who use mnemonics extensively. Every other claim is anecdotal or debunked. Sorry! I actually can't find any proof of that limited definition of eidetic memory either, hmm. There's also this supremely rare condition, but it's for autobiographical/episodic memory: http://www.answers.com/topic/hyperthymesia - I think we had some articles about that posted here last year or something. Scary!

You can't deny there are people who read something once and they remember it for ages. I know, I teach kids like that every day. It happens more often than you think. The person I was talking about in my other post is my brother, so it's hardly anecdotal.

hmm about eidetic memory for adult...well check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Slyusarchuk
30+ milion digit of pi
15000+ books word by word
20 digits multiplication
***** insane!

It's all true I saw a doc about him some times ago in ukrainian...and, even more, he did this out of world thing: contemporaneously
1)he played at chess
2)memorizing an entire book(he literally takes photographs, at 2sec fo page, he doesn't read anything) was checked after for comprehension
3)resolve a 8 digit number to the power of 21 °.°

Toooo Coooool thinking of japanizer his techniques

ruiner Wrote:

Koos83 Wrote:But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

There's no such thing as photographic memory, only rare people with eidetic memory that lasts minutes only after exposure, or people who use mnemonics extensively. Every other claim is anecdotal or debunked. Sorry! I actually can't find any proof of that limited definition of eidetic memory either, hmm. There's also this supremely rare condition, but it's for autobiographical/episodic memory: http://www.answers.com/topic/hyperthymesia - I think we had some articles about that posted here last year or something. Scary!

I gotta disagree. It exists to some degree. I say that because I experience it myself to a certain degree, particularly when referencing things i've looked up in a dictionary or something like that... oftentimes when I recall what i'm looking for mentally i'll see the mental image almost like a photograph of my lookup.

Look, I don't know if that counts or whatever but it's quite freakish when it happens the clarity of the image and all the relevant data i'm looking for encoded into my memory is stored for that particular piece of information as a visual image as opposed to abstract data. Usually a very clear when when I experience this. Basically as clear as day (in a flash) like I was looking at the exact same thing at the exact same point in time. However, it's not like looking at a physical photograph which you can hold in your hand, scan, and re-examine. I want to make that much clear. I guess it's just a case where visual memory is recalled very strongly but to a degree high enough that it replicates the real experience faithfully.

It's not super rare for me but it's also not super common. Happens with enough frequency though that I definitely acknowledge it's there. Wish I could make it happen all the time

As for a purely photographic memory of everything? I don't know if anyone has ever demonstrated one of those... although certain people, rare cases, born with freakish memories. However due to the nature of memory I don't really think it's viable. I'm no expert but I believe memory works with all your senses and each is encoded and stored in your brain differently depending on your environment at the time.

On a separate note...

Anyone heard of or better yet, tried, Photoreading?

Koos83 Wrote:The person I was talking about in my other post is my brother, so it's hardly anecdotal.

Erm, I'm afraid that's what anecdotal means, bro. Anecdotal doesn't mean not true, it means not from scientific evidence.

Are people seriously debating the existence of visual memory? Clearly it exists...

Anyways, past frame 1000 now!

mezbup Wrote:On a separate note...

Anyone heard of or better yet, tried, Photoreading?

My mom used to have a course for Photoreading sitting around the house when I was in junior high, and every now and then I'd give it a try...and never get very far. Can you photoread? Does it really work?

Up to 1333... less than 3 weeks to go *yawn* still ~91% correctness rate.

1627 now, 10 days to go. Retention rate's actually gone up a little.