Asriel Wrote:"And yet, phone numbers I have to dial on a regular basis find their way into my head without my ever trying to learn them at all..."

And yet, kanji that I write on a regular basis find a way into my head without ever trying to learn them at all

The difference is that you're dialing the numbers all the time. In this case, you're simply copying down the kanji, and not doing any effort. I look at my own phone number all the time, and I have no idea what it is every time I have to write it down (hotel reservations etc)

Exactly. Dialing a number is still a test of memory. You try to remember the number, you remember it and dial it. If you dial a number once a month and look it up each time, chances are high you will not remember it without looking it up later. And that would be once a month, with an SRS it quickly gets spaced years into the future.

But, if you actually read the modification I've made to it, I'm still actually using the component/primitive parts of the kanji and using a logical structure to tie it all together. Also, with the SRS, you are getting practice doing them on a regular basis. But, its my experiment, and we'll see. As I've said, if it doesn't work, I've lost a couple weeks and gotten some practice at recognition. That's an acceptable risk for me, to do an experiment that might potentially make learning these much more enjoyable for me. Also, I plan to write out most of my SRS sentence reps for a while when I've moved into that stage of learning which can only reinforce the writing aspect, and like other people have said before me, this whole process is really just about creating a mental hook so that when you learn readings/words there's a place for the kanji already set up in your mind. That part I am definitely getting from this method.

Also, I grade everything hard, so that years into the future thing happens much more slowly anyways

I have no problem with experimenting, and what doesn't work for me may work for you. I've experimented a whole lot with a lot of things. Just today, in fact, I reorganized (revamped, almost) may entire Anki setup.

If it works for you, cheers.
I, personally, like the difficulty of not knowing something at first, and having it become easy as time goes on. It makes me feel like something, somewhere, is progressing.

kendo99 Wrote:Also, I grade everything hard, so that years into the future thing happens much more slowly anyways

Have you realized how slow this is? Even if you never miss a single card, by the end of 6 months your cards will still have an interval of 40 days (initial interval: 4 days; rate of growth: 1.3 (anki's minimum)). Even adding as few as 20 cards/day, by the end of 6 months you'll have to review 700 cards daily (85% success rate; failure multiplier: 0.1 (anki's suggestion)) and almost 1200 cards daily another 6 months later.

Ouch, no I hadn't worked the math out...I add 30-50 cards a day...<thinks>

Edit: Started reviewing, mostly choosing the middle if I could write it and give the meaning without looking back up at the card a second time, hard if I have to look again or if I start to make a mistake and correct myself, super easy stuff that I could do in my sleep gets the easiest. This should help keep that clustering effect from happening.

Asriel Wrote:"And yet, phone numbers I have to dial on a regular basis find their way into my head without my ever trying to learn them at all..."

And yet, kanji that I write on a regular basis find a way into my head without ever trying to learn them at all

The difference is that you're dialing the numbers all the time. In this case, you're simply copying down the kanji, and not doing any effort. I look at my own phone number all the time, and I have no idea what it is every time I have to write it down (hotel reservations etc)

The first two sentences in your last paragraph there, that's your problem. That's why his method might not work for you. You have to be using the kanji, not JUST when you are SRSing. When I journal or take notes for school, if I'm going to write a word and I know the RTK keyword for it I write the kanji instead of the English word. And by doing that I write it on a regular basis. The other thing you have to be doing is exposing yourself to the kanji outside of the SRS. Read Japanese books, even if you cant understand them. Why? Because it gives you exposure to the language. I read stuff in Japanese and have no idea what it says, but I skim it and when I see a kanji that I know I recall the keyword for it. By writing the kanji when you can and by "reading" as much Japanese as you can, you write it and are exposed to it on a regular basis.

I don't think how you're SRSing is the issue, so much as how much exposure you're getting...

Kendo, I hope the long term results are awesome for you! Keep it up and good luck!

Angeldust

Angeldust, thank you for explaining what I was trying to say...I do that to, read through manga just skimming for kanji I recognize and words I know, randomly writing them in place of keywords, etc. I'm literally immersed 22-24 hours a day to a greater or lesser extent. I pause the anime I watch to look at the kanji on signs, etc. My re-inforcement is the immersion environment I've created for myself. Good luck to you too

Hi, When reviewing the Kanji is it possible to see the story as well as the keyword on the front of the card?

ta12121 Wrote:Next year I plan to incorporate SRSing into my studies. It can help save me time in memorizing info.

I´m planning on doing that also, I plan to start in the beginning of summer, so that I can get used to it, before school starts.

Please write then about how it´ll go and what new things you will get to know. Unfortunately the phenomenon of using SRS not as a language learning tool is still new.

jettyke Wrote:Unfortunately the phenomenon of using SRS not as a language learning tool is still new.

Actually it's not. ;p

After reading the posts above I think I'm going to give this method a shot. It seems like it would make the reviews easier, quicker, and (hopefully) more fun. I finished RTK with the Heisig method around August of last year. I kept up with my reviews diligently for a couple months. I found that, even after doing all the kanji and keeping up with my reviews, my problem was that I could look at a kanji pick it apart into the primitives and be stuck trying to figure out what the primitives meant together (ie. what story they triggered to get to the keyword).

This was really depressing as I had put in a lot of time and sweat into getting through the book only to not be able to use it. I could go from the keyword to the kanji with no problem, but the other way around was torture. I stopped doing them about four months ago, and am finding that I'm losing many many kanji. I'm hoping by working the other way around I'll be able to more readily recognize the kanji when I see them. I'm going to start over from kanji number one and work through them all. I'm hoping that the production of the kanji via grammar/sentence/vocab cards will make up for the lack of the other way around. After trying this method out with the first 100 kanji I think it'll make the difference I'm looking for. We'll have to wait and see I guess. Cheers!

I've just about finished RTK using this method now, along with the modification I proposed here :
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ment-37226

And I'm very satisfied with it.

Awesome! Good to know that someone else has had some success with this.

jettyke Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Next year I plan to incorporate SRSing into my studies. It can help save me time in memorizing info.

I´m planning on doing that also, I plan to start in the beginning of summer, so that I can get used to it, before school starts.

Please write then about how it´ll go and what new things you will get to know. Unfortunately the phenomenon of using SRS not as a language learning tool is still new.

No problem I've been reading this person's blog.

http://study-shack.com/table-of-contents

He gives helpful tips for srs in general+science-type courses.

So, I finished and have uploaded my Lazy Kanji + Mod deck to anki as a shared deck, which includes the modification to it that I described here:
http://bit.ly/a0qZ0F

A few of the sentences will be somewhat idiosyncratic to my strange sense of humor, quirks, etc but most of them are fairly generic and should work for anybody.

kendo99 Wrote:So, I finished and have uploaded my Lazy Kanji + Mod deck to anki as a shared deck, which includes the modification to it that I described here:
http://bit.ly/a0qZ0F

A few of the sentences will be somewhat idiosyncratic to my strange sense of humor, quirks, etc but most of them are fairly generic and should work for anybody.

You can't do this!! HEISIG SAYS SO.

I can learn anything I want any way I want because I'm awesome!

I wrote up a blog post better explaining how i use this method:
http://threepoundsflax.org/lazy-kanji-mo...een-up-to/