Okay, so I haven't actually started RtK. But judging from reading several topics, people seem to pace themselves by kanji per day.

I thought, why not keep it simple and tidy by doing a lesson per day? Would there be anything particularly wrong with this? Like maybe a certain lesson has way too many kanji to learn in an hour or two (which is how much I plan to spend each day on RtK alone). Thoughts?

You are not the first person to follow this method. Some people do it, some people don't.
You will realise that people either tend to choose a number of kanji per day which they can digest without their brains melting, or they go for the kill and do 100 or so per day.

It does not really matter which number you choose, as long as you can muster it.
So, there is nothing wrong with your plan. But you will not necessarily gain any benefits, just because you are doing one lesson per day. Some lessons benefit from you doing them all in one sitting (as Heisig so says in his book), and others, you will have a hard time keeping up with your plan. Because a few lessons reach 100 kanji or more.

My advice is, stick with your plan, AS LONG AS IT WORKS for you. If you can do one lesson per day, while keeping your concentration, great. If not, do not be afraid to lower your standards for a couple of lessons. It is no defeat, and this is no race. There is no point in forcing a 150-kanji lesson, if after 50 kanji, your ability to concentrate and focus just blows away.

Good Luck!

Pretty much what bebio said. I attempted the same, but ended up finding that I worked better with a set schedule, because it let me block my time better. I did most of my reviews and studying during a few hour block in the mornings, and going by lesson just made the whole thing too random -- some are dramatically longer than others.

Picking a number worked best for me.

Most people go by kanji per day for consistency. They know they can do X kanji in X time and it keeps you at a certain pace which keeps momentum going.

There's nothing inherently wrong with doing a lesson at a time.

This site's Progress section actually gives you a list of all lessons and amount of kanji each of them contains, so you can check it yourself. The distribution is rather uneven: it can vary from under 20 to 130. Plus don't be surprised if some groups of kanji give your a harder time than others - sometimes you can do dozens without noticing it and then just a couple of kanji gets you stuck for a while.

So I wouldn't really count on 1 lesson a day pace being comfortable or sometimes even doable at all. Still I believe that if you like things simple and tidy, you will find a way to keep them this way. Sometimes you'll want to study to some nice even number, sometimes you'll stop right before some new primitive gets introduced, sometimes you'll be able to finish whole lesson or break a longer one in relatively even parts, sometimes seeing the end of the lesson is near you'll push yourself a bit harder and end up doing more than usual, sometimes you'll want to stop at fewer kanji than usual and choose to get some rest instead of starting new lesson with tired mind, sometimes you'll fly through those kanji, sometimes you'll struggle to add even few of them. I wouldn't worry about it just yet. Start studying and see how it goes for you.

What I would do is set some minimum amount of kanji to add daily and this number should be kept low, I believe (I'd advise 5-10). Usually you'll end up doing more than that but at those rainy days when nothing seems to stick, having low goals can make a real difference. Another thing I personally found tremendously useful was printing a page with all kanji from the book and underlining/highlighting ones you've done after each session. This process gets really addicting and often just one look at that chart makes you want to go and do few more.

Going by lesson simply isn't a good idea. Some lessons are really short, some are ridiculously long. Some are easy, some are hard. Lessons are grouped by similar primitives, so you might think it's good to get them all out of the way at the same time. It isn't, you'll just mix them up.

I think going by kanji a day is pretty stupid too, though I did that for most part. What you SHOULD do is decide a certain amount of time you're willing to spend each day, then spend all that time doing as much as you can. it's more important to do each kanji well than to force tons of kanji in a day and forget all of them.

Tobberoth Wrote:What you SHOULD do is decide a certain amount of time you're willing to spend each day, then spend all that time doing as much as you can. it's more important to do each kanji well than to force tons of kanji in a day and forget all of them.

Adding to that: What you should also do is find that when you're tired or can't focus very well for other reasons, just do less. If you have set an hour for studying kanji and you notice it is getting too hard to focus after 30 minutes, just stop. I myself have days where I can only find the time and energy to review and anything else is too much, so I just don't learn any new ones. What matters is that you get there, perhaps slowly, but definitely surely.

Thank you all very much for your responses. I think I might do a combination: kanji per day within a set amount of time. Maybe something like, at least 15 kanji per day within an hour. If I can do more in that amount of time, then great. If not, then I'll just do the 15 and be done with it. If I'm feeling especially tired that night and can't concentrate at all, I'll just review.

And of course, this is all just from the very beginning; I'll definitely adjust and tweak my plan if I feel that 15 kanji a day isn't cutting it.

So, again, thanks everyone. It's good to know that there is such a responsive community to refer to as I take on something of this magnitude. If anyone else has any more suggestions or thoughts, please post and let me (and everyone else here) know!

You can do a mixture of Lessons, Number of Kanji, and Study Time blocks to find the ideal mix for yourself.

Example, you're doing lessons, but you might split it up over two or three days if it's a big one. You might also do two lessons if they're smaller ones. If you're doing numbers, but see you're near the end of a chapter lesson, you might decide to do a few extra that day just to finish it out. This may even give you the "Master of the Method, not Servant" feeling that keeps reviewing/studying from being a chore.

My advice though is do blocks of kanji (like 25 a day) but count missed and new kanji against that number. What I did that felt like it worked best was if you use RevTK SRS: Review due cards first, Initial review (blue stack) of new cards added day prior, Study missed cards (counts against my 25 per day), Study new cards (whatever of the 25 remains).

What I found was every 25 kanji block seemed to take about even out to about 1 hour of review/study time without getting a huge build up of missed cards. I might add only 10 or 15 or 20 new cards per day because of studying missed cards, but I stopped getting swamped with too many cards or burning up too much time.

I prefer to set weekly targets rather than daily ones. Some days I just can't be bothered, whereas other days I'll be in the zone for hours.

Don't go for a set number of kanji. You will have harder time with it.

Instead, try to limit yourself in a certain range and only end a study session once you've reached the next primitive.

Stopping before the next primitive comes up is usually just as effective as stopping at the end of the lesson, but it gives you much more granular material, that you can easily break up at will.
It's much easier to the brain if you study the whole primitive group at once.

unauthorized Wrote:Stopping before the next primitive comes up is usually just as effective as stopping at the end of the lesson, but it gives you much more granular material, that you can easily break up at will.
It's much easier to the brain if you study the whole primitive group at once.

You beat me I found the above to be the most effective, together with splitting the lessons roughly in groups of around 20 per day, but if the next primitive starts say at 23-24 you can stretch it a bit or stop short and do a bit more next day. Your brain will appreciate it.

spiffyXD Wrote:Okay, so I haven't actually started RtK. But judging from reading several topics, people seem to pace themselves by kanji per day.

I thought, why not keep it simple and tidy by doing a lesson per day? Would there be anything particularly wrong with this? Like maybe a certain lesson has way too many kanji to learn in an hour or two (which is how much I plan to spend each day on RtK alone). Thoughts?

There are already a lot of good replies in this thread, the main being that the kanji/lesson is too inconsistent. What I did, and am doing, was begin with 15 - 20 per day, and very quickly ramp it up to 50 - 60 kanji per day. That allowed me to get into a comfort zone of how much time I spend creating each story, because I think the biggest time sink would be wasting too much time creating a story. There is a fine line between investing time creating a story for each kanji in order to remember it, and wasting time making up elaborate stories for each kanji. I spend no more than a 30 to 45 seconds creating a story, and I am pretty sure I am doing fine (82.8% recall over 14,500 reps, 93% for mature cards), but this took about 500 or so cards of practice getting the method down. In the beginning I definitely took more time to let it sit in, the comfort came with practice.

As everyone else has said, it is less important to aim for a # of cards per day, but rather to maximize your time usage by not wasting too much time per card (even more important than that, keep up with your reviews! you will waste time re-leaning cards later on if you do not get the reviews out of the way). 10-15 seconds per rep, a minute to a minute and a half looking up new cards/primitives/stroke order(yamasa online kanji dictionary). Also, take the kanji in chunks, you do not have to do 40 new kanji in one sitting.. I usually bite them off in chunks of 5 or 10, taking at least a few minutes break between each. Nowadays, I am at #1815, I often times find it hard to stop learning new ones with this chunk method, because it just too easy to learn a chunk of 5 or 10 cards lol

unauthorized Wrote:Don't go for a set number of kanji. You will have harder time with it.

Instead, try to limit yourself in a certain range and only end a study session once you've reached the next primitive.

Stopping before the next primitive comes up is usually just as effective as stopping at the end of the lesson, but it gives you much more granular material, that you can easily break up at will.
It's much easier to the brain if you study the whole primitive group at once.

I disagree. Splitting a primitive group over two sessions gives twice the exposure. Remember, is it better to write a kanji 20 times in a row or 10 times in a row two days in a row? Review >>> Repetition. Learning 20 kanji with a primitive isn't more effective than learning 10, but learning 10 new ones the next day is very effective.

Tobberoth Wrote:I disagree. Splitting a primitive group over two sessions gives twice the exposure. Remember, is it better to write a kanji 20 times in a row or 10 times in a row two days in a row? Review >>> Repetition. Learning 20 kanji with a primitive isn't more effective than learning 10, but learning 10 new ones the next day is very effective.

This is why this question has no definitive answer. Learning process is different from person to person. However, describing our experiences is useful for at least learning the possible ways to try and tackle this task more efficiently.

I also do the chunks: I do about 10 cards (sometimes a bit more or less if I see there is a new primitive or the end of a lesson coming up) and then first review them (I make handmade paper flash cards). Then I study 10 more, etc etc, until I feel I've done enough or until the end of the lesson or something. Then I go through all the cards again in a random order, writing them down. Then I add them to the SRS on this site and I wait a few hours before reviewing them for the first time on here.
The next day I review them again with the paper flashcards and do my regular reviews on here, and the day after that is my last review with the paper cards; if I know them then, I'll put them away.

I do find I need the paper flashcards to know the kanji better, but that's merely to get a 90% retention rate. If I don't use the paper flashcards I remember around 80%, which is also good, but I prefer using the paper ones as well. It also gets me into a good mode to start new kanji, by first reviewing what I learnt the day before.

I went from 15-45 a day depending on how motivated I felt that day. I have finished RthK 1 about 6 months ago but I still review them every other day. Now I am doing RthK 3, adding like 5 new ones whenever I am up for it. I have no set deadline for that one. Like the above posts, just do what you feel you can do then work with it and if you can't do that then go a different route.

I usually do one or two lessons a day (depending on the length of the lessons themselves).

Doing 1 or 2 lessons a day is a stupid idea doomed to fail. Check the progress chart on this site and see for yourself, the lessons vary *WAY* too much for that to be realistic. The shortest lesson contains a whoppin' 6 kanji, bit of a waste of the day to stop there tbh...

The longest one is 130, gl doing that in a day

Besides, its not just the amount of work adding new kanji a day that affects your total time spent studying. Adding 130 in one day will not only make that day suck, but the next week or so will be filled with insane numbers of reviews all of a sudden. Therefore its really best to keep a steady pace of kanji added per day, to stop driving you insane (RTK is already quite the sanity check, no need to make it harder for yourself )

Rekkusu "(RTK is already quite the sanity check, no need to make it harder for yourself )"

Yeah, After I commited to doing this I realized I had "checked" my sanity at the door, when the doctor checked my sanity he found that my sanity was indeed being checked by RTK so I checked into using an SRS and realized that I could check my progress but still when I checked my sanity was still in check so now I get a check from the government because I checked into learning kanji... just clowning

I'm doing RTK over for a second time.

What I did was:
Erase my entire deck
Added 1000 cards back and did the review until I finished all cards
When I was done, I had all the failed cards for the first 1000 kanji
Reviewed all these failed cards once

This worked very well for me, since I knew many of the cards very well already.

For the next 1000 cards, I made a plan to do a minimum of 20 cards per day.
I added 20 cards at a time (purposed failed all of them on the first quiz so that they
showed up in my failed list)

From them on I kept adding 20 cards at a time and reviewing as necessary.

For me, what works best is just not setting any time limits. 20 cards is the minimum, but
I just keep going until I felt tired (or just don't feel like reviewing anymore).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that for me reviewing became much more enjoyable
when I stopped looking at my clock and just doing them until I felt like stopping with any concrete plan.

When you don't have to concentrate on things like "number of cards per day" or "number of minutes to review each day", it's easier to get in the zone and when you're
in the zone reviews just fly by without realizing it.

For me that's the best setup. On average, I spend no more than an hour per day on reviews, but that's not ever part of my plan. I just go with the flow.

Right now, I just read 1700 and i found that 40 cards per day is pretty easy for me now. Since I finished the first time, I already had stories for most kanji. But now I'm focusing on having good stories for each kanji (and often throw out bad stories without feeling any kind of regret).

Anyway, I would say to just find what works best for you.

Really, the most important thing is to all make forward progress no matter how
slow the pace. Just constantly strive to be a little bit better than yesterday and you'll be ok. The best advice is could give you is to Only do cards until you feel stopping. Don't drag on to the end of lesson just because you "have to complete the lesson" or because "there's 10 minutes left for my reviews" .
Quality is more important than quantity. And also don't be afraid to look at stories that aren't top-rated. Many of the stories I use aren't even in the top 10.

So I should be done around April 1st or 2nd (right around the time the iPad comes out :-)

I plan to move my whole manga and computer book collection to my iPad and use it to read things 24/7. Right now my main interests are manga, light novels, and cooking books in Japanese (I'm taking Japanese cooking classes now and everything is in Japanese. So anything I learn from cookbooks or classroom recipes are being reinforced in class).

Really can't wait to finish RTK again soon.

chamcham Wrote:I'm doing RTK over for a second time.

What I did was:
Erase my entire deck
Added 1000 cards back and did the review until I finished all cards
When I was done, I had all the failed cards for the first 1000 kanji
Reviewed all these failed cards once

This worked very well for me, since I knew many of the cards very well already.

For the next 1000 cards, I made a plan to do a minimum of 20 cards per day.
I added 20 cards at a time (purposed failed all of them on the first quiz so that they
showed up in my failed list)

From them on I kept adding 20 cards at a time and reviewing as necessary.

For me, what works best is just not setting any time limits. 20 cards is the minimum, but
I just keep going until I felt tired (or just don't feel like reviewing anymore).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that for me reviewing became much more enjoyable
when I stopped looking at my clock and just doing them until I felt like stopping with any concrete plan.

When you don't have to concentrate on things like "number of cards per day" or "number of minutes to review each day", it's easier to get in the zone and when you're
in the zone reviews just fly by without realizing it.

For me that's the best setup. On average, I spend no more than an hour per day on reviews, but that's not ever part of my plan. I just go with the flow.

Right now, I just read 1700 and i found that 40 cards per day is pretty easy for me now. Since I finished the first time, I already had stories for most kanji. But now I'm focusing on having good stories for each kanji (and often throw out bad stories without feeling any kind of regret).

Anyway, I would say to just find what works best for you.

Really, the most important thing is to all make forward progress no matter how
slow the pace. Just constantly strive to be a little bit better than yesterday and you'll be ok. The best advice is could give you is to Only do cards until you feel stopping. Don't drag on to the end of lesson just because you "have to complete the lesson" or because "there's 10 minutes left for my reviews" .
Quality is more important than quantity. And also don't be afraid to look at stories that aren't top-rated. Many of the stories I use aren't even in the top 10.

So I should be done around April 1st or 2nd (right around the time the iPad comes out :-)

I plan to move my whole manga and computer book collection to my iPad and use it to read things 24/7. Right now my main interests are manga, light novels, and cooking books in Japanese (I'm taking Japanese cooking classes now and everything is in Japanese. So anything I learn from cookbooks or classroom recipes are being reinforced in class).

Really can't wait to finish RTK again soon.

I was thinking of doing RTK1+3 again. Just to solidify all the kanji i forget occasional. Good thing is though, it would only take me a month to do up to 3007 without much effort, since I can remember a lot of the kanji. I was thinking of doing more kanji even after 3007. There was a spreadsheet with an additional 3000 characters. Only reason why i am doing this, continuing more kanji, is because i plan to go into chinese afterwords. And having all those kanji meanings will help me out. It won't really feel like work because I'm only doing 20 a day. So i would only need small amount of time, like 15mins or so.

ta12121 Wrote:I was thinking of doing RTK1+3 again. Just to solidify all the kanji i forget occasional. Good thing is though, it would only take me a month to do up to 3007 without much effort, since I can remember a lot of the kanji. I was thinking of doing more kanji even after 3007. There was a spreadsheet with an additional 3000 characters. Only reason why i am doing this, continuing more kanji, is because i plan to go into chinese afterwords. And having all those kanji meanings will help me out. It won't really feel like work because I'm only doing 20 a day. So i would only need small amount of time, like 15mins or so.

Even if you haven't faithfully studied RTK for years, it goes by really fast the second time around. Just erase all your cards, review all of them, and you're left with all the failed cards.

So now you only have to study the cards you don't remember.
A lot less work.

The funny thing is I decided to just go through everything anyway.

I had a lot of stories that just didn't work. And sometimes new stories would pop up in
my head the 2nd time around and make kanji easier to remember. Also, you'll find a lot of people that create new primitive meanings for those that didn't work so well.

For example, "X-box" instead of "ward".

The Level 1 exam of the Kanji Kentei Shiken tests 6000 kanji. So if you're into taking tests, maybe you can use that to motivate your study of additional kanji. There are complete Google spreadsheets that list the Heisig and non-Heisig kanji for the Kanken exam.

Anyway, good luck with your studies.

chamcham Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I was thinking of doing RTK1+3 again. Just to solidify all the kanji i forget occasional. Good thing is though, it would only take me a month to do up to 3007 without much effort, since I can remember a lot of the kanji. I was thinking of doing more kanji even after 3007. There was a spreadsheet with an additional 3000 characters. Only reason why i am doing this, continuing more kanji, is because i plan to go into chinese afterwords. And having all those kanji meanings will help me out. It won't really feel like work because I'm only doing 20 a day. So i would only need small amount of time, like 15mins or so.

Even if you haven't faithfully studied RTK for years, it goes by really fast the second time around. Just erase all your cards, review all of them, and you're left with all the failed cards.

So now you only have to study the cards you don't remember.
A lot less work.

The funny thing is I decided to just go through everything anyway.

I had a lot of stories that just didn't work. And sometimes new stories would pop up in
my head the 2nd time around and make kanji easier to remember. Also, you'll find a lot of people that create new primitive meanings for those that didn't work so well.

For example, "X-box" instead of "ward".

The Level 1 exam of the Kanji Kentei Shiken tests 6000 kanji. So if you're into taking tests, maybe you can use that to motivate your study of additional kanji. There are complete Google spreadsheets that list the Heisig and non-Heisig kanji for the Kanken exam.

Anyway, good luck with your studies.

Sweet. You're exactly right. I am interested in the kanji kentai test. Tests up to 6000 kanji.

That makes prefect sense, just delete the other deck and just do it over again and just fail all the cards you don't know and just do them. So i think this should only take 1-2 weeks at best. Once that's done i can add a steady pass of 30-40/day and before i know it i'll be at 6000+ kanji in a 2-3 months time. It all depends actually. Some days i might just do more and some days might not do much expect reviews.