There are two great peaks to which I have returned over and over no matter how often I burned out and slid back down them. The first is programming, which I started when I was ten, and which has proved one of my greatest boons. I have never, ever regretted sticking to it the past thirteen years. The second peak I discovered many years later, but somehow feels the same to me -- that if I just stick with it, I will never regret it. And that is (if you hadn't guessed already) the Japanese language.

I have attempted RTK in the past. Thinking perhaps more highly of myself than I ought, I set myself the modest *cough, cough* goal of only 50-100 kanji per day. Maybe you can guess how long that lasted. I managed 400 or so before I never wanted to see a kanji again (thankfully I recovered over the following years). There have been a few short-lived attempts since.

Having attempted the accelerated approach, I have a more modest goal in mind. Inspired by ziggr's Give yourself a Christmas gift: Complete RTKI by Christmas, I have the perfect gift in mind for myself 212 days from now.

Nevertheless, I recognize that there is still danger in this approach. This is a matter of long-term commitment, which will certainly seem less practical two weeks from now than it does today! To that end, I make only the following initial commitment:

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For the next thirty days, which is about how long it takes to establish a habit, I will add and review no more and no less than 10 new kanji per day from RTK. If I miss a day, I have to start all thirty days over. Restarting this task is not critical, so there are no exceptions. My chosen time to begin is 6:00 sharp each morning, without interruption, to be completed before I eat breakfast. After thirty days I am free to adjust my approach or even quit altogether, but not at all before that.
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I will start tomorrow morning.


If you wish to join me in a long-term commitment of this sort, feel free to post your goals and your daily progress here, as I will my own.

-- Daniel

RTK I: Complete on Christmas Day, 2007

I've got a different problem, but with a similar resolve for the solution. I had some time away, when I couldn't review. So, now I have 1500+ expired kanji. Here's the strategy I've assumed: Review all the expired in stack one. Then review as many as I have time for (a time limit of about 20 minutes), in stack 2, or until I have a total of 10 failed kanji. Continue until stacks 1 and 2 have no expired kanji. Then start whittling down stack 3, but I'm not there yet. So far, at least, that means that I won't have 400+ expired kanji to try to review in a single day. Well, I guess I always have 1400+ or so, but I'm just not trying to review all of them in a short interval, and I guess I'll never ever try to do hundreds in a day, to spread out the expirations.

I love it!

You will succeed this time. This time, you know the dangers of stopping (relearning those 400 kanji). You know the rewards of steady, maintainable, progress. You have an achievable deadline. Most importantly...

...you have this site.

I think 'suspend' feature for review system would be handy, though wrong from Leitner system point of view, it would remove psychological load, which I thing is more important factor in such situation.

CharleyGarrett Wrote:Well, I guess I always have 1400+ or so, but I'm just not trying to review all of them in a short interval, and I guess I'll never ever try to do hundreds in a day, to spread out the expirations.

Yeah, while it might look good to clear the orange stacks, doing it all at once just means they're going to come round together again! I keep a float of about 100 orange cards so that when I review I can always do 50 or so cards with the aim of, over time, getting things nicely smoothed out. Also I never add back more than 10 failed cards or new RTK3 cards in one day.

As for long term commitment, go for it!

Call me strange, but I just review what ever needs doing each day. Including newly added kanji that normally works out at around 100-120 kanji. With Fabrice's introduction of randomisation to the card times I just let the system take care of smoothing things out.

I guess I'm just trying to not get in the situation of having too many cards to review in a day :p

Two weeks away with little reviewing and the threat of orange stacks is becoming oppressive. A suspend feature would be nice. One or two more compartments would lighten things up for the power users and wouldn't violate the Leitner principles. Even with everything in the last box, 8 expirations a day does add up.


I'll buy into the pledge. I have to learn at least 25 hanzi a day for the next two months. If I fall below, I have to make them up the next day, and if I finish a day 15 short of my daily goal (including overdue ones), I have to walk through town wearing a tutu [j/k, I hope]. Overages do not roll over, so even if I do 100 today, I'm still due for 25 tomorrow.

And he's off!

I am also for some sort of vacationing suspend function. If i go on a holiday, or have an extended business trip where i cannot access or make time for reviews, having the orange cards stack up during those days can really make returning to it a big pain. It is something i wouldn't want to rely on as a crutch just to put something off, but it would be really helpful for the frequent business trips i make.

Btw, it even isn't that wrong for Leitner system, as cards which fall in orange stacks are not reviewed for extended periods of time anyway.

It could be implemented by adding offset to 'current time'.

Last year around August I was in full flow with RTK1 and got to around frame 600, however I went on a 4 week vacation, and sadly despite my best efforts to take it all with me and do my reviews; putting all frames & stories on my Palm - I didn't have internet access and I couldn't use this great site to stay on top of reviews.

Reviews piled up, memories got cloudy, work got busy, then my wife had our baby ... I let slip for 8 months so all my reviews expired .

Meanwhile I decided I needed some goal, so I set the goal of passing JLPT3 this year. Using Supermemo I've learned all the vocab for JLPT3 and lots more. Kanji's still lacking though, so I'm back with a vengeance on RTK1.

I started it from the beginning to rebuild all the foundations. I'm finding that its quite easy because I'm recalling my old stories - they just needed a refresher. In a few days I'll be where I was at last year.

My goal is not only to finish RTK but also all the readings for JLPT3 by December.

How's it coming along, Terhorst? I've managed to stick to my goal so far, and with the help of Anki, I can see it graphed out in front of me.

Currently on flash card 659. <14 days to reach 1000. Taiwan departure date: July 19 (in 44 days).

JimmySeal Wrote:How's it coming along, Terhorst?

I've managed to stick to my goal as well. I've had a few close calls, like waking up only minutes before 6 (I don't use an alarm), but I've managed to make it every day so far.

A few days ago I moved from Seattle to Cambridge in Massachusetts. I was to meet my partner here. What he didn't tell me, though, was that he had missed Comcast when they first came over, so we didn't have Internet access in our apartment =(

That made it tough (which is why I haven't been updating my post above every day), but I decided it was within the spirit of my commitment to do my new cards offline at the usual time, then do an online review whenever possible.

Comcast will visit again tomorrow, so I won't have to go around wardriving anymore!
<_< >_>

This morning I reviewed up to 300. The cards are still pretty familiar, as I'm still within the 400 or 500 I did the first time I tried RtK. They're not as familiar as the first 200, though, which I added right off the bat with only 13 failed.

I just did Pimsleur II lesson 16 this morning. I'm up to page 62 or so in アンテナ.

Thanks for asking! =)

-- Daniel

Well, I finally realized that I'm not following the Leitner program. I had 1350+ expired kanji, but I had them in box 3 and 4. I would do my expired kanji in box 1 and 2, and then clear out any failed kanji. But more were expiring in 3 and 4, and I was actually adding more to box 3 (and then not reviewing them on schedule). So I "bit the bullet" and failed all of the expired kanji. (Maybe that was extreme, since I might have been able to pass some of them).

But now I'm in a better place (I hope) where I can add a small number into box 1 each day from the failed kanji, and then keep up with the expired kanji, according to the Leitner timing to review them again as they're about to be forgotten.

I hope this works! Wish me luck on getting finally on track.

[ファブリス]

CharleyGarrett Wrote:Well, I finally realized that I'm not following the Leitner program. I had 1350+ expired kanji, but I had them in box 3 and 4. I would do my expired kanji in box 1 and 2, and then clear out any failed kanji. But more were expiring in 3 and 4,

Yeah, a friend told me I should not even allow clicking on the stacks. I didn't agree but on retrospect I think perhaps the link to do all expired kanji combined should be really prominent. Then again... you don't have to clear expired cards as soon as they expire, but you are supposed to clear all of them, eventually; not to completely ignore the expired cards in the higher stacks.

To be precise, the "urgency" of reviewing the expired cards is higher on the 2nd,3rd stacks then the 4th and 5th one.

I do like doing them one stack at a time, but because I was so far behind, I let the "less urgent" stacks slide. No more....!

How's it coming Daniel?

Thanks to Anki (and thanks to vosimura) I can now pronounce 33.3% of the joyo-kanji in Chinese. (I'm not basing my studies on the joyo-kanji, but Anki handily supplies me with that statistic).

Everyone else sticking to a goal out there, keep with it! We're all with you.

JimmySeal Wrote:How's it coming Daniel?

It has been going quite well. Thanks. =)

In a couple days I'll be almost 2/3 of the way through my initial month-long goal. I'm up to frame 380 on the 18th day and pretty soon I'll be passing into unknown territory.

My biggest problem so far has been that I drop by this forum more often than I probably should, to the detriment of some of my other projects. -_-;

But that just indicates to me that I'm keeping my interest at a healthy level. =D

-- Daniel