if your retention rate is around 70%, sure you're forgetting around 30% but you are REMEMBERING about 70%, that's what's important.

I have honestly had days with about 30% retention where I wanted to throw my arms up in the air and rage quit!

Now I am ALWAYS 80%+  typically 90 plus ( finished a couple weeks ago ) and the stuff that USED to be hard at the beginning, is now laughably easy

This is more to reassure you than to offer any actual help, but when I first started I was only getting about 50% . I was overcome with joy at the magic kanji learning method that allowed me to remember half the kanji I saw the first time round. Later on my retention rate became higher even with much less effort (and 70% became dissapointing), so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Of course, it's always worth experimenting to fine tune your method.

SheekuAltair made a good point about how your going to use the kanji after completing the book. When you learn knew word you'll be reviewing it right from the smallest intervals of SRS, which means you'll be seeing the kanji it uses much more regularly than in your kanji deck (where most of them will be in a higher box). Your going to be doing lots of additional drills, so it doesn't really matter if you can remember them perfectly before hand, and you likely won't have trouble with the shorter intervals anyway.

Last edited by Splatted (2011 February 11, 4:46 pm)

Ramger wrote:

I'm aware the first couple hundreds should be the easiest of them all, so I'm obviously doing something wrong and would like to fix it before getting into the harder kanji.

Actually, the first couple should be difficult. You're learning a completely new study process. Once you get "in the flow" then others will be easier.

Second, 70% is not bad as long as your reviewing consistently and frequently. I think I finished with 60%. Remember that 70% is your overall average. Some days you just won't have it. Some days you will. Maybe sometimes you keep failing the same few cards, but then you FINALLY get it and those cards are 100% after.

I agree that the first few hundred are the hardest.  I wouldn't worry.

Ramger wrote:

Alright thanks a lot guys, gonna keep on trying until I get the hang of it.

Will also try to stick with Heisig stories if possible, but some of them make no sense at all and find no way to remember regardless of how much I try (might be because of the Spanish translation though? Not sure).

I ditched the "heisig" stories from the start.

The only reason to necessarily use them is to get used to the system of making stories, but since this site has a tonne of user made stories feel free to use any of them as well.  It WILL NOT hurt, and it probably will be beneficial at least from time to time.


Good luck

I've made up most of my stories, as it relates to how I remember things.Everyone is different but a lot of people add there own "flavor" of memory into the mix.

The main problem I have with recalling kanji is not that I forget the story, but I forget which keywords to associate the story with.  When I hit failed and see the primitive elements, the story rushes back to me and I think "Oh, so that's the keyword to match up with the story!" and usually get it done well after one or two more reviews.  Sometimes there are some that I just can't get, but those are few and far between.  (<10% probably)

Try not to worry about it...if you're worrying about it now at 100 you will be going insane at 1000.  Sometims when I have a 70% review I want to cry and quit.  I think I even may have cried once...don't tell anyone.  But when I realized I was wasting too much time reviewing failed kanji and it was stressing me out too much, I just let the failed cards sit until the end of the week and then relearn them rather than forcing myself to half heartedly go over them every day.

MountainDewGuy wrote:

The main problem I have with recalling kanji is not that I forget the story, but I forget which keywords to associate the story with.  When I hit failed and see the primitive elements, the story rushes back to me and I think "Oh, so that's the keyword to match up with the story!" and usually get it done well after one or two more reviews.  Sometimes there are some that I just can't get, but those are few and far between.  (<10% probably)

You don't have to remember the stories because they are only words. The stories are there to help you to create a visual image, or a short scene, inside your head. The important thing is just that the keyword and the primitives are part of that one visual image or scene. Once that is done you will, or should have, a clear image of the 漢字 as a whole.

The stories can be long or short, it does not matter, as long as the story helps you to form an image. One image is enough, and 2042 images are easier to remember, than 2042 stories. It is like watching a movie that has touched you, and when someone is mentioning the name of that movie, even if it happens weeks or months later, you will stil be able to see that particular scene.

So, again, you don't have to "learn" a story or try hard to remember it when you have review the 漢字 to be able to write it. You have to recall one image when you see a given keyword to be able to write the character. What you really have to learn is how to create a visual image with the help of the story you or somebody else on here has written, while you are initially learning the characters. 

This is one part of the magic behind RTK 1.

I also started the Kanji study a few days ago - and at first I also got retention rates going erratically from 100% to 40%. I must admit though that when I was working late and I was tired I failed many more cards. So, rehearsing when you feel fit and fresh is always advisable, remembering is seldom 'absolute', but greatly depends on your alertness as long as the knowledge is not fully automated yet.

A second point, as regards to stories: some of Heisig's stories are okay, others definitely not. If a story works for you, great! If a particular story, does not work, you're right about looking on this site. On this site there are many good stories, in addition, I've learned two tricks:

1) Sometimes you may want to take another pick than Heisig did with memorizing the meaning of radicals. "Animal legs", I remember as a butcher with two pig legs instead of feet (from an old Dutch joke "Butcher, do you have pig legs? - Certainly, boy. -Wow, you must find it really hard to walk then.").

2) Try to personalize. I myself remember stories about persons much better than stories about things. My kanji are not populated by top hats and ceilings and needles and hooks, but by Salvation Army majors, superpowered grandmothers, spiteful schoolteachers, Michelangelo, dwarves, alchemists, comic book characters - many of whom may have to do with the Heisig keyword (Michelangelo painting the CEILING of the Sistine chapel), but for me, easier to remember than just putting a needle and an eye and a hook together in some kind of story. If you make your own keywords based on people or things that you find interesting, you may find learning easier than if you'd go 'pure Heisig'.

Hi Koos,

you're right that changing keywords or radicals can be dangerous; this is why I generally try to use comic book figures and such of which I truly hope that Heisig has not found an ancient Japanese equivalent. The butcher, by the way, did not give too much trouble as I remembered him as a particular kind of butcher (one limping along with difficulty on pig's legs; I didn't use the joke to just introduce the rather general word 'butcher'), while I use a regular, healthy and much slimmer butcher for the story for (for example) 'in front' (290). Though the 'pig leg' butcher is fading at the moment as the rehearsals via mnemosyne seem to be glueing him in my head to the other radicals they are often combined with (such as the eye, into shellfish).

And just as you can tell your colleagues apart from each other, even though they may have the same profession, so I try to make radicals or Kanji into individuals who I can recognize as individuals despite their similar function. Even if I would accidentally use one of my aunts for a Kanji, I can always 'recruit' another aunt if I encounter the real aunt kanji. As Stanislavski once said on acting, one should never create a 'soldier', one should create 'Constantin Petrov, cigar-smoking soldier second class with an unkrainian girlfriend and an irrational fear of white cats'.

Anyway, I think the main question here is why the OP had trouble remembering the kanji. I do not know the true reason. Perhaps he/she has trouble visualising, or working with the stories or images of Heisig. In such cases, I personally experiment with alternative interpretations or visualisations of the key word. In some cases I mess that up (for example, by remembering the left water radical as "Splash", while splash is actually a different Kanji; however, I now just remember the kanji itself as a giant/extreme splash (or 'splosh') and that seems to work well enough so far).

The OP's choices are basically: A) plod along with a system he/she has trouble with, B) try to experiment/tinker with the system to get better results, C) just give up on Heisig and revert to the JLPT and rote learning. I myself think that experimenting with stories and the visualisation of keywords can be useful; you are probably right in that one should try take care when choosing the visualisations.

What the OP will in the end choose is up to him/her, but I think that in general, thinking deeply about how best to learn Kanji is the best possible step you can take in mastering them; you may not end up with a method that is exactly the same as Heisig's, but it will probably be functional enough.

And I should update this in about 2 months, so I can report if I encounter trouble with the rest of Vol 1... [but so far, despite butcher and splash, not confused at all; apparently one's memory can be remarkably discriminating]

Last edited by EWLameijer (2011 March 06, 4:42 pm)