Hi all,

I started RTK1 back in January, and my kanji count is currently 876. Being a busy college student, I have little time to spend on kanji each week, and eventually I just stopped adding new cards altogether and just focused on reviewing. This week, I did my reviews to find that my recall rate was only thirty-two percent. THIRTY-TWO PERCENT. This is coming from someone who used to consistently get 80-90% correct. I've found that recently, my recall rate has been dropping - and, moreover, I'm enjoying it a lot less, to the point where reviews have become a chore that I'm almost dreading each week (I used to review daily, but I eventually quit that, too). Kanji used to be fun for me, and now it's just not anymore.

I'm trying out using Japanese keywords in addition to English, but I'm not really convinced that it'll help. The main problem is that the stories just aren't sticking, and it takes me a long time and much effort to recall each one, where it should just be instantaneous. Am I doing something wrong?

I'm thinking of going back to the textbook-and-classroom method and giving up on self-study altogether. I don't believe Khatzumoto for a second when he says classes don't work; you just need to find a class that meets every day with a good teacher who immerses you in the language. (Sadly, my current college schedule doesn't allow time for a Japanese course.) Back in high school when I was taking classes, I felt like I could breathe Japanese. Now, it feels like I'm trying to swim through molasses.

Thanks for listening to my frustrations,

Mereさん

classes do suck though man! Don't worry just joking around with that. I think for you're current stage your probably not seeing how it will help you out in the long run. Speaking from experience it helps a lot in the beginning when you don't know anything.

RTK will help you out when you reach the sentence phase, basically meaning your learning from real material, real japanese. As for the recall rate, don't worry about that all too much. As it tends to go down quite substantially at times, but it will steadily increase. And that's what you want. Some kanji are bound not to stick into memory, as it's harder to visualize.

As for classes vs self-study, they both have there advantages and disadvantages
I know for self-study you can get to a high level of reading/understanding, while classes you're spoken japanese will be quite solid once your done.

RTK enables you to know the meanings/writings. So when you let's say try to decode a sentence, you'll know the meanings. So you can break down the kanji easier and know how the sentence functions/understanding it. Not knowing the meanings or writings of the kanji themselves just creates more work for you in the long-haul. It makes your life easier actually.

As for the recall rate, don't worry it always goes up and down. Due to some kanji being difficult and some being easier to remember.

I recommend trying to make it more fun, personally I love kanji(nowadays). I know how you feel though, in the beginning I kinda dreaded kanji and learning it. But without kanji I wouldn't have been able to get to a good level of Japanese. Nowadays I'm personally learning more kanji. Past the 3007 of the rtk books. (Because I plan to go to mandarin after japanese.)

A lot of your stories aren't going to have instantaneous recall. At least that's my experience. Some do, some don't. Some do sometimes, and not other times. Sometimes I have a big failing streak, and sometimes I get all my reviews correct.
Also a problem might be that you have been neglecting your reviews, even if you have been reviewing. Let me try to explain that. Once I had finished RTK for a while, I started getting tired of the reviews. I began "cheating" a little. Sometimes I wouldn't know a kanji, but I would tell myself "well, I really knew that one, I'll just mark it correct". Or sometimes I would quickly guess at a kanji without thinking through the story. Even when I got it correct, I wasn't letting myself really remember the story and keep it fresh in my mind. Over time all these little things began adding up, and I got to the point where I was failing most of the kanji.
You need to make sure you are correctly thinking through your story each time, whether you know it or not. Also, it probably helps to do it every day, or even twice a day. At least that's my opinion.

meredithcat Wrote:Hi all,
I started RTK1 back in January, and my kanji count is currently 876. Being a busy college student, I have little time to spend on kanji each week, and eventually I just stopped adding new cards altogether and just focused on reviewing.

Yeh i always found it hard to find time - too busy during the day, then too tired in the evening. In the end i took to getting up an hour earlier every morning, and doing my reviews/new kanji then. Great start to the day, felt very productive.

meredithcat Wrote:This week, I did my reviews to find that my recall rate was only thirty-two percent. THIRTY-TWO PERCENT. This is coming from someone who used to consistently get 80-90% correct. I've found that recently, my recall rate has been dropping - and, moreover, I'm enjoying it a lot less, to the point where reviews have become a chore that I'm almost dreading each week (I used to review daily, but I eventually quit that, too). Kanji used to be fun for me, and now it's just not anymore.

yeh i used to have a bad day once in a while, with recall around 20-30% usually when i was hungover. Thing is, consistancy is the key; do your reviews *every day*, otherwise they'll stack up and you'll put it off more and more.
Also yes it starts to get tedious around the half way mark, and the last quarter was pure pain. But it's worth sticking with, as the benefits are so great.

meredithcat Wrote:The main problem is that the stories just aren't sticking, and it takes me a long time and much effort to recall each one, where it should just be instantaneous. Am I doing something wrong?

are you making up your own stories or using the ones on this site? the former will stick more usually. just close your eyes after seeing the primitives and keyword - whats the first thing that comes into your head, no matter how stupid?

meredithcat Wrote:I'm thinking of going back to the textbook-and-classroom method and giving up on self-study altogether. I don't believe Khatzumoto for a second when he says classes don't work; you just need to find a class that meets every day with a good teacher who immerses you in the language. (Sadly, my current college schedule doesn't allow time for a Japanese course.) Back in high school when I was taking classes, I felt like I could breathe Japanese. Now, it feels like I'm trying to swim through molasses.

'Remembering the kanji' has nothing to do with actually learning Japanese - it's just about learning to recognise and write chinese characters. I took a class at the same time as i was doing the book, i really don't think there's an issue doing both simultaneously.

I agree with aphasiac, make up your own stories they stick waaay better. I was using the stories on here, but I kept forgetting them. Once I started doingmy own and writing them down on paper, I started remembering things more.
The other thing could be that your stories aren't "lively" enough. I found this paragraph from Khatz from this blog post: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ng-burnout helpful:
"2. Put the fun back in it. Do your kanji stories rhyme? Are they violent and funny and full of potty humor and screaming and sassiness? If not, then are you TRYING to bore yourself? Because you might as well be. Don’t think of 女 just as “a pictograph of a woman”, think of it as a woman with a HUUUGE bust sticking out to the left. Don’t think of 晶 as just being “brilliant”, think of a character from Dragon Ball Z making a chi-bomb with the power of three suns (日) and screaming “KAME HAME HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”. Don’t think of 人 in 倫 as “person”, think of it as Oprah, or Bruce Lee, or Eric Cartman."

Make them as ridiculously "colorful" as possible. It soooo helps.
I hope things get better for you. =)

(Sorry if the kanji don't show up. My mom's comp doesn't have Japanese support. I don't know if that effects copy and pasting...)

One thing that quickly solved my recall problem is:

1. Look at the keyword ONLY
2. What's the first image that pops into your head?
3. Look at the primitives and construct a story by inserting the primitives into the image in 2.

This may or may not help you. Try to troubleshoot your recall problem. Where in the recall process are you having that problem. Remember recalling is a number of steps and different people have trouble at different parts of it.

Also I highly recommend you keep moving forward. It's going to very demotivating to sit still while still doing lots of work. Set a number and add that amount of kanji per day. Check when you will finish at the rate and push toward it.

I would forget the Japanese keywords for now. that is just putting extra work into a task that you already don't enjoy very much. Just stick to the English keyword and when you are done, move on to the Japanese keyword.

Secondly, go do the formal class. if that is what it is going to take for you to study Japanese regularly do it.

If you want to learn Japanese you need to finish this book. Well, that's a bit of a lie, you don't have to finish this book. But just tell yourself that the only way to learn Japanese is to finish this book first. Yes, its boring, but just do it. JUST DO IT RIGHT NOW. JUST DO IT. NOW

Courage wolf helped me...

Seriously, all good advice above. Especially aphasiac's!

And Angeldust's...

I love courage wolf.

You have time to spend doing kanji. Seriously, you do. Anyone on any schedule, unless you're a prisoner or a football player in training camp or something, should be able to cram about 50 a day. Just manage your time a little bit better.

Courage wolf looks like a cool choice for an avatar also. Not as cool as Techno Viking, but pretty cool.

courage wolf is cool.

Hi Meredithcat

In my experience recently learned kanji are easily forgotten. Only when they progress into the higher boxes do they begin to settle into long term memory. For me that would be box 5 or above. You should try to keep up daily reviews otherwise the Leitner SRS isn’t being given a chance to do its job.

I used to spend an average of 10 minutes per new story (incl. an initial review which I tried to do the same day or at least within 24 hours). I would try and invent a story of my own but if I couldn’t, I could usually find a good shared story. I never found that my own stories stuck better than borrowed ones. If a story is going to work, it will work regardless. If you are very busy, it’s probably better to prioritise daily reviews - even if it means learning fewer new ones each day. Only 6 new kanji per day equates to over 2000 in one year!

Do you always write out the kanji each time during reviews? I think that is a good idea. As you learn more kanji, some failures will inevitably be due to cross interference between confusingly similar keywords e.g. “guard”, “safeguard” and “protect” but don’t get frustrated with them. Kanji with similar meanings naturally result in similar English keywords. Although this may result in failed review cards, it doesn’t imply a failure when seeing a kanji “in the wild” as long as you get the broad meaning.

After a review session, I always look at the review summary and carefully check the stories of any cards which have had lots of failures. Give a new story a chance to work but if it fails often, don’t be afraid to either tweek it ditch it for a new one. The strange thing is, when I ditch a story which isn’t working, I usually find I can suddenly remember it. It’s almost as if the old story, realising it is about to be discarded, suddenly starts to perform!

I think it's normal to be unable to recall kanji instantly, especially if they are in lower boxes. For me, as kanji become very familiar and recall becomes faster, the story fades and only the keyword and primitive story elements remain. Once you start reading, frequently encountered kanji become very easy to review - recall becomes automatic. RTK and RevTK is like having stabiliser wheels while learning to ride a bike. Someone else on this forum described it as allowing you to simultaneously juggle (hold in memory) several thousand kanji without forgetting them. It places you on a par with a Chinese learner of Japanese who is familiar with the kanji but doesn’t know the readings. It requires a lot of work and persistence to get there but in the end it makes the whole process of acquiring Japanese more efficient and easier. I finished RTK3 about a month ago. I still learn the occasional new kanji (for non-RTK kanji I put the story into RevTK but use Anki for review). My daily reviews average about 60 cards - that number has been falling but I don’t know what number it will bottom out at. I normally average 90% pass rate but then I’m no longer adding new cards so I’m only reviewing cards I’m increasingly familiar with. When I was regularly adding new cards my pass rate averaged 80% but could be under 60% if I was very tired. As I become more familiar with the kanji through reading input, I envision a time when I’ll be able to stop RevTK reviews altogether.

One final note. I have some limited experience of teaching English in Japan. I found the best students exposed themselves to a lot of English outside of the class - watching the news, dramas, surfing the net in English etc. So by all means, go to a class but try and keep up self study. For the Japanese language classes I attended as a student, the best aspects were the fun of socialising with class mates, having a knowledgeable teacher to provide answers to questions and the discipline of a structured study plan.

I rambled a lot. I am still a long way from Japanese proficiency but I have no regrets about persisting with RTK and RevTk.