prawn12
New member
From: England
Registered: 2008-08-29
Posts: 2
I really like the added ability to check your story whilst reviewing, it certainly improves my score at the end of each review, acting as an effective way to jog my memory.
Perhaps too effective, if I was to glance over at the large kanji on the left side of the pop-up! I can easily reconstruct a forgotten kanji from my stories, and don't wish for it to be handed to me on a plate like that. In the past, I have overcome this problem by covering it with keyhole TV (a little program that always sits on top and streams Japanese television); however, today, streaming was not so good, so I resorted to dragging the window so the bit where it appears was off the screen.
That was when I realised what I was doing was really silly, and was wondering if there's any chance of it being fixed, or whether there are more effective workarounds?
I already extend the capability of the website with some of the scripts available for Greasemonkey, and if it could be simply done by a line of code in that, that would be great!
I have another suggestion for the stories pop-up: I haven't yet written stories for every single kanji, so it would be good if it would insert the most popular story in a pop-up if it's empty.
Please let me know what you think, and if you can help out!
ファブリス
Administrator
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-06-14
Posts: 4021
Website
prawn12 wrote:
I really like the added ability to check your story whilst reviewing, it certainly improves my score at the end of each review, acting as an effective way to jog my memory.
You are giving yourself hints, and thus you are not getting an honest review of the "strength" of the stories that you made or selected in the Study area. The story IS the kanji. It is a direct list of the primitives, it gives away the character entirely, save for perhaps the position of the primitives when it is not totally obvious. If you find that it does not give away the story then you really need to look at memorizing the primitives themselves very well first, as this is the foundation. A good story should always name the primitives EXACTLY as they are named. If it's "dog", it's "dog", not "bulldog" "terrier" or whatever. Thus the story IS an obvious blueprint of the character, and if you still need effort after that, as I said you need to go back to the primitives and get these memorized as best as you can.
The Story popup in the Flashcard Review is there mostly as a facility to allow you to amend the story AFTER you flipped the card and realized you did not forgot it completely but parts of the story were weak. Another use is simply if while you review you find your first memory association was completely different than the story you chose previously, you can use that new association and write a new story there and then. But a failed review is a failed review.
I believe even where Heisig suggested to write the story on the card (somewhere in RtK Volume 1 ?), he meant it that you can "refresh" your story AFTER you gtested yourself and flipped the card.
You're free to peek at the stories while you review, but you are hurting yourself in the long run. You will feel that you know them well, but you don't. They will fade away after only a few weeks of inactivity, when they should last several months.
So I'm afraid I don't have plans to hide the kanji, because it is meant as a shortcut to the Study page, and otherwise the story is a complete giveaway hence hiding the character makes no difference.
PS: an example: if I read a story which lists "dog", "tree" and "house", there is no memory exercise at all. "House" nearly always goes on top, "tree" is nearly always on the left side (I don't know if that character exists, just an example). There is no hints there at all, the story is a complete giveaway.
