Hello, fellow RTK learners.

I need some advice. I have finished RTK back in February, which took me 4 months of dedicated everyday study, started to do Assimil method and... burned out Haven't been back to Japanese for 5 months. I really do want to continue my study but not quite sure where and how to begin again.

For starters, I do not know how to "restart" RTK SRS from the very beginning at the same time keeping all of my stories. Is there a "fail all" option? I know some people went through RTK twice, any advice? I do not mind spending another several months to review all kanji, I just need technical and maybe methodical advice here.

And the question number two is how to actually restart my Japanese study to (possibly) avoid burning out again... I know this is very subjective but any advice will be really appreciated. My plan back in March was to finish RTK and progress to "Japanese Manga Way" together with Assimil. I still believe this is a good plan, but afraid of repeating my March fiasco. Am I biting too much here? This question is probably for the different section but I need some overall encouragement I guess...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Just start doing Anki again with your current deck and your SRS will sort things out. Don't bother trying to reset, just be honest (Again, Hard, Good) and never push "easy".

For that I have to actually migrate to Anki first from RTK web version. I do like this website and want to continue using it instead of Anki.... The idea is to start over with Heisig method as I have to go via all primitives all over again.

If you want to start over on this site you just need to remove all cards and just start adding again. The stories are saved regardless of whether you've seen the card or not.

Thanks for all replies. I actually did not know that stories are saved. I guess I can just export them to have a backup and then remove the cards.

My advice goes a little against the general tide, but I'd say slow down a little if you want to not burn out. It seems to be in fashion to blast through RTK in lightning speed, and for some it's become something to brag about. Learn from your experience. You rushed it the first time round, and now you're back at square 1. Ok, you're in a better position than when you first started out, but it's still not really where you intended to be right?
9 months after beginning and you're now contemplating starting over.
For me, after 9 months I had about 1500 Kanji nailed firm in my head, along with a vocabulary of several thousand words, and a decent grasp of pretty much everything in the Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. I've purposefully taken my time, and done other things to supplement RTK and use the characters I've learnt. I'm still having fun, and can confidently build on what I know every day. I'm not smart or anything; many simple things confuse the hell out of me. But the difference is that I've ignored the "lets do RTK in 1 week bandwagon" and taken the time to figure out what learning techniques, and pace works for me. There are probably people here who could say they've learnt 3 times as much as I did in 9 months, and grats to them, but it's irrelevant to me, and should be to everyone else because it's not a level playing field. Some people don't have jobs, or only work part time etc.

You need to think sensibly about what is best for you, and how you learn. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing RTK in 1/2/3 months. Some people can rush RTK and not forget any of it, but that doesn't mean everyone should or can.
For me, its the old story of the Tortoise and the Hare. For most people, if you rush things in the beginning, you end up paying dearly for it later.

I agree with squarezebra, find your own rhythm.
Also, why do it over? I'm only around 1110 (after two months), but if I ever had to stop completely, I wouldn't start over, I'll just do the reviews. So you have, what, 2000 reviews? If you do only 200 a day, it could be done in 10 days -- while starting over will take a least a month -- it really seems counterproductive to me.
And you can't have forgotten EVERYTHING, not with Heisig's method.
So my advice would be to suck it up, and start reviewing NOW!

@ squarezebra - I like to think that 4 months (about 20 kanji a day - every day) is not really considered to be a lightning speed. But I do agree on having the proper pace, therefore I am not planning on a single week review. Looking back, I guess I was just expecting too much to happen after completing RTK (against many warnings on this very forum) and was really disappointed that I was still a complete beginner after 4 months of dedicated study.

I like your advice on making things more interesting and I plan to compliment reviews with other materials. Like EratiK pointed out, lots of mnemonics should be readily available in my head even after 5 months.

No matter how many pretty words you use RTK is just a chore that just needs to be done before you start some serious study (whatever that may be). How you approach such chores depends entirely on you. I did it fast with a lot of effort but ended with tons of reviews and growing hatred for SRS.

Now I'd do it differently: read RTK (book) once or twice and get to work on vocab, since I won't be writing kanji by hand all I needed is to roughly recognize/distinguish them.

I'd save around 1.8 months of intensive study and around 4 months of trying to contain my reviews to some reasonable level that allows me to do something else during my day.

I left my RTK reviews for ages (maybe over a year), and I started noticing I wasn't remembering what some kanji in my vocabulary deck meant, confusing similar ones etc, so I went back to my reviews. I was extremely slow at remembering them, but still had to select 3-4 months for 'Hard', so I just started again.

I went at a steady pace, giving plenty of time to other (more interesting) areas of Japanese, and six months on my reviews are down to 30 or so a day and my kanji skills are back where they should be.

If you spend too much time on it, you'll just get burnout and grow to hate Anki, whereas if you're reading manga and chatting to people on Skype, you'll be finding motivation to hurry up and master Heisig so you can do the fun stuff more effectively.

tinonet Wrote:Hello, fellow RTK learners.

I need some advice. I have finished RTK back in February, which took me 4 months of dedicated everyday study, started to do Assimil method and... burned out Haven't been back to Japanese for 5 months. I really do want to continue my study but not quite sure where and how to begin again.

For starters, I do not know how to "restart" RTK SRS from the very beginning at the same time keeping all of my stories. Is there a "fail all" option? I know some people went through RTK twice, any advice? I do not mind spending another several months to review all kanji, I just need technical and maybe methodical advice here.

And the question number two is how to actually restart my Japanese study to (possibly) avoid burning out again... I know this is very subjective but any advice will be really appreciated. My plan back in March was to finish RTK and progress to "Japanese Manga Way" together with Assimil. I still believe this is a good plan, but afraid of repeating my March fiasco. Am I biting too much here? This question is probably for the different section but I need some overall encouragement I guess...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I started over with RTK by just erasing everything, and doing 150 a day until I was back where I left off. If you'd already finished the book it should come back to you really easily and take less than an hour a day to review.

I think it's much much easier to just erase everything and review again in order than to try to randomly review everything in the learned boxes.

tinonet Wrote:I really do want to continue my study but not quite sure where and how to begin again.

Same story here. I read the book 1 & 3, and got bored to death. 3 months later, I just deleted my Anki deck and downloaded it again.

Quote:I do not know how to "restart" RTK SRS from the very beginning at the same time keeping all of my stories.

Strange, I don't keep stories anywhere at all. I just remember them in my head. When I started from scratch, I remembered most of those stories, or I tried to make them better or more accurate.

The important thing about stories is written all over Heisig's books: make sure your stories are alive, you'll remember them better.

Quote:how to actually restart my Japanese study to (possibly) avoid burning out again...

Make sure you have good stories. Review first, and learn after the review, that's what AJATT taught me. If I wake up one day and I'm not motivated to learn anything, I just try to review a few kanjis, that's a bit of work everyday and keeps me motivated even if my reviews are increasing. Doing a bit everyday keeps me motivated! And if at the end of the day you have finished your reviews, learn new kanjis. But if you can't, don't despair, you've done a bit (or all) of reviewing, which is a good thing (that's what SRS is all about )

Good luck, you can do it!