There's talk on other threads about the best way to do RTK1. Staying on top of your orange stacks always seems pretty high on the agenda.

However, surprisingly for an ALT, I've actually been called into action so I have to do some real work! So for about a week or so I haven't done many reviews at all. Now my oranges are up to nearly 400 I've decided that a month or so off could well be in order.

I'm still going to do a bit of work each day as far as Japanese is concerned but for now, keyword -> kanji review is on hold. I think it will be interesting to see how my reviewing success is effected when I get back into it. Not just that, but there are loads of kanji that I'd still know after even a longer period off and others where the keyword -> kanji relationship is not strong enough in my mind. So taking time off might help me get a better picture of what ones need more work.

Or it could just be an excuse

400 kanji is only a couple of hours reviewing. I'd still try and do a little everyday, even if the total expired number is still increasing day by day (ie. you review fewer than expire that day). This way you'll keep in the habit of reviewing so when you do find you have some more time again it'll be much easier to just extend your sessions that start up again from cold.

Also, the number of kanji you'll have after another month might seem insurmountable and just cause you to put it off even longer. A bad cycle to get into (and yes, I speak from experience. Currently I only have about 300 kanji left to learn and yet after 'taking a week off' three weeks ago I still haven't got back into learning new kanji)

just try ten minutes a day to keep up your fluency...use a stop watch or timer so your mind knows you will get a break soon....

I think Synewave is one of the few exceptions here where taking a longer break might actually make sense. I think he's at a pretty high level of Kanji/japanese profiency compared to most of us at the RtK1-3 level.

It would make sense for him to try to "weed out" which kanji would give him some difficulty at this point.

[ファブリス]

Just make sure to answer "Easy" for all the kanji you remember without much trouble, when you start reviewing again, that way you won't see them for awhile (assuming you've got most cards in the rightmost stack (4+reviews)).

I agree with suffah, if you've been reviewing all RTK1 kanji several times, you can let them expire for a month or two or even more. I've had a long hiatus of reviews around last December, with 1000+ expired cards. Looking into the database, I found out many of them where last reviewed 5-6 months ago. I did forget a small percentage but even then I answered "Yes" to some of them, after spending a minute on the story, instead of restarting the cycle. I think it worked well because once learned with a decent story, it's learned. You're your own judge.

I love this quote,

ファブリス Wrote:once learned with a decent story, it's learned.

I think even with the Leitner system the site uses, you can still get away with brute force memory to a certain extent. Obviously not for all 2000+ characters, but for the say 100-200 (or so) in my case that I find are not forming nice images in my head, when one of these keywords pops up I remember that I can't remember and start racking my brains and often I can get the kanji without having used a proper story. But for these kanji in particular, increasing the time till the next review could be a good thing. In that I hope to be able to weed out then sort out the ones that aren't properly in me 'ead.

If you finished RTK1 a while ago and you're just in maintenance mode, then yeah, you'll be fine taking a month off.
I currently take weekdays off, and most of each weekend, too. If I'm bored, I'll review cards out of the last box, but it's a rare day that I do. The few cards I fail, I let accumulate in the red box. Where I ignore 'em:

Then once every 4-6 weeks, I print out my Failed list and go study them offline for a few days. On a Wednesday, I mark my entire red box "Learned" (man I wish there was a mark all as learned link ^_^). Saturday, I review 'em and they move to the next box. Next weekend, I review the entire stack again and move 'em up. Two weeks later, again.
By gaming the system this way, I only have orange cards expiring out of the last box, except for the occasional big burst of recently (re)learned cards working its way back up, always on the weekend.
And the rest of the week? I'm free to ignore RTK cards.

synewave Wrote:I think even with the Leitner system the site uses, you can still get away with brute force memory to a certain extent.

Due to the fact that there are stories, and in virtually all cases, multiple stories, in fact, for every single kanji on this site, you can memorize the supplied stories by rote and know the kanji by extension. Due to the time investment usually required to make a good, memorable story, I do this a lot, actually, a good deal more often than I should be doing.

Oh, and ziggr, I know that you have been at this for some time, but, damn, that's a beautiful picture.

synewave Wrote:There's talk on other threads about the best way to do RTK1. Staying on top of your orange stacks always seems pretty high on the agenda.

However, surprisingly for an ALT, I've actually been called into action so I have to do some real work! So for about a week or so I haven't done many reviews at all. Now my oranges are up to nearly 400 I've decided that a month or so off could well be in order.

I'm still going to do a bit of work each day as far as Japanese is concerned but for now, keyword -> kanji review is on hold. I think it will be interesting to see how my reviewing success is effected when I get back into it. Not just that, but there are loads of kanji that I'd still know after even a longer period off and others where the keyword -> kanji relationship is not strong enough in my mind. So taking time off might help me get a better picture of what ones need more work.

Or it could just be an excuse

All this sounds like slackers talk to me

ziggr Wrote:The few cards I fail, I let accumulate in the red box.

Ziggr! You should frame that and put it on your wall (maybe get rid of the red stack first . I'm floored, that's one hell of a kanji graph!

ziggr - your idea is genius (probably why I never thought of it!). Although I'll probably do it in reverse...weekends definitely off and just review a few times during the week...once I get my stacks sorted out that is.

I'm not clever, I'm just optimally lazy. ^_^