Lurker here. I've been trying to figure out how you guys manage the recall rates some of you quote. I don't know if anyone can help, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm really bad at this.

I finished the book in a few months, and I've done over 1,500 review sessions, but my recall rate never got that high. My failures stacked up, and I got to the point where reviews were taking too long each day, and I fell out of reviewing. Coming back to it now, I'm starting over. I took all the kanji out and am adding them back in slowly (I forgot some of the primitives).

I've added back 650 kanji, and my last review was a less than stellar 65% correct. I think my biggest problem is that I can't keep the words straight. I'm confusing keywords (such as briar and thorn, canopy and curtain), and story details too (such as not remembering if the animal in the story is a pig or a turkey). Therefore, I remember the wrong story, or I remember the story with some incorrect details. It's really frustrating.

For what it's worth, I do spend time trying to carefully picture the images when studying, and I'm very creatively inclined in daily life, so it's not like I don't have a vivid imagination.

Just out of curiosity, how many cards are you adding each day? Maybe you are just trying to add them too quickly if you end up getting overwhelmed by your reviews.

igomadness Wrote:Just out of curiosity, how many cards are you adding each day?

50.

Personally.... it may be a little early, but I think they would stick better if you started learning Japanese sentences using the kanji itself. If you learn a Japanese sentence using the word "turkey", such as "Turkeys lay eggs," you're very unlikely to get it confused with "pig" (unless it's some biologically-engineered egg laying pig).

Seems a little high to me, But i suppose possible if you put in the time to keep up on the reviews.

I think honestly, you shouldn't worry so much about the 65 percent failure rate as long as you take the time to restudy, maybe tweak your stories a little bit so that you can avoid whatever confusion you keep running into.

You will get there eventually if you can keep the reviews from piling up. I think the real danger is when you leave a failed card for too long you forget it and have to spend a lot of extra work on it.

mirina Wrote:Personally.... it may be a little early, but I think they would stick better if you started learning Japanese sentences using the kanji itself. If you learn a Japanese sentence using the word "turkey", such as "Turkeys lay eggs," you're very unlikely to get it confused with "pig" (unless it's some biologically-engineered egg laying pig).

It may be a good idea. I'm already semi-functional in conversational Japanese. I'd have to run my stories by a native speaker so I don't make mistakes, though.

Try adding half that.

And by the way, so that you know what I am talking about when I say, tweak your stories. Ill give an example.

I was repeatedly mixing up plot and plan. Similar english meanings, both start with the letter P, you can see how they could get mixed up.

I had two stories, two good stories, I had no problem writing either of the two kanji. But again, always mixed them up. That is until I modified one of the stories.

Plan - I thought of the A-Team, where hannibal always said "I love it when a plan comes together" And I just went and Inserted Hannibal into my story for plan, which was just relaxing in a hammoc up in a tree. He fit in nicely, reclning, smoking a cigar...

As soon as I did that, absolutely no problem with those two.

So maybe when you get mix-up situations like that, You need to sit down, and look at the two names/stories and figure out an additional way to separate them.

igomadness Wrote:You will get there eventually if you can keep the reviews from piling up. I think the real danger is when you leave a failed card for too long you forget it and have to spend a lot of extra work on it.

Yeah, I shouldn't have put off reviewing failed cards, or stopped with my reviews. Now I'm trying to review failed cards immediately after.

Have you tried adding Japanese keywords to the questions? I think that makes it much easier if you already know some spoken Japanese. Also, since you're in Japan, you're probably running across many of these kanji in everyday situations, even if it's just in the names of train stations. For me, "bamboo grass" doesn't mean much, but adding ささ to the question instantly brings up a fuzzy mental image of the signs at the nearby station Sasadzuka and from there it's easy to recall the primitives to write that kanji. I also found that "briar" and "thorn" were tricky for me in English, but in Japanese there's no way I'd mix up いばら and さす.

I haven't heard anyone say this yet, but a certain failure rate is a good thing! If you're getting 100% all the time, that means you are wasting a lot of your time. I've heard people say their sweet spots are anywhere from 70% to 95%, with most being 70-80%. Since you're just below that line, you're probably trying to learn just a little too much each day. Take it down just a bit and you'll probably hit the sweet spot.

In any case, don't get too hung up over whatever your rate happens to be, if you're just confusing keyword and Kanji. As has been written above, try using confusable Kanji in real Japanese - the more times and the more different contexts you see a word in, the more likely it is to seep into long term memory. I believe that as far as spoken languages are concerned, you need to be exposed to any given word 20 times on average, in different contexts, for it to stick permanently. Heisig and Anki do not give you that many contexts.

At the end of the day, Heisig meanings aren't really that important, because no Japanese reads "夏恋" as "summer romance" - they can't, and use the Japanese reading (obviously).

As far as I'm concerned, Heisig's real charm is getting familiar with Chinese characters - you'll learn them when you start reading Japanese proper. 65% is not a bad rate. Are you able to recognise your mistakes as soon as you see the kanji when reviewing?

Try also adding some images to your reviews - makes them more fun, and somehow makes them more distinct in your mind (works for me, anyway) - you're then utilising different senses, and are adding in extra context.

I often mix up words too (like chastise and rebuke and there's another one of those), but I try not to put too much value on that. I'm sure once I finish the book and it's merely reviewing I'll become more familiar with them and learn them. And, like donjorge22 said: you really learn their meanings once you start encountering them in actual Japanese texts.

Ok, good suggestions everyone. For a lot of the kanji I do recognize where I went wrong in writing it after I see the card. There are some that I still don't recognize even when I see the card, so I try to focus on those especially.

As for Japanese keywords, do you add that along with the English word, or totally replace it? I'm working my way through Read the Kanji, too, and I think the Heisig keywords make it easier to remember the kanji compounds.

Also, how well should I know the kanji/keyword before replacing it? There some cards I can't even look at without reading them in Japanese, so I don't even try to remember the Heisig word for them. On the other hand, some of the rarer kanji I hardly ever see, much less associate with anything.

Just add Japanese keywords, replacing is unnecessary.