So I've been doing RTK for a week or two now, and I've just reached #200. The problem I'm having, is the further I go along, the harder of a time I'm having remember the new kanji. I just read through about 20 kanji, read the stories, wrote them down, and then brought them into the review here like I've always done, but out of the 20 I missed about a dozen of them. I've been forced to use not just the review section of this site, but Anki as well, for a double pass, plus using Smart.FM for another pass. I know it says right in the book that you shouldn't bother doing a character more than once, because it will only further your beliefs that repetition is the only way to remember things, but how can I not think that when if I don't repeat them, I can't remember them?

I'm just curious if anyone knows something I may be doing wrong, or if you've ran into this issue yourself. I greatly appreciate and replies.

Hey Scykoh.
The problem is by doing multiple passes, you completely ruin the SRS purpose (to move the stored info to your long-term memory) by forcing the info to remain on the short-term one. It's a nasty habit, cut it out.

Don't worry, the reviews get harder as you go along for every one, so no need to worry about that.

Like said somewhere, apart from that, if you feel you fail too much, try to visualize your kanji image better or improve the story (the picture in your mind should really be clear).
Good luck!

The memory process with Heisig has something to do with elaboration (=create neural paths through visualisation, a brain muscle usually not that used, which I think when used consciously makes the imprint stay sharper)(and not repetition) I think.

For example, the keyword "semi-": I used the story with the turkeys swimming competition. Once I had it visualized (also I've discovered the method works even better if you enhance the image with a mnemonic caption), I had it remembered ever since. And I hardly even wrote it twice.

Thanks for the reply!

The issue I have with remembering them, is some kanji are just so obscure that I just can't seem to remember them. The large list of stories submitted by people to the site is fantastic, and it helps for a lot, but then there are some that just don't stick. It goes beyond remembering the character, and I run into the issue of remembering the story.

Also, for the SRS, I feel like if I don't know the character in the first place, how will I remember it if I see it again in a few days?

For this particular problem, I'd recommend chain/cycle-reviews (works for me):
do all your reps, then restudy the fail stack right away (by making a simplier story, or one that appeals to your own memories...), and review them right away (enter Y even if you fail). They'll show up in less than 3 days (on RevTK), and if you've rearranged the story correctly (triggered by a mnemonic trick maybe?)(or a more colourful image), there shouldn't be any problems.

And if it doesn't work, retry in 3 other days. Try to rote memorize (esp that early in the book) is really not indicated. Relax, spend time with the obscure kanji. Try to think of connotations this specific keyword trigger (a place? a person? a feeling? a smell?) and try to insert this personal bg in the story. Sure it's not easy at first, but eventually, you'll get the hang to it.

[ファブリス]

If you feel you need more reviews for new cards, don't let the SRS bog you down. On this site, go to the Manage page and remove a "custom selection", for example "10-30", then add the same selection "10-30" and review the blue stack. Removing flashcards does not affect your stories.

Think about what each keyword means to you, and look for any associations in your mind. Anything goes: quote from a movie, or high fantasy. Give your own imagination a chance before looking on shared stories, then use shared stories to add "spice" to yours.

Some stories are very catchy but remember you're not looking for words, you're looking for an impression in your mind/memory that is related to the keyword meaning. Then put the primitives in there, and always use the same primitive name/image.

Don't worry about it. The important thing is to not let failing bother you. Even if your story is awful you'll eventually remember it through brute memorization, and once something is memorized the actual process behind it becomes irrelevant. It's the old adage about failing a lot in order to succeed: Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, etc.

At least as far as Anki goes, if you fail a card enough times, your probably going to learn it. The worst possible thing is it turns into a leech. Which is not the end of the world, just keep pushing through and learning other new things.

Like harhol said, don't let it bother you. However, it's probably best for you to pick one SRS and keep with it.

I learned them in one big pile, and frankly I have no idea how people can manage it otherwise. The keywords are so arbitrary (they have to be, because every language has synonyms) that it was really not until I finished all 2000 that I had any handle on the fine distinctions. Because unless I rely on silly wordplay, there seems to me to be no way to distinguish between a "go between", and a "mediator"

(It helps that I actually knew words that used those kanji and knew that both keywords were off.)

Anki was nowhere near as useful as studying on the site for me.

(What's a memotech?)

Sorry, I meant "mnemonic trick". (edited) (μνεμο τεχνη)

I don't know if this is orthodox RTK, but what eventually worked for me (and I tried a lot of different ways of studying) was to make sure the keywords were lodged in my short term memory before I reviewed them for the first time. After I'd studied them, I'd cover the kanji in my book and go through the keywords to make sure I could recall all the stories and picture the kanji, and only then would I commit them to the SRS.

Anna B Wrote:I don't know if this is orthodox RTK, but what eventually worked for me (and I tried a lot of different ways of studying) was to make sure the keywords were lodged in my short term memory before I reviewed them for the first time. After I'd studied them, I'd cover the kanji in my book and go through the keywords to make sure I could recall all the stories and picture the kanji, and only then would I commit them to the SRS.

This sounds almost like the world list method. I believe this is actually one of the better ways to use an SRS, to only put things in you have already learned well. From what I understand, your not supposed to use an SRS to learn from, but rather to review something you have learned.

Anki has a "Learn" plugin which lets you drill seven new cards repeatedly à la the Iversen method.

I remember my first i would say 700 cards I failed many SRS reps but having finished RTK for a couple months now, I would say on my daily SRS reps I fail anywhere from 0-2 cards now. So it will obviously get easier.
Also, do you look at the stories when the keyword comes up for review? What I did was if I had failed a kanji too much, I would look at the story and it made things much easier.

2 things:

1) there's nothing wrong with failing. iy's just another opportunity to see that card again. if you stress over every fail on your way to 2000 kanji in 20,000 reviews at 80% you're going to stress over 4000 reviews and it's just not worth it and it doesn't really matter.

2) when you're stuck with a fail that keeps coming back again and again within the 1 session you just need to get it to stick it your short term memory for long enough to pass it. with words or sentences i'll stop my reviewing and use some sort of memory hook to force it in there so i can get it back on the next review. funnily enough those ones seem to stick better than the simple ones as if the failed reviews are even more valuable than the passed ones...

but yeah, to do your 2000 kanji you need to do 10-20k reviews so do them quickly and don't stress the fails.

For me, I often find the failing is caused by my choosing a wrong story.

Some people here said man is not supposed to change story he goes with from start.
I disagree. From my experience I can say it is sometimes worthwhile to reconsider, after realizing the story I chose just does not work for me.

What can be also of help is to remember the kanji in connection to a word, that uses it.
However, I guess this is not such a great help, when you are in the start of the learning process.

To give example for the last point - the kanji for 'roof' 屋 is used in words describing
different shops - like hanaya 花屋 (florist), panya パン屋 (bakery), etc.
So you can create image of flag, that is put on roof (aka climax/highest point [thanks samuize]) of the house, to depict the different wares that are sold in respective shop.

Are you doing things exactly as stated in the preface of lesson 11? closing your eyes, making a mental image, etc..?
Repeating a lot the same character is bad because you tend to rely on your visual memory, which is bad until the kanji is mature in your imaginative memory.
My retention rate is 90% with newly added flashcards; I always fail some because the story wasn't so clear as I though and I have to revise it. I consider that I "missed a lot" compared to older kanji with 100% retention, but it's actually an impressive rate if you think about it. And I suspect those are the normal rates with RtK.
When you fail a new kanji you must ask yourself; why did I fail? what did I forget about the story? when you know what went wrong, fix it. As you learn more kanji, you'll get better at making the stories memorable from the start.
My advice is to do only Reviewing the Kanji (no smart.fm or anki) and re reading everything Heisig tells you in the book. Don't worry, it works.

..one should mention, too, that we are humans and not computers or robots and so forgetting something is just natural, and forgetting something you are not surrounded by (not to talk about that, right) is normal. Remembering the Kanji will in the end help you remembering things better, not only japanese concerned/Kanji concerned, but just everything you try remembering by an image. (read the introduction by heisig, he wrote about it i suppose.. images stay better in our mind than anything else, better than donkey-bridges..)

Drilling < Donkey-Bridge < Image </= Fact you want to keep in mind

Drilling works with japanese children, is time consuming. No discussion needed~

Make sure that your stories are sharp and resonant, and cut out as much as you can from the story. Distill it as far as possible, without omitting any of necessary parts. The less you have to remember, the better.

Many of the stories I see are simply too long, and introduce many extraneous things. If your story or image is cluttered, you may end up confusing yourself. Eg, rather than say "i was walking down the street, and tripped on a stick," just say "i tripped on a stick." Or, see the stick and yourself tripping. If you think "street", you might end up pulling in the street radical.

The concrete image is the important thing. The brain works best with concrete objects, so rather than say, e.g., "person" as a component or radical, use a real person, e.g. Mr T. Many of heisig's words are too abstract, as are many of stories I see.

This all takes effort and dedication! But good luck and hang in there, if you can do 100, you can do another, and then another.

Old thread is old. I think OP is either fluent by now, or everything West of the Bering Strait is dead to him.

Creating and adapting stories/mnemonics is certainly a skill that many RTK users have to learn for the first time, and it takes more than a couple of weeks to learn. And it takes deliberative practice to keep getting better, to keep taking your story-making skills from plateau to higher plateau of performance---if you wanted to improve, that is: you could certainly figure out a technique by #200 and stick to it till #2200 and in a few years it wouldn't matter (unless the psychologists are right and imaginative memory can help in all learning activities, not just kanji).

I have to think there there is a page on the RTK Wiki that distills @Jzohrab's cogent advice, but I can't find it? (If not, @Jzohrab should definitely make one.)

Like others have said, don't worry too much about failing. Failing a card is just part of the process and an opportunity to learn the character better, not an indication that you are doing anything wrong.

With that said, I retained kanji much better when I did the following:

1) Spent more time visualizing each image/story in my head (while trying to activate sensory memory through touch, movement, smell, etc.) and less time writing it down, both when initially learning it and when reviewing it. I found it especially helpful to act out the movements of some stories, for example, to give my brain something extra to associate the story with and also earmark it as important (apparently, explaining a concept out loud or combining it with physical movement signals to the brain that certain information should be retained).

2) Took a break from studying pure kanji and started studying actual vocabulary. I found I retained kanji much better when I had an actual word with usage to associate it with rather than some an abstract English definition, especially in the case of the synonyms.

CAVEAT: This may have only worked for me because I speak Korean. For example, while I couldn't remember 要 as (insert whatever the Heisig word for it is), I could remember it easily as being part of 要求 because I knew the Korean word 요구--and so 要　became 요　(from 필요 and 요구) for me--and　求 became 구 (from 요구) rather than request(?).

weatherman Wrote:1) Spent more time visualizing each image/story in my head (while trying to activate sensory memory through touch, movement, smell, etc.) and less time writing it down, both when initially learning it and when reviewing it. I found it especially helpful to act out the movements of some stories, for example, to give my brain something extra to associate the story with and also earmark it as important (apparently, explaining a concept out loud or combining it with physical movement signals to the brain that certain information should be retained).

Yeah! In http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid210749 I quoted at length from Ken Higbee's book "Your Memory" which says exactly this in more words:

Kenneth Higbee Wrote:Research has been done on three factors that can help to make your visual associations effective—interaction, vividness, and bizarreness.
...
Visual imagery by itself is not maximally effective. To make visual association effective, your imagery must both be "visual" and involve "association." The two items you are associating should be pictured as interacting in some way with each other (one of them doing something to or with the other), rather than as merely sitting next to each other or one on top of the other. For example, if you were associating the words dog and broom it would be better to picture a dog sweeping with a broom than to picture a dog standing by a broom.

You should try to see your mental pictures as clearly as possible. For example, if you are associating the words dog and broom you should not just think about the two words together or think about the idea of a dog sweeping with a broom, but you should try to actually see the dog sweeping with the broom in your mind's eye. People who are not accustomed to visualizing (and many adults are not) may find that it helps at firs t if they close their eyes when trying to see the mental picture. It also seems to help if you make the mental picture detailed. What kind of dog is it? What kind of broom? Where is he sweeping? What is he sweeping? Picture a dachshund sweeping mud off your porch with a pushbroom; or a bulldog sweeping food off the kitchen floor with a straw broom.
...
In addition to detail, three suggestions that are frequently recommended to help make visual associations effective are aimed at making them more vivid:

1. Motion. See the picture in action (the dog is sweeping with the broom, not just holding it).

2 . Substitution. See one item in place of the other (you are sweeping with a dog instead of a broom, or a broom is coming out of a doghouse).

3 . Exaggeration. See one or both of the items exaggerated in size or number (a Chihuahua is sweeping with a giant broom, or a large St. Bernard is us ing a small whisk broom).
...
Most of the studies have found no difference between bizarre and plausible images in their effectiveness, but a few studies have found that bizarre images were more effective than plausible images under some conditions, and a few have found that bizarre images were less effective. ... When bizarreness does help, it may be because bizarre images also incorporate other factors that help memory, such as interaction, vividness, uniqueness, and time. Some studies have found that bizarreness can be confounded with interaction; some interacting images may almost have to be bizarre in order to involve interaction (for example, it is hard to think of a plausible picture showing an elephant and a piano interacting).

It really is a skill kanji learning will make you good at.

And with regard to failing, I have to plug the idea of putting your story (in my case, in small, dark-gray-on-black font) on the front of your card. I read about it on AJATT where it was called Kendo's method. It's been several weeks since I did this and it's been super-fun.

I haven't read this whole thread... in case nobody's mentioned it:

You may be doing too many new cards in a day if you feel its not working for you. Slowdown if you need to, there is a lot of individual variation in this. Find the new card count that works for you

This is my first post ever in this forum and I'm writing it to thank @aldebrn.
I came to this post days ago because I had a hard time trying to remember new kanjis (studied the 1130th just a few minutes ago). I'm not good at making stories from scratch so I always take a look at what others invented and try to adapt the story, simplify it, etc. But this advice, for me, made a big step forward:

aldebrn Wrote:1. Motion. See the picture in action.

Since I read this, I adapt stories adding movement to them. If it's necessary, I add an "Imagine:" phrase at the bottom, to help me with the picture I have to have in mind (I'm doing it also on old kanjis that I don't want to change the main story but to add a layer of motion).
Before that, I struggled even when studying 10 new Kanji. I forgot about the Kanjis I studied minutes ago when reviewing them on Anki!
When adding action to it, it's much more easier and I remember the story very quickly. I also try not to force bizarre stories anymore, only if it adds motion to the story.
I guess this is something obvious, and maybe Heisig says so at some part of the book. But this helped me and I wanted to thank you for it and encourage others to add more action/motion to stories and see if it helps. I was scared of the 1,000 Kanji wall, but I think I can make it now

PD: just added Ken Higbee's book "Your Memory" to my reading list, seems very interesting.