I know there are like, a thousand topics on this.

After I SRS vocab words for a few months, I decided to go back and finish RTK and brush up on the basics of grammar. I mean, REALLY cement everything that Japanese the Manga Way and Tae Kim teach. I'm just, starting my Japanese study from the ground up again. I'd say I'm a low to mid Intermediate about now.
I was around Frame 550 or so when I stopped, and now I'm at Frame 1260. To get from there to there, it's been about.....2 months.

Here's where I'm wondering if I'm doing this right, or at the very least not screwing myself when working.

At first, I studied solely using this site. I would add in about 20 new cards, write down the stories in the text box, and write the Keyword first, then the kanji on a sheet of paper. This got me to about 80 Kanji in the New Pile, however I had about 300 in the Restudy Pile. For about a month, I just did reviews in piles of 40/50/100 before even adding new cards. It got to the point where I wasn't even adding new cards, it was constant review, review, review.

This wasn't a bad thing really. I did get alot of difficult kanji sealed away, I just wasn't reviewing any of those new kanji I had added. So I went back to Anki and decided to use Anki for reviewing and using the site for adding stories.

My routine now is to do my reviews in Anki first, rest, and then add 20 new Kanji a day in RtK. My overall Kanji count is growing but my reviews on the site are getting behind. I GUESS this shouldn't be a problem since Anki is taking care of reviews, but I dunno if this is hurting me in the long run. When I review, I pass the Kanji if I can write it out, or see it in my head. If I just remember the stories I pass/fail it about half the time. I've gotten a bit stricter with that recently though. If I can't remember anything, it's either fail, or see again soon.

I hear that one should do all reviews first before adding new Kanji, but I never seem to get anywhere doing just reviews on the site. I plan to finish RtK at the end of the year, it's been too long and I should have finished it 2 years ago, really. I am prepared to keep reviewing for a while after then and breeze through Iknow formally.

If it matters, I immerse in videogames and music for my recreation. I watch Keyhole TV passively about 1-2 hours a week, though I'm still struggling at alot of stuff listening, I am getting the gist of things slowly.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:At first, I studied solely using this site. I would add in about 20 new cards, write down the stories in the text box, and write the Keyword first, then the kanji on a sheet of paper. This got me to about 80 Kanji in the New Pile, however I had about 300 in the Restudy Pile. For about a month, I just did reviews in piles of 40/50/100 before even adding new cards. It got to the point where I wasn't even adding new cards, it was constant review, review, review.

This wasn't a bad thing really. I did get alot of difficult kanji sealed away, I just wasn't reviewing any of those new kanji I had added. So I went back to Anki and decided to use Anki for reviewing and using the site for adding stories.

I don't understand: if you stopped adding, you should have reached a point were you reviews decreased enough to make you confident to add again. If you didn't stop adding, why didn't you review them? Here's a tip: say Y to all the new cards, so you can start reviewing them along with the others.

Quote:My routine now is to do my reviews in Anki first, rest, and then add 20 new Kanji a day in RtK. My overall Kanji count is growing but my reviews on the site are getting behind. I GUESS this shouldn't be a problem since Anki is taking care of reviews, but I dunno if this is hurting me in the long run. When I review, I pass the Kanji if I can write it out, or see it in my head. If I just remember the stories I pass/fail it about half the time. I've gotten a bit stricter with that recently though. If I can't remember anything, it's either fail, or see again soon.

Why should this hurt you since you are reviewing? RevTK site or Anki, it's up to taste I guess... Or do you mean you add in RevTK, and not in Anki, so you only review the old kanji and not the new ones (even after you added them)? But why would you do that?

Quote:I hear that one should do all reviews first before adding new Kanji, but I never seem to get anywhere doing just reviews on the site. I plan to finish RtK at the end of the year, it's been too long and I should have finished it 2 years ago, really. I am prepared to keep reviewing for a while after then and breeze through Iknow formally.

Again, the reviews should have decreased after awhile. But the point is RevTK and Anki have different SRS algorithms, and it looks like the one on RevTK doesn't really fit you, so stop worring about it.
If you feel you're too inefficient, maybe you should centralize your ressources (like putting your stories on the kanji cards in Anki).
And a detail, when you write on paper, kanji, keyword, story might be a more effective order, but since it implies changing your routine, I don't know if it would be worth it. Try it out to see if you like it or not.
Sorry if I didn't answer your questions...

So do you have 2 of some cards? 1 on this site and 1 in anki? You only want one of each card really.

<i>Why should this hurt you since you are reviewing? RevTK site or Anki, it's up to taste I guess... Or do you mean you add in RevTK, and not in Anki, so you only review the old kanji and not the new ones (even after you added them)? But why would you do that?</i>

I only review in one at a time. I thought that the optimal method was to clear your Fail pile first before adding new kanji, so I didn't add any of those to my reviews until I got a certian amount out of the failed pile. It seemed to help in remembering ALOT of kanji giving me trouble before, so I didn't question the method at first. Then I started doing reviews only in Anki and just used the site to add new kanji.

<i>Again, the reviews should have decreased after awhile. But the point is RevTK and Anki have different SRS algorithms, and it looks like the one on RevTK doesn't really fit you, so stop worring about it.
If you feel you're too inefficient, maybe you should centralize your ressources (like putting your stories on the kanji cards in Anki).</i>

I kinda hate modifying Anki, even though I know how to use the basic functions, so I didn't add my stories in. I figured the more time I spent getting rid of the stories and replacing them with pronnnouciations, the better. There are plenty of kanji I can recall just by combining the keywords.

I'll try that for a week. See if it helps.

<i>And a detail, when you write on paper, kanji, keyword, story might be a more effective order, but since it implies changing your routine, I don't know if it would be worth it. Try it out to see if you like it or not.
Sorry if I didn't answer your questions...</i>

No, you helped a bit. I SHOULD have been saying Yes to those in the new pile instead of letting them sit there. But I was worried that the older kanji would be all mixed up before properly learning them for good.

Ah, of course you need to use only ONE SRS. Using two make you lose a tremendous amount of time, since you do the same task twice for less long term retention. Trust me, when you'll have even more daily reviews (after 1750), you'll see how pointless that was.

Yes, a method is to clear the failed pile, but what's important is to clear the due pile before you start adding (cementing the core of your knowledge, since advanced kanji use a lot of basic kanji). About failed cards, a lot of people do "cycle reviews", which mean immediately after they've finished reviewing, they tackle the failed pile, and again, say Y to all the cards (they have restudied them of course, ie modified the story/image or mnemonic). I feel it's more faster and efficient this way.

Fine, you can still use this site for the stories, but quit reviewing with both the site and Anki, you're really doing yourself a disfavor.