lagwagon555 wrote:

I was just going to ask the same for a 1/3 thread Just clocked in 700. And to time in nicely, I have a review pile of 130, which is the biggest I've had so far. Oh well, best get chugging...

Get back to us when you have 1/3 in the right-hand stack.    That's when you are *really* 1/3 done.

Just finished chapter 40 or frame 1586 and man was that sort of kind of hard. Silage kicked my butt for sec since I didn't quite know what it was and I am pretty positive that I still don't even after looking at the definition. The only motivation for me is to get the Remebering the Kanji Poster as well as the Shirt. I also want to get to the gate kanji since it looks so cooool!

I'm just gonna post here and say... I am on frame 1816 as of today. I'll be finished by Sunday or sooner. I just flipped through the ~200 or so I have left and... I've got to admit... they look pretty frightening... but I'm gonna push through. 40 per day. I can sort out my issues with stubborn kanji after Sunday.

いつも。。。頑張っている

alyks wrote:

Here's a question, why did you choose mnemosyne over anki/supermemo? Just curious.

This has probably already been answered (I'll see once I read on - I'm going through the whole thread), but I figured I'd throw in my two cents:
I like Mnemosyne because it's simple and easy-to-use... but also, it uses your results for a research project (your statistics are anonymously (and without revealing what kinds of things you're studying in the program) sent to the creator of the program), so using Mnemosyne helps science along in the study of spaced repetition and memory and such.

I just wish it kept more statistics like Anki does. I like statistics too... but I like research more

Also note this review for some pretty interesting comparisons between Mnemosyne, Anki and SuperMemo. Mnemosyne actually came out best, according to the reviewer, who used it to help them pass the JLPT 2kyuu.

Btw, I'm at 930 kanji at the moment. I add them in fives by first studying them on the Study page, then adding them to my pile and reviewing them to see if I know them straight after learning them (so far, always have (just started doing it this method though)), and if not, I'll study them again on the Study page. After I add 5 new ones, I make the newest one into my avatar to help me keep track of my progress

phauna wrote:

alyks wrote:

Sleeping is the best thing for memory. It's the difference between a 50% and 80% retention.

I used to think that but I hardly sleep at all, because of my daughter, and still with an SRS I'm up around 94% retention.  I think an SRS doesn't allow you to forget no matter what, and perhaps I put a little more effort in because of my sleep deprivation.

REM sleep helps you remember (transfers knowledge from short term to long term memory), and while you don't have to catch up on ordinary sleep, your body does catch up on REM sleep if you don't get a lot of that. So in other words, if you don't sleep well, you'll still probably get about the same amount of REM sleep, or at least a reasonable amount. So chances are you'll still remember things quite well, so long as you do sleep some.

Last edited by Whatsifsowhatsit (2009 May 29, 6:54 am)

wishroom wrote:

Just now reached 800.  I've been doing 10-15 a day(started off doing 20), but my goal now is to do 20 a day and be finished by the end of July.

This is a very realistic goal, and you should have zero problems meeting it.  Right now, I'm at 1198, and I add 11 a day.  Slow, yes?  But it's very comfortable, and my reviews are not crushing my desire to do them.  I'll finish in August.  My reviews will continue to be very, very manageable.

I'm at the 450 mark right now.

Actually I read somewhere on the forums that someone put a counter in their messenger message thing and it motivated them to see the number go up. Well, I did that and it really demotivated me. Pressure pressure ARGH having people know only made it worse for me... now I've removed it and trying to get back to work.

Half a week without seeing this site really put me out of the loop.

mentat_kgs wrote:

@Wally
Not slow at all. It is a strong pace. Determination until the end is what really counts. Way to go.

Thanks for the kind words.

I agree with you -- setting a pace that you can maintain until the end is key.  I have absolutely no doubt about finishing.  It will take another 80 days or so, but so what.  I am absolutely going to finish this project, and that is the name of the game.  ^_^

Reinforcing good behavior with food...hmm...I've had that kind of upbringing as well as receiving food when I'm upset thats why I'm not healthy as I used to be.

Congrats hitting the 1,000 mark though.

Whatsifsowhatsit wrote:

So I recently passed the 1,000 kanji mark, and to be supportive my parents devised a test with 100 randomly selected kanji from these 1,000. If I got 50 right, I got a snack; if I got 90 right, all of my family got one. I got 95 right

That was my personal encouragement for the day. I'm continuing with renewed enthusiasm now!

Congratulations! That sounds fun! Its great that you've got such a supportive family!

Just started yesterday so im on 100 Kanji, and enjoying it quite a lot, suprisingly.

For once im actually looking forward to studying!

Good luck to all those that are higher or lower than me, and keep at it

Whatsifsowhatsit wrote:

So I recently passed the 1,000 kanji mark, and to be supportive my parents devised a test with 100 randomly selected kanji from these 1,000. If I got 50 right, I got a snack; if I got 90 right, all of my family got one. I got 95 right

That was my personal encouragement for the day. I'm continuing with renewed enthusiasm now!

Even getting encouragement from your parents!? Awesome!

sakatsu wrote:

I'm at the 450 mark right now.

Actually I read somewhere on the forums that someone put a counter in their messenger message thing and it motivated them to see the number go up. Well, I did that and it really demotivated me. Pressure pressure ARGH having people know only made it worse for me... now I've removed it and trying to get back to work.

Half a week without seeing this site really put me out of the loop.

Making a public declaration of your goal is a step in the right direction. You were probably just being to hard on yourself. Instead of counting up, set a date you want to finish at and calculate how many kanji per day you need to do to get there.

Of course, if the number you have to do to get there is far more than what you are doing now, you probably want to set a more doable date.

Last edited by kazelee (2009 June 10, 5:59 pm)

Then I'll make this a message with miscellaneous stuff. I'm sure no one will mind my making two messages since there's so much to say, and a message with both those quotes and all this other stuff would just be messy.

WARNING: Long message!

So, after I hit ~1,000 (1,060, actually) and read this post by alyks, I made my own victory board/poster/sheet... that was Monday last week. I decided to do 30 a day every day from then on and finish July 17th. I'm tracking my progress on the victory sheet, and also keeping track of the number of repetitions I have every day (just because I think it's interesting and I like statistics). I'll post up a picture of the victory sheet sometime once I can get a hold of my dad's videocamera. Anyway, so that was ten days ago, and I'm at 1,360 now, so... so far, so good!

Downsides:
- My retention rate hasn't been so good anymore, especially for the ones most recently learned;
- Because of this, the amount of repetitions I do every day has still been increasing. Today (which is to say, June 25th) is the top so far with 110 new repetitions;
- Since I made the sheet, I've been thinking about my kanji and my progress a lot more, and it seems like I've slowed down because I think thoughts like "I'm at 1,360 now" so many times per day that it seems like there's no advancement. And that is a little bit frustrating... like crossing down the days on a calendar before Christmas might make a kid waiting for that very special present feel like it's actually taking longer now.

Upsides:
- My retention rate still manages to get better for newish kanji that I've failed a couple of times, after some days;
- My motivation has greatly improved, and I've been going through even the many tens of repetitions I've been getting a day reasonably hassle-free so far (although at one time, I just finished three minutes before midnight... that was stressful). Even tonight, I've already done 55 out of 110 repetitions (exactly half) after midnight and before going to bed, at a remarkable pace;
- Even though it feels like I'm not going that fast, I've actually been going a lot faster than I have before, and the three weeks (and two days) before I finish really aren't that long if you look at it objectively.

I'd also like to say some things about the way I've been studying the kanji. For one thing, I never learn new kanji until all my repetitions are done, and my failed pile is empty. That's worked well for me; if I don't do that, my review and failed piles will just get even fuller and that will demotivate me greatly.

Another thing I'd like to note, in reply to people like Walden (see this post for example), who have been expressing concern about their retention rates... many people in this thread (I've read it in full by now, btw ) have given the advice not to worry too much, to trust in the SRS and to make sure your stories are vivid and imaginative, and you can really see them in your mind. And I agree with all that strongly... but I would like to point out that vivid stories and such aren't all it takes - you still need to link the keyword with the story. That's another point where recalling a kanji can go wrong. For me personally, it's usually not that I forget a story, but rather that I don't properly think of the story when I see the keyword.

That's why it's important to strongly, consciously link the keyword with the story. You can make this easier by giving the keyword a very prominent "role" in the story so that the word is inherently likely to bring the story back to mind.
Another thing that helps me sometimes is to just connect the keyword to the story by rote memorization - it's not as bad as learning the entire story that way (or, heaven forbid, the shape of the kanji without a story). Of course, when doing the rote memorization thing in this case, you'll want to link it to the image/abstract idea of the story, not the actual words that describe it.
Yet another thing that could help is to imagine yourself seeing the keyword in the future and then thinking of this story. Through just imagining that, it might actually happen in the future once you do see that keyword, because you'll have made stronger connections in your brain between the keyword (and especially the experience of seeing it, since that's what you imagined) and the story.

These are just things that worked for me, but you may be able to think of your own ways to make sure the keyword will actually bring the story to mind. My main point was just that besides remembering the actual story, this is another thing that is very important while learning the kanji.
By the way, I do realize the keywords themselves aren't the actual point of RtK1 so much as just remembering to distinguish and write all the different kanji, but for the purpose of doing that through the RtK-method, you'll still need to recall the stories through the keywords, obviously.

Last edited by Whatsifsowhatsit (2009 June 24, 6:57 pm)

yukkuri_kame wrote:

Very good points about building that connection between keyword>story>kanji.  One more, I would add, is if you often confuse similar keywords, for example "sea" and "ocean", build a differentiation into your story to distinguish them.  It is the similar keywords that kill me every time.

That's very true as well... good thing to add.

yukkuri_kame wrote:

BTW, I am at 1332 and chugging along at a similar pace.  Rather than do 30 a day, though, I am doing one lesson per day.  The thematic groupings make things a little easier.

I can imagine that also being helpful. For me, however, I need to keep my number of repetitions under control in order to stay motivated. If I would do a lesson a day, there'd be some lessons where I did a lot of new kanji all of a sudden, and I'd probably get too many repetitions to keep up. But that's just me, I can imagine something like this working for other people.