Man is it great to have these types of communities for ideas/motivation. First I'll throw out my problem and see if you guys have any advice to help me get motivation back.

It seems I have to study every kanji two or three times. I sit down, spend 3-5 minutes with each kanji, get a really good picture, write it down once, then about six hours later I'll go enter the cards into anki. I remember them crystal clear the firs time, but then when the 3 to 5 days pass for the review, I draw a complete blank and end up having to review the same kanji again for the same amount of time, sometimes even three times. I'm on 1000 now by the way.

The main thing is it's making me so frustrated that I'm just considering quitting and starting reading source materials like most people do when they finish RtK. I'll still keep up with my reviews, but probably not add any new cards and learn everything else just by frequency I guess.

Another option I am considering is just going into the source material and learning actual Japanese, but still study new kanji through RtK. Anyone have experience with any of these methods? Any advice would be appreciated.

This thought comes more from my study of piano than studying kanji, but it still applies: Forgetting is an essential part of learning. When you initially study something, whether it be a passage of music or kanji or whatever, you're changing pathways in the brain. Just because you forgot does not mean these pathways disappeared. They are still there, you just need to clarify them to make access easier. The imagery I like is that of water and sand. If you pour water on dry sand, say on the beach as a kid, it flows in all kinds of directions at first, but if you guide in the direction you want, and you repeatedly pour water through your guided path, eventually, when you first pour the water, it won't go anywhere else. So the pathways in the brain get carved deeper by the forgetting/learning process. Forgetting forces you to follow through the whole process used to learn initially all over again, without skipping steps, making the pathways that much stronger.

If you got to 1000 kanji with the struggles you're having, kudos to you. I don't think halfway through is a good time to give up, personally. I always consider the second half of a project easier than the first, since you've built up so much momentum, and finally the number of kanji you know is greater than the number you don't (limiting ourselves to the 2000 studied in the book). Plus, I bet if you think about it, there's a lot of kanji that you've got down cold. Don't let those few that cause you trouble knock you down, but consider them a challenge and get excited about conquering them. Also, maybe now is a good time to sit down and reexamine your reasons for studying the kanji in the first place. I always find this self-examination inspirational in a special way. Remind yourself why it's worth it.

Of course, there's always the doubt that this method is the best way to learn the kanji, but have you really got another way? Rote learning hardly ever works. Even though Heisig's mnemonics aren't always the best, they're certainly better than nothing.

Best of luck to you. I just hit 150 kanji, so I'm pretty far behind you, but I'm hoping to finish the book by the end of this semester. I suspect you'll be done long before me.

I used another system, but it was like RTK. I gave up at 1,367 kanji and went to studying vocabulary instead.

The 1300 kanji I had 'learned' helped a TON with the vocab. Especially the easy stuff. It got me to my first goal: Reading manga. It actually got me to my second goal: Reading easy light novels.

It didn't get me to my third goal: Reading without furigana.

I'm starting to pick up the old process again now because learning new vocabulary with kanji that wasn't in those 1367 (or was, and I forgot) is WAY tougher. Like, crazy tougher. Not impossible, but man, the time spent was sure worth it before.

You can take this tale as advice either way. Either you quit now and start learning things that will keep your motivation, or you keep trucking along and make the rest of your learning easier.

It's up to you.

Try marking the kanji hard on your first review?

The way my learn/review schedule went, it was like 'study the kanji, some time that day review it as a new card in the SRS, mark it hard so that it comes up in 24 hours, i.e. study it the next day'. Then mark it so that it comes up 3 days after that or so. If you're still having difficulty then I'd say you need to adjust your study method (spend more time on the kanji, adjusting story/conceptualization or whatever your method is, or perhaps do a different number of new kanji each day, etc.).

Also, you can do all sorts of stuff with Japanese while you're doing RTK. Working on listening and pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc., with various resources (books, native media, whathaveyou). Just do that other stuff in ways that it avoids requiring involved study of kanji or reinforces kanji you've studied. We've talked about this a lot, but for an example I think Nukemarine's beginner thingamajig might have that kind of overlap of complementary aspects of Japanese study from the onset.

My suggestion is: try it and see if it works for you. Learn what works for you by experience, not because someone else has said it is the best way. Even if something worked for the entire world population but it didn't for you, forcing yourself to use their method wouldn't be the right path. Nevertheless, I have some experience in doing what you're considering:

MountainDewGuy Wrote:Another option I am considering is just going into the source material and learning actual Japanese, but still study new kanji through RtK. Anyone have experience with any of these methods? Any advice would be appreciated.

This is exactly what I'm doing now that I'm studying Chinese; I think it's much more interesting than studying RSH/RTH/RTK from cover to cover. But I must say this: I've had finished RTK 1 and half of RTK 3 before (using the right order), so I knew most of the tricks, the only problem being that I didn't keep reviewing nor studying Japanese (I decided to study practical things in Spanish, English and my native language, which is Portuguese; this actually was an excellent decision at that time but, by doing so, I forgot a lot of the kanji that I've studied. Maybe most of them.)

If you have a good method for adding characters out of the recommended order, then you definitely should try it — this can keep you much more interested in the language than studying a lot of characters that you may not bump into anytime soon, and can even make you more interested in adding them in order if you see the need. To help me in the process, one thing I did was to add an Anki field with the primitives that compose the character (example: 厚 thick = cliff, sun, child) and Heisig's explanation when necessary, so when I find a new character I want to add it's just a matter of using the search function and adding the necessary components (it's very fast and easy with these additional fields); before this I tried using the book, but it was just too much hassle (in cases like this, paper books are so... inconvenient, to say the least.)

Two suggestions: 1) always mark new cards 'hard' (interval of one day), and 2) every week/250 kanji review what you have learned from the book, in order--this is in addition to your SRS reviews.

On my previous attempt I was marking new cards as "easy" or "very easy" (intervals of a few days to a week), and I always found that I would have trouble remembering them on the first or second review (70% success rate). This time (I'm in the 600's) I've been marking them as 'hard' in Anki, which causes me to review them again the next day. Now my success rate is constantly greater than 90%, and I feel much better about my memory. Waiting 8 hours before you add it to your SRS is good, but a much better review is sleeping on it and testing yourself again in the morning.

In the book Heisig recommends at the end of Part I, somewhere around kanji 250, that you go back and review all the kanji you have learned so far both to make sure you've been doing the method right and to spot any potential trouble points. At the end of Part II--around frame 500--he recommends again that you go back and review the previous 250 or so kanji. Previously I had ignored this advice thinking that the SRS was doing this work for me. This time though I decided to follow his advice exactly, so I loaded up my PDF copy of the book, covered the side of the screen that showed the kanji, and then tested myself sequentially on all of the previous 250 kanji at those two points. I found that the review really did help a lot, and was qualitatively different than the SRS reviews. It worked so well that I'm going to continue this practice at 750, 1000, 1250, etc.

Now that said, I'm not sure if the benefit was due to the number of kanji covered between these reviews, or the amount of real time that elapsed between them. I've been doing 50/day, so these reviews are spaced every 5 days. Adjust either the number of kanji covered or timing to your schedule accordingly.

Your first interval shouldn't be 3-5 days. That's way too long.

JimmySeal Wrote:Your first interval shouldn't be 3-5 days. That's way too long.

Yes, that's something to consider: 3 to 5 days is the default initial value for the Good button in Anki; one mistake people make is pressing it when reviewing for the first time a card they've just added, because they just "knew" the answer so well...

Few things I feel worth mentioning:

1) If you can't make it through all of them, consider moving over to RTK Lite. You'll focus on the most common 1000 kanji this way, which should help you a lot with mining. I switched halfway, I just added lite and nonlite tags to everything and suspended the nonlite stuff, it took me a while to tag but it's an option. (I probably should of done this in SQL now that I think about it...)

2) Leeches are fine, if you can't memorize it and Anki turns it into a leech, don't worry about it too much, your time is much better spent focusing on what you are learning well. I found that I sometimes I get memory collisions and confusion between some kanji I learned right next to each other. If your having trouble with one, let one cement in your head and come back to the other one later. If you feel like the kanji is a leech or is conflicting with something else, suspend it yourself and work on it later.

3) You can always have a separate duplicate deck that has cramming intervals, you can use this to learn with.

RTK is about recognizing radicals, which helps you see Kanji in a way where you can recognize them easily. Download the radicals deck and cram it everyday for 2 weeks - checking the RTK sections for each radical (I mean primitive). Also, get in the habit now of having a separate deck you use to cram a very specific number of new items over a period of 1 week seeing them every single day twice a day (morning and evening is best). <--- Just upload it to Ankiweb and redownload it everyday. Don't stress the reviews on this. Fail if you look at it and go "what"; otherwise, what you press doesn't matter as you'll redownload it again anyway (don't sync - delete and reupload). This will get your recognition up fast and cut your work down.

P.s., I would write them all once or twice only. Every review will drive you nuts if you write every single one. When you finish RTK, though, get into writing diaries on Lang-8 or with your teacher or just copying someones work, so you can write (if it's important).

delete and redownload.

The above is just my opinion. I did Kendo's Lazy Kanji, by the way.

When I needed a break from kanji I started on the core 6000 in RTK order ( http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5091&page=1 ). I found that some familiarity with a kanji is enough to facilitate learning a word with it; I reccomend you start allowing yourself to look at the stories when reviewing.

You should try experimenting with the way your studying. For example, I've found that spending longer trying to memorise something in a single session it doesn't help much, but if I keep seeing it over a few days it sinks in naturally. Obviously thats not the same as saying that making a good image isn't helpful, but you should consider whether that 3-5 minutes your spending on it is really about making a good image or if your just spending longer trying to force it in to your head. I think that if you spend a third of the time on the initial learning but review the kanji three times as much you'll find your retention at the end of the week is much better, and that this then results in better retention as the cards get even older.

This is just what works for me. You should experiment and see what suits you.

P.S. I also tried mining sentences before completing RTK, but it just didn't work.

Are you sure your stories/mental images are not the problem? I went through RTK 2.25 times (once I got a quarter through only, but that was in the bad old days when supermemo was the only SRS and it kept crashing, and before this site, then for the first time completely with this site, then once more with anki). The last time I made sure that each story had some emotional content, whether funny, raunchy or in some other way. Just a story that happens to make sense isn't enough for a mnemonic. With good stories that stick you should be able to reconstruct the kanji from the keyword if necessary.

By the way, contrary to what Heisig says, I've found that writing out each kanji once as I recall it has helped solidify the memory.

You might want to try reviewing on this site. The spacing algorithm might be more to your liking.
Otherwise, I'd suggest that if RTK is such a pain in the arse then for the time being why not leave it be. Start studying other things. You can always come to it later. RTK isn't gonna go anywhere. If RTK is a chore holding you back in your goals then let it go.

I think you should keep up your reviews, but instead of entering new cards, you can try mining sentences. The way I see it, it will either work well for you, or (like me) you'll figure out that the only words you are learning well are ones with kanji that you've done through RTK. I realized that I don't have the vocabulary, exposure, or time that a Japanese child has. Trying to learn the readings, context-sensitive meanings, and stroke order of a kanji all at once would be a tall order. I believe breaking the task into sections is the best way. But like I said, try mining and see if it works for you.

Doing 3-5 minutes per kanji sounds a bit long to me. Quantity/exposures over quality every time. Spend less time each time and repeat more frequently instead. Trust in the ole noggin.

Irixmark Wrote:By the way, contrary to what Heisig says, I've found that writing out each kanji once as I recall it has helped solidify the memory.

That's actually exactly what Dr. Heisig recommends.

Thank you everyone for the responses. After reading everyones advice It seems to me that I just need to review more. I thought that the point of Heisig was to review extremely little, and spend a lot of time on the story the first time. It seems that although that is the point I may have taken it to the extreme. Since I'm about halfway done I'm just going to force myself through the rest, only spending a few minutes on the story and I'll start checking hard on the first review and maybe a few other times if I start running into trouble.

One last question, about when do you guys start forgetting your stories and only think of the primitive elements? Or should I always be trying to recall the story during the review?

Sorry, that's not what I meant... I wanted to say "write it out once every time it comes up in Anki."

Heisig writes "(...), the repeated advice given to study the characters with pad and pencil should be taken seriously" but then on p. 45 "A final note about reviewing. You have probably gotten into the habit of writing the character several times when memorizing it, whether you need to or not; and then writing it more times for kanji that you have trouble remembering. There is really no need to write the kanji more than once, unless you have trouble with the stroke-order and want to get a better “feel” for it."

Admittedly this was written pre-SRS, but I tend to disagree. Frequent writing practice helps me remember the kanji better. Sort of like my fingers can play a Cm7-9 chord faster than I can remember the individual notes. Muscle memory is better than visual memory in most people. The story is only a bridge to get there.

Well you know how I feel about writing during reviews, but I think there Heisig was just cautioning against using writing as a crutch. That is to say, slipping back into rote memorization processes rather than focusing on improving 'stories'. And he didn't get everything right (like the focus on stroke order in that sentence, or not emphasizing the benefits of muscle memory), but then again, we've all moved on, so that doesn't matter too much. ;p

MountainDewGuy Wrote:Thank you everyone for the responses. After reading everyones advice It seems to me that I just need to review more. I thought that the point of Heisig was to review extremely little, and spend a lot of time on the story the first time. It seems that although that is the point I may have taken it to the extreme. Since I'm about halfway done I'm just going to force myself through the rest, only spending a few minutes on the story and I'll start checking hard on the first review and maybe a few other times if I start running into trouble.

One last question, about when do you guys start forgetting your stories and only think of the primitive elements? Or should I always be trying to recall the story during the review?

Following the optimum spacing pattern is going to result in the least amount of time reviewed with the best gains, so in that sense you're still going to be on the 'extreme' (extremely awesome, that is!) once you get that aspect worked out. ^_^

I would say thinking of the kanji piecemeal and thinking of stories fell off about the same time, at varying rates (but usually after multiple successful reviews of that kanji over time). Yes, should try to recall the story during reviews, unless of course you don't need it because you've made that kanji your own, and I think only as much as you feel necessary (though I imagine you'd want to take a moment to decide whether your difficulty with a given kanji was related to a need to rethink the story).

Irixmark Wrote:Sorry, that's not what I meant... I wanted to say "write it out once every time it comes up in Anki."

Heisig writes...

I think that quote could be interpreted either way, although it didn't occur to me until now. I took that advice to mean write it down once, but just once each time you review (which is what I do, and I also highly recommend).

MountainDewGuy Wrote:One last question, about when do you guys start forgetting your stories and only think of the primitive elements? Or should I always be trying to recall the story during the review?

For me, about the time it becomes a mature card.

nadiatims Wrote:You might want to try reviewing on this site. The spacing algorithm might be more to your liking.
Otherwise, I'd suggest that if RTK is such a pain in the arse then for the time being why not leave it be. Start studying other things. You can always come to it later. RTK isn't gonna go anywhere. If RTK is a chore holding you back in your goals then let it go.

I have to agree with Nadiatims. I started using the SRS on this site for the first 600 kanji because I didn't know about Anki. When everybody was saying they used Anki, I tried anki for about a week, and I found that the reviews were too far apart and I failed a lot more than I do on this site. With that being said, you might like to use this site instead of anki as I find the second review for a kanji is only about a day away versus a couple of days (or something to that effect, I dont really keep track).

Another thing I do sometimes for tricky abstract kanji is fail the first review even though I got it easy, so that it goes to the fail pile for me to review again tomorrow. If tomorrow I feel comfortable, then I'll pass it otherwise I'll fail it even if I do get it.

Anyway, I've read everywhere that you shouldnt' give up learning Kanji, if you're really serious about learning japanese. as katsumoto, says 'there's no way over it, under it , around it but only through it when it comes to learning kanji', and you'll learn to speak and listen better when you subconsciously have a visual image of the kanji your'e speaking and listening to (apparently). I've just gotten past 1000 myself (>1085), and was also thinking about switching gears to do something else and i'm dying to start other things, but enough advice from the web, here, and ajatt.com about sticking to kanji only right now...has convinced me that it's critical to learn kanji early on. =) So I hope you stay on it..

I'm someone who felt just like you about RTK, always getting them wrong and considering quitting. But, as i pondered it (i took like 2 "2 week" breaks from rtk), it slowly dawned on me that even though RTK feels like a big nuiscence, i feel its better to get it (kanji i mean) out the way now, then later; and more importantly, persevere.

And because i did that, i finally did pass it, so it may be hard at times, but once you get over the hurdle, you'll only love and want to get into japanese so much sooner. so GOOD LUCK ^_^