Just take your time! There's nothing wrong with doing 20-30/day - I did that as well. And now (3 months and 3 weeks later) I'm through. :-)
Everybody has to find his/her own pace.

sarahrepin Wrote:Is it my method of studying that's slowing me down?
For each and every kanji, I make my own flash card with the keyword on the front + story and then i write the kanji on the back...so to make 100 cards a day would be tiring, esp after a full day on the wards..
any tips?

Yes, your method is losing you a lot of time.

1) You should use an SRS program instead of using physical flashcards. I suggest Anki, although RevTK's review page on this site isn't half bad.

2) You should download a pre-made RtK deck if using Anki. Other people have already gone through the mindless process of scribing the keyword/kanji pairs (Nukemarine's deck even has an example story as well), so thank their effort and don't reinvent the wheel yourself.

thanks for the reply.
i actually am using Anki, but just for the review process, not the remembering process. its hard to remember something on the screen and as awesome as Heisig's method is, his stories are hard for me to remember. :p
But i'll have to stop my method i guess, as expected it's impossible for me to keep 2000+ flashcards at bay - it takes up so much space and i'm not even halfway done!

I stopped making my own flash cards very early in the game. I think it was a waste of time. Writing a character once didn't help me remember them, anyway.

sarahrepin Wrote:i actually am using Anki, but just for the review process, not the remembering process.

You can use a second deck with small timing intervals for learning, try the learn mode plugin, or the cram feature if you feel you need to seperate the two processes.

So far I seem to be doing fairly well with doing it all in one deck though. I quickly go through about 50-100 (depending on if it's a workday) kanji on this site while referencing Heisig's book for caveats and Katsuo's spreadsheet of unnamed primitives to optimize a bit, then afterwards I update my anki deck against my revtk stories with the handy export to csv feature on the site and a small python script, unsuspend the new kanji I added, and finally start reviewing them. At worst, the initial review is delayed until the next day, in which case my first time answer correct% gets pretty bad, but the only downside to bad correct% stats is more reviews, which you'd do anyway with the seperate learning phase.

That said, a seperate learning phase _might_ be worth it in some cases, but I think you'll find the extra overhead really isn't neccessary for RtK if you're leveraging stories correctly.

sarahrepin Wrote:its hard to remember something on the screen and as awesome as Heisig's method is, his stories are hard for me to remember.

The top stories on this site are usually better, give those a try.

sarahrepin Wrote:as awesome as Heisig's method is, his stories are hard for me to remember. :p

That's because Hesig's stories were (at least, I assume) originally made for Heisig.* They're influenced by his background, his experiences, and his beliefs. For example, a heck of a lot of his stories are based around biblical imagery. As another example, look at the story he provides for the 'fond' kanji. When I read it, it's obvious Heisig comes from a different background than mine from the way he glibly talks about a mother 'fondling her child gently'.

IMHO, making up your own stories is the best way to go, because only you know what will really hit all your id buttons and burn that mental image into your head.

For example, I've been trying to add readings to some of my flash cards, and I found out that most dictionaries use 'thing/article' as a keyword for the kanji Heisig calls 'goods'. One of my favourite films of all time is...you guessed it, <i>The Thing</i>, a film about a shapeshifting life form who often looks like a parody of the human anatomy. So, in my case, imagining a 'Thing' with three screaming mouths works a lot better than three hungry mouths who're eager to consume some 'goods'.

When you come to a new Kanji, don't just jump onto Heisig's story. Instead, look at the radicals and see what <i>your</i> id says. That way it's tailor-made to fit your mind, kind of.

*Granted, he probably changed some parts when writing the book.

A_Broken_Pencil Wrote:When you come to a new Kanji, don't just jump onto Heisig's story. Instead, look at the radicals and see what <i>your</i> id says. That way it's tailor-made to fit your mind, kind of.

Also look at the top suggestion(s) on this site. They're often perfectly fine when taken verbatim, and otherwise a great starting point to base/refine your own story with.

I've tried to do 50 or 100 in a day. It just killed me. It wasn't the way for me.

Guess how many I do a day now? 8. That's it. Setting the bar so low got rid of all the pressure and the stress. I never beat myself up about my kanji.

Find your own pace. Hell, if you do 6 a day you'll finish in under a year (and if you're like me, you'll enjoy the whole process a lot more).

I do an average of 3/4 kanji a day, and I learn something like 20/30 new kanji only on saturday or sunday.

I won't learn the prize of the quickest folk who has finished RTK, but it's not the (or my) goal.

If I was learning faster, my expired cards would explode and I would probably give up because i've loads of work next to that T.T.

Better do it slowly than never finish.

Don't listen to the haters, it's possible, I did it, although it was a full time job practically. At the beginning its pretty tough because it was all so new, now Kanji are a complete piece of cake 1 year and 5 months later. Just be ready to be frustrated if you have that high of a goal though because you will like fail a lot as you review, but don't look that as a bad thing, once you get used to using an srs failure becomes something you don't care about at all, cause you after a lot of time spent srs you know that maybe it will just take one more failure and then it's there forever(but to not be an absolutist, you will have ease remembering it for quite a long interval without any problems at all). Well, study hard!

steelmole Wrote:I've tried to do 50 or 100 in a day. It just killed me. It wasn't the way for me.

Guess how many I do a day now? 8. That's it. Setting the bar so low got rid of all the pressure and the stress. I never beat myself up about my kanji.

Such introspection may be difficult, but was there anything in particular about it that was stressful? I ask because I was just the opposite; 5-10/day felt like a chore because it wasn't enough to really "get into it" and I eventually stalled, whereas when I restarted at 50/100 per weekday/weekend day, I couldn't help myself but raise that to 80/160+ by the end.

steelmole Wrote:Find your own pace. Hell, if you do 6 a day you'll finish in under a year (and if you're like me, you'll enjoy the whole process a lot more).

Always good advice, but given the purpose of the thread, it's worth reiterating that it's also okay if "your own pace" is 100+/day and that figure is by no means exaggerated if you're willing to put the time in.

I do a lesson a day now, with a day off here or there if I feel my reviews are getting too high.

The few longer lesson i'll break up to make more manageable pieces.

This is also not my first runthrough, I finished RTK the first time at a pace similar to the 100 ( i had days where i did 150or so jsut wanted to get it done ) but after a couple days with no internet my reviews added up to 1300, i never got out from under that mountain.

Do something manageable, and keep up with the reviews.

overture2112 Wrote:

steelmole Wrote:I've tried to do 50 or 100 in a day. It just killed me. It wasn't the way for me.

Guess how many I do a day now? 8. That's it. Setting the bar so low got rid of all the pressure and the stress. I never beat myself up about my kanji.

Such introspection may be difficult, but was there anything in particular about it that was stressful? I ask because I was just the opposite; 5-10/day felt like a chore because it wasn't enough to really "get into it" and I eventually stalled, whereas when I restarted at 50/100 per weekday/weekend day, I couldn't help myself but raise that to 80/160+ by the end.

In reality there are some days where I learn more than 8, but I probably stick to 8 for more than half. I think the real difference is the feelings of success. With 8 a day I can always do all the new ones and all the reviews, no matter how busy the day has been. When I was aiming for 50 I would learn a lot, but I would end lots of days feeling like a failure for not keeping up to my own high expectations.

I think that 20-30 is the best if you have time, doing more than that may have a bad effect later. It's not a "who's is faster" contest, ive tried learning more than 30, but i dont really think it's more effective. Thanks to adding "only" 20 to 30 new kanji each day i can recognize ~95% of them by both: looking at the kanji or reading the keyword. There wont be a need to go back and relearn already known kanji this way. Im doing Pimsleur/Japanesepod101 at the same time, just leaving the vocabulary using kanji for later.

meeatcookies Wrote:I think that 20-30 is the best if you have time, doing more than that may have a bad effect later. It's not a "who's is faster" contest, ive tried learning more than 30, but i dont really think it's more effective. Thanks to adding "only" 20 to 30 new kanji each day i can recognize ~95% of them by both: looking at the kanji or reading the keyword. There wont be a need to go back and relearn already known kanji this way. Im doing Pimsleur/Japanesepod101 at the same time, just leaving the vocabulary using kanji for later.

That's the way to use the srs system. Slow but enough to challenge you without going overburn. I've set my number for 30 a day and decreased my count addition to 30-40 vocab cards a day (new). The reason why most people get away from the srs is because of the huge number of reps per day. The key is to do a small number and let it build to huge numbers in 2 years time.

I have a hard time believing anyone does 100 a day, or more, for more than one day. It's just insane. I did 70 once and I had the entire day free to study. I usually averaged 30 a day. That was a good rate for me. If I was really cookin' I'd do 40 or 50. But, I finished yesterday

I often did 200 a day, English on and kun readings but not stroke order.

eubankp Wrote:I have a hard time believing anyone does 100 a day, or more, for more than one day. It's just insane. I did 70 once and I had the entire day free to study. I usually averaged 30 a day. That was a good rate for me. If I was really cookin' I'd do 40 or 50. But, I finished yesterday

I think when I took a month off work and powered through the very last of RTK1, I was doing 100 a day or so. But my reviews got so mental that it basically took several sessions through the day to get through them all. So if I hadn't taken the month off, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Fortunately, by the end of the month the reviews had calmed down.

eubankp Wrote:I have a hard time believing anyone does 100 a day, or more, for more than one day. It's just insane. I did 70 once and I had the entire day free to study. I usually averaged 30 a day. That was a good rate for me. If I was really cookin' I'd do 40 or 50. But, I finished yesterday

That's how it's done, slow but enough to get some good work done. I only add 60 cards a day now (30 for sentence deck and 30 for vocabulary deck).

I usually do 40 - 60 on school days and 90 - 120 over the weekend or if on vacation. I usually always review in one session, take a break for a few hours, learn 30 - 60 in another session, and if I'm home for the entire day I can cram in three sessions (review + 2 for new kanji) instead of two. On an average week, this means that the ~200 symbols I learn over the weekend are mostly delayed for two weeks by Saturday's review (with Anki intervals being 1 day-4 day-~15 day, being correct both times would send Sunday's cards into a 15-day interval by Friday). If there are 3 or more non-school days in a row, I generally learn 100 kanji every other day, or more often if I feel I can do it.

This method has allowed me to get to 1500 (i.e. 1/2 of the total) over a month and a half (1st January -> today, with a single weeklong break), I review 200 - 230 kanji every day, very rarely 250+. I imagine 100 new kanji a day would result in an evergrowing avalanche of reviews, and the slow - and - steady approach is better than getting overwhelmed and risking burnout.

I did rtk1 in 10 days during holidays......production and recognition decks (trying to recognise in a split second) for each and yeah.....it was a full time job. 10 hours a day 1000+ reviews a day. It took about another month of testing on anki to be confident enough to say that I've truly learnt them.

Its amazing how streamlined this website makes this process..... just choose your favourite story from a list and put it into the premade anki deck.

I'm doing rtk3 100 kanji a week which is alot easier

10 days? madness! congrats on winning...

I'm doing it for the second time right now and I do 100 a day, also production and recognition. it's OK except on days when I'm tired.

truando Wrote:10 days? madness! congrats on winning...

I'm doing it for the second time right now and I do 100 a day, also production and recognition. it's OK except on days when I'm tired.

And people thought I was crazy for doing 3007 kanji in 3 months...

meeatcookies Wrote:I think that 20-30 is the best if you have time, doing more than that may have a bad effect later.

Do you have any data to support the idea that more than this will have a "bad effect"?

I've yet to see any real science (see the argument against Robin P. Clarke) supporting the idea that learning too much causes brain damage. I also haven't seen any noticeable decrease in retention rate when people I know or myself have bursted over 100 new cards in a day. If you meant that you may generate more reviews than you'd like to do per day then that is certainly possible, however this is easily detected ahead of time by using the various graphs available in Anki + plugins for projecting estimated number of reviews.

meeatcookies Wrote:It's not a "who's is faster" contest

That's certainly true, but it _is_ about keeping yourself motivated. Sometimes working hard and seeing more progress is what people need to keep themselves going; some people may have a hard time getting themselves to just sit down and do 10 but once they start they can do 40 just fine, etc.

meeatcookies Wrote:Thanks to adding "only" 20 to 30 new kanji each day i can recognize ~95%...There wont be a need to go back and relearn already known kanji this way.

As long as you're making proper stories and keeping up with reviews, your SRS will make sure you remember them. Stop worrying and learn to trust the SRS.

Seems to me like a lot of people decide that certain numbers are too big without even trying them. Kinda like the people who think that 3 kana a day is a sane pace. They're capable of far far more but somehow they've convinced themselves that they're badass for even attempting to learn the kana at all. At each step, they pat themselves on the back about how *hard* it is.

Others have a weird fixation on pass rates. Like, "i only do 3 kanji a day but my pass rate is 98%. All you people learning 100 a day have crap pass rates like 60%". Totally ignoring that 60% of 100 is a much bigger number than 98% of 3. How many kanji you can recall while you're doing RTK (assuming you do RTK before learning japanese) is *irrelevant*. It is a useless skill by itself. The only effect failing cards has is on the number of reviews. It doesn't matter if your recall rate is 20% or 100% 2 weeks after learning the kanji. What matters is that, 6+ months later when you're learning japanese proper, you know the kanji. In SRS terminology, the important metric is the rate at which you get new kanji into the mature category. If racing through them and failing tonnes of them gets more mature cards per week, win.

Comparing absolute numbers is a little silly though. People have wildly different amounts of free time. A better metric is kanji per hour. But even that is pretty pointless. Just do as many as you can and try to finish as soon as you can. Avoid burning out and try to consistently make progress. And even more to the point, remember that the goal is to learn japanese. Avoid getting bogged down in RTK for more than a few months.