Just to reiterate: Quitting your RTK deck doesn't mean no longer writing kanji, nor does it mean no longer using the keywords/stories (I maintained the latter as mostly-dissolved-stitches that I used less and less to help learn vocabulary words, but now I have enough Japanese words that I don't even need to do that, and only reference the rare keyword via Rikaichan in passing to recall the story, and that only when I can't immediately make up a story via the definition, which is rare, and even then it's a barebones story because I've mastered the method, which occurred at some point partly through RTK and only became more fine-tuned afterwards). If you're doing individual words as active recall cards like I mostly did for single word cards but now only do occasionally because even that's unnecessary when I'm already doing multimodal learning (which includes incorporating muscle memory/motor processes via 空書, mentally writing, or actual writing), it doesn't even mean no longer doing kanji as active recall, either (likewise with cloze deletion).

In other words, I echo and take one step further concerns about 'writing' by emphasizing motor skills to supplement encoding and facilitate recall regardless of an interest in handwriting, without continuing RTK but instead keeping keywords/stories in mind and maintaining kanji via words and sentences, especially those that are systematically learned for readings post-RTK.

jettyke Wrote:After completing RTK1 I feel very demotivated, before I could study 50-100 kanji a day, but right now I feel like I don´t have any reason to do that.

I want to move on to sentences as fast as possible, but these reviews are killing me, I´m sick of learning kanji for now. In the end I end up not doing any sentences and not reviewing any kanji.

If I quit reviewing kanji and ll will look up the meanings of the kanji I forgot, while I learn sentences...would it make it harder for me? Does anyone have any experience?

I guess I would spend about 2 hours on sentences each day, if I would allow myself to do it...

Here's a suggestion:

Remove all the cards in your RevTK deck (via the Manage Tab).

Go and read authentic Japanese materials (drama subtitles, manga, light novels,
news stories, cooking recipes, whatever, etc.).

Every time you come across a kanji you don't know, write it down.
When you're done reading, add those kanji to RevTK (via the Manage Tab).

Review them.

This way you'll only review kanji that you've encountered in real life.
Since you've finished RTK1, I assume that you have all your stories completed.

This is a really old thread, but @Jarvik:

What do you think that Japanese people do? They do not write every single Kanji every day, or even every week or every month.

Why is it that we, as learners, have to do it every day, but natives don't?

Why not just make the cards well known, practicing for 6months-year and then stopping and just letting exposure do the trick? Japanese people can write Kanji that they haven't written in a whole year (say, for an essay on an obscure topic) without doing SRS.

zachandhobbes Wrote:Japanese people can write Kanji that they haven't written in a whole year (say, for an essay on an obscure topic) without doing SRS.

Actually I wouldn't be so sure about that (if they're not using a computer, that is).

Well, I'd imagine it's similar to how I can write the word "Anaheim" even though I haven't written or typed the word in a whole year.

Or perhaps Pittsburg.

Maybe Cockatoo?

Inalienable.

Darjeeling.

Unfathomable.

Antidisestablishmentarianism.

zachandhobbes Wrote:What do you think that Japanese people do? They do not write every single Kanji every day, or even every week or every month.

Why is it that we, as learners, have to do it every day, but natives don't?

Japanese kids have 15+ years of exposure that we don't. Reviewing RTK1 to the bitter end is just one way of trying to close that gap. It's not absolutely necessary, of course, but imo giving up on Heisig reviews at the earliest available opportunity is a bad idea, both short term and long term.

I stopped reviewing kanji for about 5 months and I regret it. At best I can remember half of them.

I should have done 20 reps per day until they would have settled down.

So what would be the settle down time? A year?

zachandhobbes Wrote:This is a really old thread, but @Jarvik:

What do you think that Japanese people do? They do not write every single Kanji every day, or even every week or every month.

Why is it that we, as learners, have to do it every day, but natives don't?

Why not just make the cards well known, practicing for 6months-year and then stopping and just letting exposure do the trick? Japanese people can write Kanji that they haven't written in a whole year (say, for an essay on an obscure topic) without doing SRS.

I'm first to admit I can't write Kanji very well. I've forgotten. I was a bookworm and can still read better than most collage graduates, but my ability to write Kanji is that of a 3rd grader. I've been abroad for a long time so my case is probably a bit extreme, but I guess it's not just me.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=..._article=1

Natives DO need to write.

From the above article:

Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, says Siok Wai Ting, assistant professor of linguistics at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. "There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic -- we have to memorise, we have to rote learn," she says.

Heh.

harhol Wrote:From the above article:

Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, says Siok Wai Ting, assistant professor of linguistics at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. "There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic -- we have to memorise, we have to rote learn," she says.

Heh.

Heh.

truando Wrote:

harhol Wrote:From the above article:

Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, says Siok Wai Ting, assistant professor of linguistics at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. "There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic -- we have to memorise, we have to rote learn," she says.

Heh.

Heh.

Heh.

Asriel Wrote:

truando Wrote:

harhol Wrote:From the above article:

Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, says Siok Wai Ting, assistant professor of linguistics at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. "There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic -- we have to memorise, we have to rote learn," she says.

Heh.

Heh.

Heh.

Heh.

I was tempted to continue the "Heh." postings, so let me get that out of the way first: "Heh" to Ms. Siok Wai Ting.

As for natives not needing to review, my wife and other Japanese who have lived in the U.S. for a long time have all remarked at one time or another that they are forgetting characters.

Edit: I thought of this after I posted the initial comment. I have had trouble sticking to the reviews when I try to accomplish too much. I always enjoy the process more if I set a minimum goal and accomplish that. If you are currently doing a lot of review, perhaps you should do only that until the number of reviews goes down to a manageable level. For me, I am adding a few kanji per day and then checking the forums. This is really a hobby for me and I enjoy the community as much as learning the characters. So, I'm proceeding more slowly than most people on this site but I'm enjoying it.

I recently started up dojng reviews again and learning kanji after a 6 month break just after finishing RTK1. I figure I had forgotten about 600-700 kanji or so, but it seems now I can do RTK quite easily at about 100 kanji per day. When I was doing RTK1 the first time it was more like 25 per day. I'm at 1400-1500 right now, and we'll see how things are when I'm done. I think this should work with anyone, if they've studied hard and then took a long break and then came back, it should be much easier to redo RTK than before.

Of course not taking a break would be much better, but if you do, it's not the end of the world.

After all the talk I stopped the reviews for like forever right after finishing, and right now I feel that I haven't lost much.

The main point of RTK for me was to be able to remember kanji easily, and with 20K reviews it's definitely more or less achieved. The reviews became too bothersome and I ditched them.

If you are really leaning towards stopping your reviews after finishing, then it'll work out eventually, but I recommend to start doing core2000 hardcore during first 3 months. Then I don't think there will be any problems.
You can still look up the keywords sometimes when you're doing core vocabulary.

The problem with RTK was that It was just so boring that I just stopped doing anything in Japanese because of the big amount of boring reviews.

I stopped doing RTK review about 4/5 months ago. I regret nothing. It was boring and took a lot of time.

Now I only do sentences and have no problems remembering the kanji.

CarolinaCG Wrote:I stopped doing RTK review about 4/5 months ago. I regret nothing. It was boring and took a lot of time.

Now I only do sentences and have no problems remembering the kanji.

Sentences are boring and take a lot of time. Why not try reading?

I quit RTK months ago and do sentences. But simply having RTK, I can break down new kanji I find, and if necessary I can come back to this website and look up the keyword if I've forgotten it. But I can write kanji and remember them easily thanks to simply having gone through RTK. I no longer see the point in continuing RTK reviews, as long as I continue to write kanji regularly in sentence reviews.