What I did to maintain my 50/day schedule:

1. I made it a habit to do my daily memorizing at the same time everyday. This helped a lot.
2. I used a victory board:

3. I ignored retention rates.

Alyks, I really admire your motivational approach, as I do the same thing. I love how you have that phrase at the bottom, hah. I laugh because I do the same thing, thinking no one else does it. Every time someone enters the room, I attempt to run them out or hide it.

I will follow your 'way' and see how I turn out. I am sure I will be fine, probably just over-worrying which is what I tend to do a lot. Not good for me or my learning progress I know.

+CandyCane

Let me ask one more thing, directed to you Alyks. When reviewing new cards, how many times do you write them out to remember them? Yes I know the importance of stories, but I understand writing them+reinforcing the story at the same time may be a better approach.

+CandyCane

Most people recommend writing it once. I usually write it between one and three times, just because I tend to take a second to mull over it after I've already gotten it (refresh my mind), and while I'm doing that my hand kindof just keeps going.
That's when reviewing, mind. When learning, I did the same thing, but ended up writing it down a lot more since I'd take a long time thinking up the story, writing the whole time (unconsciously).
On the other hand, now that I'm done with RTK, and I don't actually use stories or any mnemonics anymore, I don't even write kanji when I first see them. I only write them when they pop up in sentences I'm reviewing for production, when I feel like writing them out (which isn't all the time). It hasn't affected my retention, so...
But, yeah... one is enough.

I'm currently doing 20 kanji a day and I am now on 560 kanji.  I started on the 7th of September with a couple days doing 30 or 40 kanji.

The current process I have now is that I do my 20 kanji each day, every day.  I suggest that you get a designated work area for your "kanji stuff."  My desk is nice in that it has a second tabletop that I can slide out (it is essentially a glorified keyboard shelf) and have my RTK book on with some paper to work from.  I also did a Google search for "Graph Paper Generator" and found one and printed a dozen pages of graph paper.  Somehow writing on those tiny squares keeps me going because I'm so excited to switch to a fresh piece of paper after they're all filled.

When I study my kanji, I look at the keyword and the shape of the kanji in the book and then come to this site for a story.  When I find one I like (or create my own), I draw the kanji in the air with my finger while repeating the story to myself as I write the primitives in it.  I then write a large, clear version of the kanji on a regular lined sheet of "scrap paper," again repeating the story to myself as I write it.  I then write it on the little graph paper square and move to the next story.  This generally works well for me.

When I've finished doing my 20, I update my RTK stack with my new cards but I do not review them until the next day.  After that, I open an Excel calendar I've been keeping and write down how many I've done that day.  It's really motivating to see the days fill up with the amount of kanji I've learned that day, as well as how many reviews I've done that day (which I do before going to bed).

Finally, I have a laminated poster with all the RTK kanji in order on it.  After I've updated my stacks here from studying, I sit down at my bed with it and a dry erase marker and start to iterate through the kanji.  I will write the kanji with the marker right over the printed kanji while trying to recall the story that I have associated with that kanji, and the word eventually comes to me.  I find that this context-switch of studying is good for helping it solidify in my mind, as well as being a colorful visual indicator of my success.


I guess to summarize this whole thing, I suggest coming up with a formula, and a way of visual charting your success.  It is really motivating to open your calendar and see how much work you've done each day.  It's hard to break the streak when you've been doing it for a month!

CandyCane wrote:

Yes Codiferous, 吾 mark my daily progress as 井ell. It makes it 難ifficult to "break the 鎖hain". 吾 薦ecommend anyone looking for a 良ood external motivator, google breaking the 鎖hain by Jerry Seinfeld. Also, you taught 僕e an effective way to solidify my stories 中n my head, the 分術rt where you said to draw 各ach primitive 中n the air while explaining the 階tory.

Thanks guys for the answers, 皆ll 之f you really helped 僕e.

The 他ther 物hing that worries 僕e is that 吾 為o them 中n spurts 之f 5, then 為o the test, 動ove on to the 次ext 5, 等tc. 吾'm afraid 吾 am 勿ot learning properly.

+CandyCane

吾 為o it 5's, and 吾 着on't feel like 吾'm doing it wrong >_>

If you wanted to know, my retention rates are usually 85-95% a 日ay, and I'm at 1650 kanji so far.

Last edited by Squintox (2008 October 01, 3:37 am)

CandyCane, I'd recommend just getting down to it.  It'll probably take you until around frame number 300-400 before you settle into your own groove.

First things first: no offense to Heisig, but dump his stories right now.  Seriously.  Use the book for reference and stories for primitives, but that's it.  Heisig's life is not yours, and you will notice HUGE improvements by making your stories just that: your OWN stories.  If you're stuck trying to come up with a story, use the submissions on this site.  Heisig's stories should be your absolute last resort.

Don't worry about only studying 5 frames at a time.  I tried doing that, too (because of the same perceived benefit you believe it provides), but found that it honestly didn't help my retention rate (retention rate for 20-at-a-time was the same as 5-at-a-time).  More important than how MANY you're tackling at a time is when/where/what-kind-of-distractions.  If you can't concentrate, you're not gonna remember anything.  As long as you are getting around 75-100% retention rates during review, don't sweat it.  The review-->fail-->learn-from-failure process is supposed to help you weed out those stories that you know (and thus don't need to bother your mind with) versus those that you don't (and thus should be focusing your energy on).  Don't test your newly-added cards too quickly after studying, either.  That just reinforces your short-term memory.  Test them the next day (24 hours later).  If you fail all of them, that's fine -- it just shows that you need better stories, 'cause the ones you got ain't stickin'.

Don't write the kanji more than twice during the learning stage.  More than this and you're just wasting time.  Write each kanji on paper (not just in the air or on your palm) during the review -- the visual feedback will help your brain notice mistakes -- but only write a kanji a second time if it's *really* tricky for some reason.

If for some reason, you're finding your fail pile growing by leaps and bounds, it's a sure sign that you're not making stories that are memorable.  Make sure not to confuse a catchy phrase with a visual story -- occasionally catchy phrases do work, but use them ever-so-sparingly.

Try not to think of the pass percentage during the review in the same sphere as a test.  It's more like playing music.  When you make a mistake on a test, you usually think "oh crap, well, whatever...next time".  Reviewing the Kanji isn't like that at all.  When you make a mistake while playing music, you go back and TWEAK how you played a note/section.  That's what you should be doing.  You should be finding your mistakes and tweaking the things that aren't working.  You'll likely even to find yourself going back to tweak frames that you studied weeks/months ago, just because you later figured out how to make it better.

Last edited by potempkin (2008 October 01, 12:28 pm)

To help with retention of your stories, I would suggest you take the time to fully visualize them in your mind while saying your story.  Using your example for morning, I would close my eyes and visualize a misty morning, to the left you can see the sunlight glinting through the mist (with the beams of light above and below the sun glinting in the shape of the kanji for needle/ten), and to the right you can see the moon just disappearing behind the horizon, and instead of the "Man in the Moon," the moon has 月 printed on it.  If you take the time to place yourself within this scene, visualizing it fully in your head while saying your story, you'll have a visual memory associate with the kanji in case you can't remember a keyword in your story.  For particularly difficult kanji, I will also visualize the pieces of the kanji within the scene, like picturing the "mist" kanji right over the sun, and visualizing the word "morning floating in the sky in very large letters - (letters which I picture as being lit by the misty morning light on the left and that of a waning moon on the right - ha ha).

I also write them out when I learn them and when I "answer" when I review them - I think it helps in retaining them.  If you've written something a few times it helps you get the feel for the placement of the primitives.  That way you have some muscle memory as well as your visual memory and mnemonic memory to draw from.

Don't put yourself in too much of a rush - whatever pace is best for you is what you should do.  It's not going to do you much good to rush ahead too fast while forgetting Many of the later kanji are built from the earlier ones, so I find that it's been best for me to get them really solid in my memory before progressing.

I've encountered the same problem as candycane, in not making the keyword the active part of each story, and have had to correct many stories (currently in the 700s).

I just couldn't handle 30 a day. I went up to about 15 a day and found myself quickly avalanched by reviews and couldn't put the time in to make stories stick, so my retention went way down. I've had to drop it a bit further still, and am still working at making a good 150 kanji done during that period stick. But it's more manageable now.

I'm certainly not the most qualified to give advice on RTK since I'm only nearing the 1000 mark myself, but I can hopefully offer a few pointers to you nonetheless.

I have gone through periods where I've added between 20 and 50 new kanji a day.  To keep up the pace, perhaps one day I'll slack off and not review expired kanji.  Then, perhaps, I'll avoid testing the new cards I added until a few days after.  Pretty soon it's been a few days since I've done any sort of substantial review, and lo-and-behold, when I do finally get around to reviewing properly, my retention is awful.  My advice, then, is quite simple.

Study your 30 new kanji (don't rush through them, of course) and write them on some handmade flashcards.  Leave them and return ten minutes later to see what your retention is like and if you have forgotten any then study the appropriate ones and leave them again.  Then return in perhaps an hour and check again.  Then once in the evening.  If you have sorted out your new kanji up to here, then add them to your stack here and test them the very next day without fail.  This should help you get a good initial grip on the kanji.

That aside, just make sure you keep up with any expired cards and do not allow failed kanji to just sit there.  Try a story, put it back in there.  If it fails again then so be it; the worst thing you can do is leave them there stagnating.

Hope that helps pal.

I totaly agree. Heisig himself advises that. I do it once for every review and my handwriting is getting neater. It was very ugly in the beggining. Now it is better, but it is still far from perfect.

About your pace. I did not followed that. Somedays I did none and somedays I was doing 100. Maybe that's why it was so painful. A good pace seems a good idea.

I used to write each of them out, then I stopped because I was lazy. Then I realized that it was taking me more time to draw them with a finger in the air than it did to actually write them. Plus if you write them you can more reliably check if you answered it correctly.

Candy, the best piece of advice that I can give a beginner is to make sure you have really poignant images or stories even for the ones that seem very easy now, and make sure that it incorporates the EXACT keyword. Later you'll have some with almost identical keywords and that'll trip you up.