I am not so good at the Remembering part

lisbet Member

From: Houston Registered: 2010-06-15 Posts: 22

Hello everyone!
I am a swamped graduate student, and therefore I've been plugging away at RtK for over a year now. Last year my busyness meant that I was averaging a little more than one kanji a day (seriously), but now I've switched to one page a day.
(If I didn't need Japanese for my research I wouldn't be doing this right now.)

Still, even at this slow pace, my retention rate sucks. I seem to average around 67% no matter how I manipulate the stories. This is a combo of forgetting components and forgetting position as well as spacing out on the kanji altogether.
I'd like to increase to 15-20 a day, but at this current retention rate I'm thinking it'd be a bad idea.

Anyone have any tricks to increase retention? Though vocab is more important right now, I'd like to be done with RTK- and I'm only at 1047 or so.

raz789 Member

From: Ireland Registered: 2010-02-23 Posts: 28

Do you use an SRS program like Anki?
Really helps with retention, 67% is quite good.
www.ankisrs.net
Read some of the guides before using this program unless you're good at figuring out programs for yourself. Download deck for RTK. Then review. Many other people can explain how it works better than me, just google it.

Last edited by raz789 (2011 November 03, 12:06 pm)

amillerchip Member

From: Edinburgh Registered: 2011-05-31 Posts: 103 Website

I'm about the same as you. I started in January but didn't discover RevTK until June. I'm currently sitting on 1124 cards.

I think 60-70% retention is actually not bad for us long-term slow people. The people that cram them in over 6 weeks with 95% retention are using short term memory. It's then reinforced by SRSing over the long term, combined with further language study.

By just doing Kanji over a longer term, the odds of forgetting are higher. At least, that's how I justify it. However there's no way I would know over 1000 kanji by now if I'd been brute-forcing them.

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rinkuhero Member

From: paterson nj Registered: 2011-09-02 Posts: 21

this may be counter-intuitive, but i tend to get higher failure rates the *fewer* kanji i add per day. i was adding 80 a day for the first two weeks and had a retention rate of 85%. i slowed down to 10 a day for a month and my retention rate went down to 65%. i tried speeding up again to 40 a day and my retention rate went back up a crazy 95%. i'm not quite sure what's happening, but i think it's a mistake to think that "slower = more accurate". that isn't true at all in my experience. faster can be just as accurate or more accurate

lisbet Member

From: Houston Registered: 2010-06-15 Posts: 22

This is really interesting. I may try to increase my kanji per day then short term as an experiment. I actually only use this website to study RtK. I use the wonderful app Smartr to study vocab and grammar (I'm really up against it because I need to be able to function in a Japanese business environment by mid-June, and I'm just doing my best to get as far as possible from (I'm guessing) around JLPT level 3 to there.

But I digress.

I actually found that making myself review the ones I miss rather than just hitting N on this website is helping a bit. I used to just try them again the next day and hope for a better result This morning I got 90%. Woot.

The pisser was that I went away last weekend and came back to RtK prompting me to review 200+ kanji. And that takes me a while.

So do most people not use this website to review?

Last edited by lisbet (2011 November 03, 3:58 pm)

SomeCallMeChris Member

From: Massachusetts USA Registered: 2011-08-01 Posts: 787

Many people here use Anki already in the course of their studies, so of course they use Anki for the RTK kanji (there's premade decks for it). Many people here are following AJATT, and some of them use Surusu as a consequence. If you don't have an SRS that you're already using for other reasons, there's no reason -not- to use the one on this site - I don't really use it but I poked at it, and it seems just fine. Many people do use it, at a wild guess, more than use Surusu and less than use Anki.

I don't know really what you mean by retention rate, but I -think- you mean retention rate on your first review a day or so later. I wouldn't worry about that, just repeat the story to yourself and try again later. (Personally, I have almost 100% recall on the next-day reviews. It's the first time the interval between reviews exceeds a week that I have a severe retention drop-off... but the 'second time through' as it were, they generally stick pretty well.)

You might also look at wordlist study techniques. If SRS isn't for you, wordlists are a popular second choice (or if not popular, a vocal minority strongly supports them.) A hybrid study style is also possible.

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2011 November 03, 4:22 pm)

lisbet Member

From: Houston Registered: 2010-06-15 Posts: 22

Ah, yeah I'm quite hung up on using Smartr for my vocab and grammar, but is it possible to export my RtK progress on this site to Anki? If not, I'll probably just stick with the website, since I've got 1044 kanji worth of stories up on here

Edit- nevermind, figured it out. I'll try Anki for my kanji, but will probably stick with Smartr for my vocab because I love it so

Last edited by lisbet (2011 November 03, 6:01 pm)

SomeCallMeChris Member

From: Massachusetts USA Registered: 2011-08-01 Posts: 787

As far as the -stories- go, the deck I downloaded for Anki ( 'Heisigs Remember the Kanji (RTK) 13' ) has links to this site for each keyword. But in terms of timing progress... uhm... I don't know but I don't think so.

I don't know how much you've been using the site's SRS to review but I wouldn't switch just for the Kanji, especially given the timing troubles if you've already been keeping up with reviewing the cards as they come due. (That isn't to say I wouldn't switch at all - if you're going to use Anki for lots of things it could be worth the hassle. For -just- the Kanji, I don't think it matters which you're using.)

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2011 November 03, 6:03 pm)

Max.89 Member

Registered: 2010-03-07 Posts: 27

Maybe it will sound obvious to you, but I noticed that when I am too tired my retention rate drops a lot.
Sometimes I can't almost read the most basic kanji.
If you think about it, Japanese is a language that require more mental energy to read because for every kanji the brain has to make a translation to onyomi sound and then remembering the meaning.
It's normal sometimes having troubles at remembering.

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