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Hey guys,
What do you think of my process bewlo? What could be optimized?
PREREQUISITE
- I already own a text file containing 3 fields: one for the kanji, one for the Heisig number (French version) and one for the keyword.
- I'm using Anki as my SRS
MY KANJI LEARNING PROCESS:
1 - I import the equivalent of one Heisig book chapter from my text file to Anki. Basically, it means between 15 to 50 kanji.
2 - I read the mnemonic story in the book and by type a summary of it on to my Anki cards. Every 3 kanjis, I hand-write the 3 learnt kanji once on paper.
3 - Once I'm done, I select all new cards and use the CRAM option to review them.
- By the way, does that affect the stats of my regular kanji deck?
- I checked every card either as AGAIN when I am unable to reproduce the kanji (simulating handwritting on my palm), or HARD (even if I was quick and easy at remembering it).
4 - Then I launched the Review on my regular deck and I'm mostly presented kanji I learnt the previous days. I'm also tempted to be hard on myself and check as HARD or GOOD even the kanji/cards I was right. I have a hard time clicking the EASY button...
I usually need about 1 hour/2 hours to learn a chapter and doing my review on the regular deck. I 'd be dreaming of doing 100 kanji/day as I read some of you do in this forum, but my office job and adult responsabilities simply does make it possible. Also, I'm afraid to just go too fast and learn the kanji too superficially...
Any feedback?
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Seems like a good process, though I generally advice people to create their own stories instead of using the ones from the book (he stops supplying stories later).
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In case you aren't already aware, click the "Go to Reviewing the Kanji" (top) to access this site's SRS and all the user-contributed stories.
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Thanks Thora, but I'm working in FRENCH, and I guess all I can find on this site is in English, right? I guess it'd be a bad idea to have 3 languages mixed in the process of learning kanji.
One more question on the reviewing process: when asked a keyword by Anki, do you a/ try to isolate each component and "rewrite" the story or b/ is it better to just go for the kanji shape? I guess a/ is better for long term memory and b/ better for instant recognition like the one you're facing in real-life situation (when reading, when in the street in Japan and so on...).
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First, you're using Anki. Anki isn't tuned for making superficial memories: if they're not sinking in, Anki will decrease review intervals, crank up the number of reviews per day and make them sink in. Don't worry about that at all.
You're spending more time per character than is necessary.
1) Don't use "cram." That option is for people who suffer from test anxiety and feel better if they've studied the night before. You're not preparing for a test. Your goal should be a strong initial memory-trace.
2) Do use "easy." My personal rule is that "easy" is for characters that flow naturally without any thinking (and thus, I'm reviewing them too early). "Hard" is for characters that require restarting or fixing errors. "Good" is for most characters, some thought or hesitation, but correct. "Again" when they're not correct or I give up.
3) Settings -> preferences -> uncheck "show next time until answer". Don't think about how long; it only builds anxiety.
4) The two keys for making this work are A) good sleep and B) good initial memorization.
Ideally, you wake without an alarm-clock; though I admit this is fairly difficult for most people and there's no easy answer for the question "how can I wake up in time for my job without it."
Strong memorization is why I dislike cramming. Rather than quickly switching from one character to another, worrying about whether you "have it," you should just focus on one at a time.
If you haven't read the note before Lesson 11, I'd recommend that now. Here's a summary of how Hesig suggests to memorize:
1) Read the keyword. I say "read it aloud," that way you're sure you've read it.
2) Tell the story. Feel free to tell it aloud.
3) Visualize the story. Hesig actually recommends to pause here for a while and let it sink in. Feel free to change the story until it feels right.
4) Read the keywords and primitives.
5) Mentally arrange the primitive images in the same shape as the kanji.
6) Copy the kanji once telling the story.
If take the time to do this carefully, you'll have formed a strong memory. Now leave it alone. Building stable memories is like painting something: each review is a coat of paint. You have to let it dry between reviews.
Trust Anki to handle the scheduling. If you fail, do the steps again (Keyword, Story, Vision, Primitives, Position, Write)--it'll be a lot faster since you're putting the memory back together rather than creating in from scratch. First review can be as soon as you like after adding a card--provided you clear your working memory first. Working memory is small, so this just means you have to do something between adding and first-review. Read a page of a book or listen to a song. That's all that's needed.
Finally, a warning. Anki is designed to only show the most difficult, most likely to fail cards. Well-known kanji will stay silent, so you'll feel like you know less than you do. The big payoff doesn't come until you reach the end and start using the kanji.
EDIT, in answer to your question:
Know what the primitives are as you write them. If you can do that, you're good. Eventually, the primitives associate directly with their meaning, but that may not happen till the end (it's just starting for me).
To expand on this a bit, the goal of RTK is stable memory. Fluency will come naturally with practice. Between the point where you are and the end of RTK 1, I had an epiphany:
Kanji aren't shapes. Kanji are gestures!
Just like the signs of a sign language (gestures made with hands, arms, and face) and utterances of a spoken language (gestures made with the vocal organs), kanji are gestures, this time made with arm and pen. Spoken words are made from phonemes. Signed words are made from parts, too--initially called chiremes, now called phonemes since they serve the same linguistic function. Radicals are the phonemes of written Chinese and together with the kana are the phonemes of written Japanese.
Your brain will learn to speed-read Japanese by shape if you let it, but to do that you have to read, and to do that you need to remember the kanji, which requires long-term memory, which cannot remember shapes directly.
Edited: 2009-08-18, 3:52 pm
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Agreed, but just fyi, please know that the French version of RTK has been quite modified by its author/translator/adaptor: the order presentation of the kanji is not exactly the same, so are the keywords, and so on...
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Sounds fine to me. The one thing I would say is that you don't have to be so strict about writing the character only once. I write it until it looks okay, so if the first couple of times it's funky I write it again. If you're writing it ten or so times that's a waste, but don't worry about doing it 3 or 4 times if you're handwriting isn't so good.
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I don't recommend usage of the Easy button. Unless something is so insanely easy that you wonder why you even entered it, it's probably hard enough to warrant the Normal button.
Easy is just there to lower the workload, unless you feel you have way too many reviews, there's no reason to use it. Failing a card, while a must in SRS, is a huge step backward. If you press easy, forget the kanji next time and fail it, you will have lost a LOT of time and effort for no real reason, so make sure you only press Easy if the kanji is REALLY easy and you're confident you won't forget it.
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wwwjdic just takes that information from kanjidic (edict but for kanji, sorta). Of course, wwwjdic is administered by the same guy who made edict and kanjidic in the first place.
Edited: 2009-08-20, 11:41 am
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The French keyword is much more true to the most common use of that kanji that I've found.
~J
