Simple question really, do you put your mnemonic story on the front or the back of the flash card?

Personally neither. I only review the story if I fail the card and can't come up with the story on my own after seeing the answer.

Having it on the front is kinda like cheating in way. It's akin to doing a test open-book. If you're going to put it anywhere put it on the back is the best place for it to go.

Reviewing is a test of memory and a tool to strengthen it and having the story on the front serves as a crutch that will only really slow you down.

If you're having trouble with a particular Kanji it may be that your story needs to be modified or that it just takes a few failures for it to really stick but don't worry because you will get there.

<--- prefers to reinforce memory rather than test it

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid66433

When you come across kanji in the wild, you won't see your story stuck to it, similarly, if you need to look at your story to write an essay and need a kanji, it will take much longer to write something out.

Therefor, testing yourself with this information exposed is unfair to yourself.

Just my opinion. Put the story on the back, if at all.

Besides, if in doubt, just don't put the story on at all. It's easy enough, most people here manage to do it without the stories on the cards. All it can do is good.

For the last 500 or so, I took Khatz's advice and put the story on the front. To this day, those are the ones I have the hardest time remembering. I was a strong supporter of it before I tried it, but now I recommend that you don't put the story on the front, seriously. It is much better ingrained in your memory if you have to recall it just from the keyword. The relationship becomes much clearer as well so that you're not accidentally recalling the wrong part of your story, I think.

I never look at the story when I review kanji, and if I have to look at the story I mark it as 'failed'. Like someone said: the story isn't stuck to a kanji if you encounter it 'in the wild'. So having to rely on the story is failing it. Whether you put it on the front or the back is whatever works best for you. What is the front and the back anyway? Is the front where you put the kanji? Then I put it on the back. I use the paper flash cards that Heisig advises making in lesson 11 or so of the book. Same layout and stuff that he recommends there.

Thanks for the replies ^^

The way I'm doing it at the moment is:
Front of flash card: Keyword, story in white text (not visible unless highlighted)
so if I can't remember the kanji(either intuitively or by reciting my mnemonic story) I peek at the story, if I can reproduce the kanji after seeing the story, I mark it as difficult so it'll be repeated fairly soon
Then on the back i have all the different information about the kanji, stroke order, reading etc

@koos83, when you encounter a kanji in the wild you encounter a kanji, not a keyword : )

fjolnir Wrote:@koos83, when you encounter a kanji in the wild you encounter a kanji, not a keyword : )

Bingo.

I'd suggest once the cards reach maturity if you have to use the story then mark it as fail instead of hard. That's once the card would next be due in like a month on hard and 2 or 3 months on medium or easy.

Using the story like you plan when it's still young I think will work out ok for you. Although, if you have to repeatedly keep on using the story to pass then perhaps you'd mark that one a fail.

Good luck.

fjolnir: So it's ok to use the story to remember which kanji goes with the keyword, since it will be different 'in the wild' anyway? That seems like cheating. I think it's better to fail a kanji for which you've had to peek at the story, so it comes back sooner, than to mark it as 'passed' and have it not come back for another few weeks. If I've had to peak, it means I don't know it well enough to not have it come back for another few weeks.

Put'em on the front if you like.

Use a small and unobtrusive font. Change the color to a very light grey. Or even white (to match the background), so that you have to actively highlight the area to see it.

I always kept'em where I could access'em and never found it difficult to ignore'em.

I never got the point of putting it in white on the front. If you can't recreate the kanji, you should fail it immediately, and when you turn it you see the story on the back anyway. A lot of people make the mistake with SRS to spend too much time on each card. They can't think of the kanji so they sit and ponder it for a while, even going so far as to let themselves cheat by looking at the story... why? Let the SRS do the job, if you can't do it immediately, fail it until you can.

Tobberoth Wrote:I never got the point of putting it in white on the front. If you can't recreate the kanji, you should fail it immediately, and when you turn it you see the story on the back anyway. A lot of people make the mistake with SRS to spend too much time on each card. They can't think of the kanji so they sit and ponder it for a while, even going so far as to let themselves cheat by looking at the story... why? Let the SRS do the job, if you can't do it immediately, fail it until you can.

Meh I don't necessarily agree with that. I know that sometimes if I think about it for a while I can remember thehout p Kanji and reproduce it witeeking at the story. This doesn't happen to often, but sometimes you have a Kanji that is on the tip of the tongue, so to speak, and you just have to think about it for a bit and it will come to you. Then I mark it as hard and move on. It wasn't a fail because I did recreate it without the story.

And I remember one time for the Kanji for beautiful 美 I couldn't remember it immediately so I highlighted the tail end of my story which read Beautiful sight. That was enough for me to remember the Kanji even though I didn't look at the whole story or see either of the primitives in the part of the story I looked at.

And now beautiful is one of the Kanji that sticks most with me because of that incident.

So I like having the story in white on the front. I don't actually use it very often, and if I need the entire story I mark it a fail, and if I need a small part of the story I'll mark it as hard. But there are a few occasions where I feel having the story on the front has helped my retention. And none where I feel like it hut my retention.

But I'm not done with RTK and I could be mistaken about it. I suppose I'll find out in time whether or not it was a bad idea. But these are my experiences with it up to now.