About 2-3 minutes a piece if done properly.

This is my daily routine:

At some point in the day (either at work or at home) I will go through the next 25 kanji in the book.  I do this by having a index card for each lesson and writing the kanji down and reading any notes that Heisig wrote for the Kanji.

I will then wait at least an hour before starting Anki (just so that I don't get some of the Kanji right solely from it still being in my short-term memory).

In Anki I have my cards setup with the front showing the keyword.  If I hover my mouse over the keyword there is some javascript that will reveal the story.  The answer side has the Kanji in MS Mincho font with the stroke count and Heisig number also on the page.  If I hover over the Kanji it will then switch to the KanjiStrokeOrders font so I can easily tell the order and direction of the strokes if I need it.

During my reviews, I will write down the kanji using a pad of graph paper (allocate 4 squares for each kanji, which allows me to fit about 500 per page).  For me I believe this is a very crucial step in not only memorizing the kanji, but also being able to have the ability to actually write.

For new cards, I will first attempt to remember it from my earlier book review.  If I can do it I will usually mark it down as Easy (Very easy if I think I will have no issues whatsoever with it in the future).  If I have any issues with it I will mark it as again.  In either case I will edit the card with a story that I 99% of the time will steal from this site.

For review cards I will score them as follows:
* If I see the keyword and instantly am able to write down the kanji, I mark it as Very easy.
* If I need a few seconds to remember the story from the top of my head or I know it nearly perfect but need the story for positioning of the elements I will mark it as Good/Easy.
* If I can't do it off the keyword alone and I need to hover over the keyword to look at the story I will mark it as hard.
* If even with the story I get any of the elements wrong (strokes or positioning) or I can't remember it at all, I will mark it as again and no matter how easy it is on the second time I see it this session I will mark it as Hard so I will see it the next day.

dacker wrote:

For me it's more like 6-25 minutes per kanji. Problem is my native language is not english so I have to make up similar keywords (also I have to check that there is no meaning that is the same later on, and I also check if SOD of kanji is correct). Sometimes I can't use stories that are mostly associated with english meaning. So I have to make completely different story which goes with keyword that I make up.

In 7 days time I added only 130 new kanji. So I'm feeling a little bit down because with this rate it'll take 2-3 months to learn them all. And everyday I study for about 5h average. Luckly I have 98% retention rate (300+ kanji). But still I feel it's going reeeeeealy slow. Anybody else has this kind of problem?

Wow, 5 hours per day!  It seems you are being very careful up front which takes more time but you get rewarded with a high retention rate.  I did the opposite.  I would go fast on the story part and then use the reviews to really get the story into my head.  This way, it would take me maybe about 1 minute per kanji the first time but my retention rate only averaged about 65% (and much lower than that for new kanji - I would probably get most new kanji wrong the first few times reviewing).

However, I recently completed the kanji in just over 3 months probably spending an average of 90 minutes per day.

Now that I have completed all the kanji and can focus on reviewing, my retention rate is going up - now about 75-80%.

If you're feeling down, you may want to try a different method.  For me, trying to remember them perfectly would have been very frustrating so I did this method.  I don't remember as well but can go much more quickly which gave me more motivation.

BTW, I've visited Slovenia.  It's a very beautiful country!

Betelgeuzah wrote:

I did 5 minutes per kanji for the first 500 letters, 2-5 minutes afterwards.

I haven't written down any of my stories so far though, what's the point in that?

If you manage to make it through in one go, no problems.

If, like many, you stop and then have to restart... better to have the stories there to review on your second go-round.

definitely wrote:

Does everyone always go Keyword -> story -> kanji?

Kanji-> story -> keyword shouldn't be done??

Doing it the second way isn't really enough practice. Seeing the kanji first doesn't test you on whether or not you know the radicals, or how they fit together, or stroke order for writing.

I believe the general consensus is to leave recognition until you've got a good grounding in the kanji themselves.

Last edited by adoette (2011 May 11, 10:08 am)

Hm, I'm just wondering, but I did RtK1 without reviewing in Anki, but in KanjiGym light instead (perhaps this was a mistake?). Currently I'm busy learning and building vocabulary with CORE6k and if you'd ask me some meaning of a kanji - appearing in Heisig's book as well - I would be shrugging. I probably wouldn't know it, because I haven't learnt it yet within CORE6k (but those I learnt I know on and kun yomi both, including the meaning.).
Should I starting with RtK1 again or would that be waste of time?

I learned Yume via a song from Tales of Phantasia, so you don't always need to think of a awesome story for everything. Nothing more rememberable than a song with vocals on a SNES game.

I memorized most of them with a vivid story -- technically a vivid image of the story. I  brute-forced maybe 10% max, but that took like 10 times the normal time to learn, and still failed sometimes because of close keywords. But since I've finished, I changed the problematic keywords and redid some stories, so life is peachy now.

The point of Heisig is to avoid brute force imo, that should only be used as a last resort.

dacker wrote:

I was just wondering how you guys study. I understood from the coments that nobody tries to really remember story or impress it in the memory. But instead vaguely remember it and then get it through reviewing (basically repetiton). And just try to finish everything so that you can get to reviewing (I got that impression also after reading other topics). Is that correct? Because if that can be done then I probably doing it the wrong way.

There is no "wrong" way.  However, you mentioned in your other post that you are feeling a little bored because it is taking so long.  If you are starting to feel bored and losing motivation then it's possible that you are doing a "wrong" way for you.

Maybe, for one week (or one day or whatever) you could try to speed it up and see if you enjoy it more.  One possibility is to set a timer and only give yourself 2 or 3 minutes per new card.

The whole point of the SRS system is that you will be exposed to it later so your brain will be forced to remember it.

It's like when most people (including me) meet someone new.  They tell me their name and then 3 seconds later I've forgotten it.  So to remember their name, I need to repeat it back to them immediately ie. Hi Marko, nice to meet you.  And then use it a couple more times in the conversation - "Where do you work Marko?"  Even then, the next time I meet them, if it's a few weeks later, I'll probably forget it again but if I ask their name and use it then it finally starts to stick.

If you like taking a long time to come up with stories and having an almost 100% review rate then that's great.  But if you are getting bored with it then it might be good to *slightly* change some things.