Hi people,

I occasionally get a fright that maybe I'm doing something wrong. I have never had a review without doing mistakes (excluding the ones with just added new kanjis, of course). My error rate is sometimes as high as 25%, though usually in between 20%-10%. What's the 'right', safe error rate?

Furthermore, I was somewhat terrified to find out that I had forgotten one old kanji which was on its way from fourth to fifth column. What if I don't actually remember a lot of kanjis from the fourth column, the ones which get their reviews only very infrequently? Could anyone share their experience on this matter? Should I be changing something?

p.s. FWIW, I have 551 cards so far.

I would say 70-80% correct for new cards, 90-95% correct for mature cards, but it depends.

Tobberoth Wrote:I would say 70-80% correct for new cards, 90-95% correct for mature cards, but it depends.

I second this I get about 75-85%, After a hard at at work or what have you it can get really low. They was this one day where they really beasted me and I only got 53% for that day. Redid the next day without restudyig sure enough it was back to "normal".

Sounds like you're doing fine, don't worry about it and just carry on with the reviews.

It often just depends on how tired you are, distracted, and so on. I often find myself forgetting ones I really should not forget; that feeling that the it's on the tip of your tongue but you just can't get it out. Doesn't matter: fail it, drop it back to box 1, and trust the SRS to take care of it.

Honestly, you shouldn't be worrying about that. There is no "right" error rate; thinking that will only get you discouraged. Of course, if you consistently have a very low recall rate (= high error rate), for example you only remember 20-30 percent of cards, that could be an indication that something is wrong. But if it's ~50 percent or higher, I'd say you're doing fine

In my experience I had a very fluctuatoinal error rate. Some days I would have 100% after learning 70+ Kanji, but others I would only do as little as 30 and only remember half the next day! The one thing that happened to me though is I had a terrible error rate when I hit about 1600 last time using the RevTK system. Nearly everything I was remembering fine before was being failed which built up and I lost motivation. I'm now using Anki instead and the spacing seems to be much more efficient (not knocking RevTK just saying this in case it happens to you).

The error rate on my Anki Heisig deck is 79.8% correct for mature cards.
What do you do if your error rate is too high, and what do you do if it is too low?
Is there a setting in Anki to make it wait shorter or longer between reviews? Should you do this if your error rate is outside of 75 to 85?

And as for the OP's question:
Don't worry if you fail many times when first learning a card. Be more concerned with mature cards. My new card %correct is 25 and it's 55 for young cards.

One thing I notice while studying RSH is that for new Hanzi that I just learned I'll have a high retention rate, but if that same hanzi then shows up in a sentence or word that I just learned while studying Chinese then it will be cemented into my brain.

It varies day to day for me.

To echo what some other guys said, I really had a problem with one lesson and it was only 25, but today I did a lesson of 40 and aced em.

As others have said, don't get too hung up on it. I had long stretches off days with pass rates as low as 50% when I was time poor but still trying to keep my rate up nice and high.

also, don't forget that anki is a remembering tool, not a learning tool. Take the time to learn your stories before you review them. I wrote big batches of stories and then it could be days or even weeks before I reviewed them so I would invariably have forgotten heaps by then.