ihatobu wrote:

However, I seriously doubt that many of those individuals have sustained their study habits, uninteruppted, for years at a time after completing the book. That sounds great in theory-- but in the real world, with demands of job, family, friends... with illnesses and home purchases and moving and getting married and raising babies... etc. etc. etc.... in the real world, sooner or later everyone lapses in their study. It's inevitable.

People manage to spend hours every other day exercising to keep fit. People read novels before bed every night. People read their bibles every morning before work. People pray in the direction of Mecca three (is it three?) times a day every day of their lives. There are countless hobbyists who have to work at their hobby at least nearly every day (musicians and artists, for instance), and at incredible investments in time. Why would it be inevitable for someone not to be able to review 15 flashcards a day? I think you're severely underestimating people, or the difficulty of these reviews.

That argument invalidates the entire attempt at language learning anyway, really. Every aspect of the language takes minimal amounts of effort every day to become proficient, not just the kanji.

Separate from that, I can't comment on long-term retention personally because I'm not long-term yet. There are a number of long-haulers around here, though.

It's the same as with every other skill: use it or lose it.

Indeed, time management and consistency is the key. I've only been going at this for about 5 months now (finished rtk1 in 3 months), and I haven't missed a single day of reviews except for a few days when my internet went down. Some days, it was VERY HARD to make myself review. But you know what, after doing it for so long now, it has become a part of my life. Its just what I do every day.

The most important thing above all, is to try to never miss a day, no matter what. Because when you miss a day, you may just think "I can make up for it tomorrow". But then when tomorrow comes, its suddenly much easier to blow it off again. And before you know it, you've completely stopped.

I'm not saying to sit there and try to work in an hour or more of study every day, but its very important that you at least do SOMETHING, even if you can only manage about 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe wake up a few minutes early in the mornings to try and fit some reviews in, or make yourself do some before you go to bed.

Of course, there can always be some major life-shattering circumstances that can keep you from getting it done on some days. You do have to take care of what's important in your life above all else. The key is to just get back in there as soon as you POSSIBLY CAN.

I imagine once you make it through the initial kanji wall, the amount of reviews per day diminishes drastically. Once every card is implemented, and as cards get closer to the fourth box, you will get back to that 15 reviews per day situation. You just need to stick with it. You can't get something for nothing, after all.

Edit: And you live in Tokyo? How hard can it really be to get daily practice with using kanji? Just step outside!

Last edited by The_Dude (2008 July 31, 10:55 am)

ihatobu wrote:

Yes, of course. Without a doubt, a significant amount of time and energy must be invested when learning a language. That's a given. However, the problem I was describing was INTERRUPTIONS-- and the fact that a kanji learning system like this one is heavily dependent on short-term memory. At least until a sufficient amount of literacy is developed and reading becomes a regular routine in itself. One question I am asking is, at what point does the system become ratched-- so you don't backslide and have a tremendous amount of catching up to do every time your regular study routine is disturbed.

When I started the reviews involved 15 flash cards a day. By the time I got half-way through the book the reviews involved hundreds of kanji at a time. As one progresses, and the number of kanji increases, the reviews require more and more time. Long-term retention does improve over time, but not as fast as the rate of increase in review volume. So it's like walking up a hill the steepness of which increases the higher you get. I imagine that this isn't so much of a problem is you can progress without interruption, because in that case you don't lose short-term memory.

I would disagree that it relies heavily on short-term memory. After just 3 or 4 reviews, a card won't be appearing for another month or so. That's definitely long term memory right there, at least as long as you keep reviewing it.
The number of cards you have to review does increase as you get further and further along. There are two primary factors that play into this:
1. The amount of new cards that you add each day
2. The number of cards you miss each day

#1 can obviously be controlled. If you are getting too many reviews to handle, just cut back on your new cards for a couple weeks.
#2 is much more difficult to control. If you find that you are missing more than about 70% or so of your kanji each day, you should seriously consider if you are doing something wrong, or if you can improve the way you remember them. I think the big problem would come in if you go a long time without reviewing and then come back. If you start off having to review 1000 kanji, and you end up missing about half of them, then thats 500 kanji going right back into the first stack. That's like adding 500 brand new kanji to learn all over again. It will take a while for them to work their way back through the srs and get up to longer intervals. So, if you are still adding new kanji on top of all that, your number of reviews may be pretty difficult to manage.

Dragg wrote:

But, as long as I study regularly through reading in context, I really dont find keyword/story reviewing to be absolutely necessary because the reading exposure alone seems to keep all that fresh enough.

Dragg, be careful doing this.  I did the same thing (I was reading a TON) and skimped on reviewing.  After 6 months I realized I could no longer write a lot of the Kanji.  My vocab and grammar skills definitely improved, but my ability to write and recall Kanji were abysmal.  So I started RTK over again (this time with Japanese keywords).

@ suffah

I agree 100 percent.  I've noticed a similar decline in my ability to write the more complicated kanji by hand.  I seem to always remember the keywords but sometimes the details of the stories get fuzzy (although I almost never fail to recognize them).

The main reason I stopped reviewing on this site was because the English keywords weren't fading in my mind the way many people think they are supposed to.  This was causing some problems with my reading because whenever I encountered a new or uncommon compound I would immediately think of the English keywords, and only afterwards would I guess at the ON readings.  This was slowing my reading down so I figured that I would stop reviewing the keywords/stories and, instead, focus on solidifying the on-yomi as my dominant layer of knowledge by drilling RTK 2 and reading in context.  This process  has helped my reading a lot, but as you mentioned, my production has already taken a turn for the worse.

So maybe I should try the Japanese keywords after all.  At least that would squeeze English out of the equation and get my writing back on track.

Yeah, same thing happened to me. I went through and learned the first 150 kanji, then stopped. Later I went through again and learned 250 in one day, because the first 150 were easy as pie. Then I stopped again...

The SRS system, although not perfect, tries to emulate what happens in your memory. The fact that when you take a break (1 or 2 weeks), a ton of reviews show up, implies that you have in fact forgotten a lot of stuff.
Production/ recognition: if you stop reviewing RTK and try to retain kanjis by reading in context, you will probably get to be good at recognition, but you will lose gradually your production ability. That is not good or bad in itself, it depends in what your objectives are. I would like to be good at everything, but time is so limited..

For the long haul, you will have seen so many of these characters that they cease to be an issue completely. Also, most stories fade away. If you're fairly advanced in your Japanese and still find yourself doing kanji reps, I would say it's not the most efficient use of your time...

ihatobu wrote:

Zarxrax wrote:

I would disagree that it relies heavily on short-term memory. After just 3 or 4 reviews, a card won't be appearing for another month or so. That's definitely long term memory right there, at least as long as you keep reviewing it.

I originally shared Zarxax's concept of short-term vs. long-term memory, but actual empirical experience has shown that this black and white distinction is overly simplistic.

Just FYI, if you remember it after more than about a minute without rehearsal, it's in long-term memory.

This may seem like an irrelevant distinction, but I'd argue it's important--remembering that "long-term memory" and "permanently learned" are really not very closely related at all will prevent you from making the "black and white distinction" in the first place.

~J