duder wrote:

i do not use mnemonics for rtk - while not finished, i nearly am -1900

the reason that i did it was because when writing japanese, it takes too long to remember a story. if you're thinking about a kanji story, its hard to think about what you're writing - i just srs'd until I burned the image in my head - now i can picture the entire kanji in my head- much like anyone can do with the alphabet...

I could be wrong on this, seeing how I'm only 450 into things, but I think the stories eventually fade away for any Kanji that study and write with any sort of regularity.  So far there are plenty of Kanji that I don't even begin to think about the story for when it pops up in the SRS.  It's just there and I know it.  Then when one pops up that I don't have internalized the story comes through as a support system.

I am a horrible speller in English (even though it is a major portion of my job...curse you spell check), and I find that if I'm writing things out on paper I often times dumb down my vocabulary due to a lack of confidence in writing words I have difficulty spelling.  With this, even if I forget how to "spell" a word, at least I can use a story to remind me of the stroke order.

But hey, if just using brute force is working for you, then I say go for.  Everybody should stick to what is working for them, and at 1900 it looks like it most definitely is. 

My theory though is this: you are some form of robot.  Memorization from sight, and stroke order.  Sounds very to-the-point, very clean cut...almost too clean cut.  Just how a robot would do it.  Well, a robot or the Borg.

duder wrote:

i just bash them in my head like the kids I teach - except using an srs makes me bash myself more efficiently.

You bash the kids in the head?!

yukamina wrote:

duder wrote:

i just bash them in my head like the kids I teach - except using an srs makes me bash myself more efficiently.

You bash the kids in the head?!

the language abuse that i give out is awful -

Personally I'm not sure that using stories will slow down your writing.  It could really be the opposite; someone who has built a strong memory with a story could remember the kanji quickly as a whole compared to someone who has less structured memory of the kanji.

When thinking about speed of writing the time required to remember what kanji to use for each word is important, so finishing RTK in the quickest time so that you have more time to practice words is important.  The time spent learning,failing, re-learning, writing out lots of kanji over & over is time that can be spent doing other things.

Last edited by vosmiura (2009 August 21, 4:15 am)

On frame 556 now; know a total of ~1040 now so just 1000 to go.

Anki's saying I have a 91% retention rate on young cards, so not too bad.

Well, I'll be adding those 500 eventually when I come to them anyway, so it's no big deal even if I have forgotten a few. At 723 now~

Last edited by dizmox (2009 August 29, 10:38 pm)

Koos83 wrote:

dizmox wrote:

but any rate, we all learnt the 26 letters of the alphabet visually (I assume).

The good part of RTK is that it allows you to study as an adult, not as a child.

What I remember from my lessons learning how to read and write in primary school, was having to write the letters over and over again, first tracing them and then writing them on my own. I still have the writing books to prove it. XD So that's still cramming.

When learning cursive in 3rd grade (which I've long since forgotten how to actually write myself beyond signing my name, haha) there was lots of repetition as well as making little pictures based on the letter as what I now recognize as a mnemonic device. i.e. a cursive e we'd turn into a bird.

lerris wrote:

Koos83 wrote:

dizmox wrote:

but any rate, we all learnt the 26 letters of the alphabet visually (I assume).

The good part of RTK is that it allows you to study as an adult, not as a child.

What I remember from my lessons learning how to read and write in primary school, was having to write the letters over and over again, first tracing them and then writing them on my own. I still have the writing books to prove it. XD So that's still cramming.

When learning cursive in 3rd grade (which I've long since forgotten how to actually write myself beyond signing my name, haha) there was lots of repetition as well as making little pictures based on the letter as what I now recognize as a mnemonic device. i.e. a cursive e we'd turn into a bird.

I can still write cursive. XD
We used to turn a cursive 2 into a swan... And 5 into a dog... Oh there were so many things. XD

ruiner wrote:

Koos83 wrote:

But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

There's no such thing as photographic memory, only rare people with eidetic memory that lasts minutes only after exposure, or people who use mnemonics extensively. Every other claim is anecdotal or debunked. Sorry! I actually can't find any proof of that limited definition of eidetic memory either, hmm. There's also this supremely rare condition, but it's for autobiographical/episodic memory: http://www.answers.com/topic/hyperthymesia - I think we had some articles about that posted here last year or something. Scary!

You can't deny there are people who read something once and they remember it for ages. I know, I teach kids like that every day. It happens more often than you think. The person I was talking about in my other post is my brother, so it's hardly anecdotal.

ruiner wrote:

Koos83 wrote:

But mnemonics aren't for everyone. There are also those out there with a near-photographic memory (I know someone personally who has this, it's not a myth) so perhaps that's you as well. I'm just curious to see how it will work for you in the long run.

There's no such thing as photographic memory, only rare people with eidetic memory that lasts minutes only after exposure, or people who use mnemonics extensively. Every other claim is anecdotal or debunked. Sorry! I actually can't find any proof of that limited definition of eidetic memory either, hmm. There's also this supremely rare condition, but it's for autobiographical/episodic memory: http://www.answers.com/topic/hyperthymesia - I think we had some articles about that posted here last year or something. Scary!

I gotta disagree. It exists to some degree. I say that because I experience it myself to a certain degree, particularly when referencing things i've looked up in a dictionary or something like that... oftentimes when I recall what i'm looking for mentally i'll see the mental image almost like a photograph of my lookup.

Look, I don't know if that counts or whatever but it's quite freakish when it happens the clarity of the image and all the relevant data i'm looking for encoded into my memory is stored for that particular piece of information as a visual image as opposed to abstract data. Usually a very clear when when I experience this. Basically as clear as day (in a flash) like I was looking at the exact same thing at the exact same point in time. However, it's not like looking at a physical photograph which you can hold in your hand, scan, and re-examine. I want to make that much clear. I guess it's just a case where visual memory is recalled very strongly but to a degree high enough that it replicates the real experience faithfully.

It's not super rare for me but it's also not super common. Happens with enough frequency though that I definitely acknowledge it's there. Wish I could make it happen all the time

As for a purely photographic memory of everything? I don't know if anyone has ever demonstrated one of those... although certain people, rare cases, born with freakish memories. However due to the nature of memory I don't really think it's viable. I'm no expert but I believe memory works with all your senses and each is encoded and stored in your brain differently depending on your environment at the time.

On a separate note...

Anyone heard of or better yet, tried, Photoreading?

Are people seriously debating the existence of visual memory? Clearly it exists...

Anyways, past frame 1000 now!

Last edited by dizmox (2009 September 05, 12:01 pm)

Up to 1333... less than 3 weeks to go *yawn* still ~91% correctness rate.