Slow down your learning for awhile and realize that it's probably nothing more than you psyched yourself out.

It's easy to discount the affect that things have on the human psyche, but we're honestly quite fragile and not as in control of ourselves as we like to say. As you said, after you missed 10 you were freaking out and screaming, so it's pretty natural that you were going to miss the great majority of the rest of them. After you lose your cool, it's all going to go down hill. In fact, I'd probably say that you were already rolling down this slope before you got to 10 fails. Once you saw your fails equal to your passes, you were probably losing it. I know I do. On a typical day, it really gets to me if I start to miss any over 10% of my cards, and when that happens, I'll slide a LOT further if I don't stop myself.

When that happens, I recommend stepping away for awhile, settling yourself back down. If not, just exit your review and then go back in so you're not looking at that "12 pass 5 fail" statistic anymore.

If this is a one time deal, don't worry about - but do slow down for a while and see what happens. You only need to go back and take a really hard look at how you're doing this if it's a repeat problem.

Edit: I feel this deserves further comment. I think that one of the biggest obstacles that we have here is this idea that we're wasting time, we're not actually going to remember, and it's all going to be a massive failure. I know it's always weighing on my mind, sometimes more than others (like when I'm failing cards), and I think it's obviously gotta weigh a lot more heavily on someone who's 'failed' (I use the word to emphasize state of mind, not put you down, since it's not like it's your fault) more than once in the past. I think it's likely that more people end up quitting out of a fear of failure rather than by actually failing the method or anything, which gives you something of a personal self-fulfilling prophecy. So just don't let yourself be freaked out.

Last edited by QuackingShoe (2008 June 22, 11:39 pm)

I used to have a lot of the same problems.  Last time I tried to go through the book, my review rates kept falling the further in I got, my failed stack kept getting out of hand, and I eventually got so overwhelmed and discouraged that by the time I got to about frame 750 I kept letting myself get distracted by other endeavors more and more until I eventually quit Heisig outright without realizing it.  And all this was over the course of about four or five months.

This time around, I've been at it for about a month and a half, and I'm already on frame 1300.  I'd probably be done by now, but I ran into a few GTA/MGS related roadblocks...

In any case my advice would be to experiment, and find out what approach works best for you.  In my case,  I switched from using this site to using Anki.  No offense to Fabrice, since I think he's made a wonderful tool, and the story sharing aspect has been invaluable, but I like the fact that Anki forces me to deal with my failed cards instead of just letting them pile up, and it's algorithms just work better with my memory.  I also started putting my stories on the question sides of my cards.  I'd rant about the merits, but I'm no pundit. I'll just say that it's tremendously increased my recall rate over time, and not just because the story is there if I need it.

Pretty recognizable... whenever I fail more than a 'few' cards (I usually only get about 75 % on reviews, which is irritating enough. But at least my daily reviews ARE going down even though it is slowly), I get irritated and there's a huge chance I'll fail kanji I normally don't have any trouble with.

Around the end, I did 60 cards a day, and it was still manageable. But I started out with 5 a day (which was too low, it only made my recall worse ). I think *for me* the best number of new kanji a day was 30-40-ish. But I couldn't have kept up with that through the whole book, because review numbers would've gotten out of control.

What I noticed with the higher number of new cards... My short term recall rate (1 day, new cards tested the next day) was perfect, 95~100 %. ... 3 days later, I usually failed 30~40 % of the newer cards, UGH!
I think it was more because of the amount than that the stories weren't ok. I was, after all, trying to do too much. I didn't have any trouble 'learning' 40 new kanji a day, and I was fine the next day... but if there had been 2 more days or trying to learn 40 new kanji... I had almost lost the first ones.

Anyway...
If you fail 'too many' in your opinion (I sometimes did this, haha), just click the 'go to summary' and review a few stories of kanji you failed... And start reviewing again (but this time, 0 failed 0 passed ). It's a cheap trick, of course, but if it helps motivation, why not? (I do write down the % of every review session a day, to still be able to see the average.)

Thanks for all the replies and words of encouragement!

It definitely helped to ease my worries. Now I think I'll just plow along, but slow down to about 25 a day. That should be manageable enough. Also, I think I figured out my memory, too. I need to have an... extra (?) keyword. Something that is an immediate word associate with the keyword that will call to mind the rest of the story.

Seems to work so far.

I'll get back to you when I start reviewing more frequently again.

And again, thanks for all the support!

My recall rate got worse and worse as I got farther into RTK. I started out around 90%, then about halfway through I was averaging about 80% most days. Once I got to about 1600 or so, my recall rate plummeted to 50-60%. This was brutal, because the more kanji you fail, the more reviews you end up having to do! I just finished RTK1 today, and for the past few days I've been having about 170 cards expire each day. In fact I even neglected my reviews for the past 2-3 days (I don't recommend this :p) and I have 300 cards in my expired stack right now. But, now that I'm done, I can take comfort in the fact that those expired stacks will get shorter and shorter every day, as long as I keep plugging away at it.
Actually I'm pretty sure I know why my recall rates dropped like they did. Towards the end of the book, you encounter more and more primitives, and primitives often don't have any good mnemonic device with them... Once you get past that though, the main thing is just trying to come up with good stories that associate with the keyword. I found that was one of my biggest problems--I see the keyword and I would just draw a blank. Then I see the kanji and think "doh, I knew that!" A lot of my stories just didn't have a strong enough association with the keyword, and I think that's one of the toughest things to fix, sometimes.

I'm having the same issue with my kanji recall rates dropping a bit towards the end of the book. My recall rate was in the 90's for the first 1000 or so, then in the high 80's to 1500, then the mid to low 80's now.. I'm glad I'm over 1900 kanji now because I've had a few reviews in the 70's and I do not like that at all. I think part of my problem is having to do reviews of 120, 130 kanji a day. I cannot wait to finish up this weekend and start seeing a slow shrinking of the daily reviews. I still plan to add 10 per week of RTK3 for fun, but 10 a week beats 140 a week.

Ryuujin27 wrote:

It's really hard to fix your association with that keyword. I've even come to keywords where I will pre-associate (not a word, I know) a phrase or a meaning behind the keyword that absolutely has nothing to do with the primitives. This trips me up every time it happens, and it is hard to... overwrite, is a good word, I guess.

Sometimes it might be a good idea not to overwrite it, even if it doesn't have anything to do with the primitives. I think the process of associating a Kanji with a phrase, saying, or context is easier than the process of associating a keyword with the same. That is to say, once I remember what my story for a keyword is, I rarely actually have to RECITE the story to remember the primitives - once I make that first leap, I just remember the kanji because the whole thing is just a package deal. As the most dramatic example, I never had any story or image whatsoever for the character 'Melancholy'. But 'Melancholy' reminds me of 'Haruhi,' and from there I've wrapped the kanji into it, even though she has nothing to do with anything (well, I'm sure I could come up with something, but the point is that I haven't). The important jump is actually from the keyword to ANYTHING else you can associate with the kanji, and not necessarily from the story to the kanji. So if you have a pre-association with a certain word, go ahead and use it if you can, even if it might not seem immediately useful.

Anyway, I don't suggest making frequent use of this kind of thing because I don't know how much of it one can handle. But if you keep finding that your mind always jumps to one specific thing other than what you want it to, you might try to use that preexisting connection to your advantage.

Haha, I also associate Melancholy with Haruhi. I also associate "group" with Haruhi too (can't type the kanji as I'm on my phone). For Melancholy I don't put Haruhi into my story, but for group I say she has all her group members pent in the club room and glued down, and that works quite well.

Also, I do that thing during in between time too. But I also do it all day long sometimes. For example, when I am at work I think to myself while doing the mindless busy work and when a keyword happens to come up, I call to mind the kanji. If I can't recall it I'm sure not to try too hard, but check my book the next chance I get.

All and all, I think that helps me remember more.

Anyway, thanks for all the help, guys. It's really gotten me back on track!

I think you've more than finished your English studies, Jonathan. You're English is very good!

Ryuujin27 - Thanks! Although I'm already at a level where I can communicate quite well in English, I still find myself making some mistakes here and there, as well as finding some words I don't know. I guess language is the kind of thing you never actually stop studying, I think even native speakers are bound to keep learning their languages throughout their lives (mostly vocabulary, I presume). Well, at least it's like this in my country, so I guess it applies to others as well. Also, I'm still lacking my ECPE (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/testing/ecpe) diploma. I'm only going to take the test next year, so until then I'm still an English student.

mentat_kgs - I'm not advertising RTK for any Brazilian for two reasons: the first and minor one, is that I don't know that many Brazilians who know English; the second and real reason, is that I don't know, in person, anyone besides me who is interested in studying Japanese. I'm doing self-study, so I lack fellow students. And FYI, I've finished RTK for about a month now. BTW, where are you from?

I just wanted to thank everyone for this thread.  I had a day like that yesterday and it was extremely reassuring to know that I'm not alone.  (I, too, was shouting at the screen.)  I just passed 400, so I still have a ways to go.  I think I'm going to try slowing down the pace a little bit, too.

Yo wood! I'm doing the same as you. I differ only that I do kanjis in packs of 5.
This helps finding out that your beloved story is not that good as soon as possible.

If you take not enough care, here on RevTK, you'll find out that your story was no good only 3 days after clicking on the "learned" button.

And yeah sfekas. Keep working hard. Some people seem to breeze trought RTK. But some of us have a lot of trouble doing it. But it doesnt mean we will not succeed. Good luck!