nadiatims wrote:

Not to mention that it really doesn't matter if you can't keep up with the reviews. Just get through the material quickly and move on. Keeping all the kanji fresh in your memory like this only seems important because of the review process itself, RTK becomes useful for...doing RTK. The idea that you go through RTK, space all the cards away and then you "know" kanji is a false one anyway. You'll be continually learning different readings and plenty of new characters as you start reading. The amount of kanji review inherent in the reading process and in any post RTK flashcarding pretty quickly makes RTK redundant.

Can you explain this a little, I mean I get what you're saying about the reviews being added from the other learning sources but here is what I don't get:

The point of RTK is to learn how to draw the knaji with the right stroke order and just know the kanji in general right. So the keyword is not very important?

So should I just pass the frame if I know how to draw it correctly and have a fuzzy but general idea of the meaning or should I wait until I know the meaning perfectly too?

EasyJapanezy wrote:

you see the word and the kanji just pops into your mind or it doesn't

I forgot to mention this point, but that's what happened with me as well. The stories don't last in your mind very long. You just know what it's supposed to look like. I'm willing to hypothesize that writing down the character every time strongly contributes to this. (I could also be completely wrong, too). Is that what you're doing? I'm curious.

By the way, you've done very well up to now. Taking a day off won't hurt. This might sound absurd, but you just might have to get used to the idea of finishing it in 16 days instead of 14.

The point of RTK is to learn how to draw the knaji with the right stroke order and just know the kanji in general right. So the keyword is not very important?

So should I just pass the frame if I know how to draw it correctly and have a fuzzy but general idea of the meaning or should I wait until I know the meaning perfectly too?

Heisig introduced keywords, so your brain can follow the following path in order to discover how to strike the character:
keyword → plot → story → focal elements of the story (primitives) → strokes

or quicker (if possible) way:
keyword → primitives → strokes

If you allow for only:
keyword → strokes

then, as Heisig put it, “you are are asking your visual memory to do the work” (see Lesson 11). Myself, I can't see how “keyword → strokes” is different from rote memorizing. And keep in mind that Heisigs keywords are, as nadiatims mentioned, just approximations. You will be finding these characters later in different contexts (compounds), so your understanding of the “meaning” will be evolving.

Inny Jan wrote:

If you allow for only:
keyword → strokes

Wait. I don't think any of us are doing that. The "shape" of the kanji includes which primitives are in it and where they are placed. It's hard to forget the primitives given how frequent they are. I mean, you're not going to draw a primitive and still think of it as "those lines that go here in this kanji". More like "there's a door on the left of this one". It would, indeed, be a bad idea to memorize individual stokes!

And besides, the story is a leverage to putting the character in your brain. It's perfectly okay and the right thing to do to completely forget it. I sincerely hope nobody intends to remember the story for the rest of their lives. You might be right that I will completely forget the characters a year from now (already happened once!), but I intend to learn actual words that use them before I will let that happen.

Inny Jan wrote:

Myself, I can't see how “keyword → strokes” is different from rote memorizing.

Well, it's not rote unless you repeat the same thing, possibly hundreds of times. Anki actually tells you how many reps you've done. My worst is 繕 with 24 reps. I have 25 cards with 17 or more reps, and everything else is below that. So really, I think that's ridiculously efficient. (But keep in mind I've only had this deck alive for almost 4 months now, haven't touched it for nearly a month, and don't intend to use it anymore, but they're still good numbers.)

EasyJapanezy wrote:

I'll be done by tomorrow, this cramming thing is really burning me out.

Nooooo

That was a little sad. I guess I'd go nuts too if I were in my room all day. Oh well, at least you have a good feel for the kanji now.

Last edited by netsplitter (2011 December 13, 6:26 am)

@netsplitter

People were rote memorizing kanji for years. Heisig put a bit of spin on it, and in 1977 published his method were he uses mnemonics. In late '90ies people became aware of SRS. Given these two advances (1. mnemonics, 2. SRS) learning kanji became quite achievable to us, Westerners. If you remove mnemonics from this system you are still left with SRS. So,  it's not that this “rote memorizing” is going to fail on you – you still will have a cushion. But even your experience indicates the number of repetitions you need to do in SRS for characters for which you don't keep story around and that that you do is higher.

I'm not saying you shouldn’t do that – I'm rather trying to point out possible problem. It may be that in some time from now you will be coming back to those hard kanji and eventually learn that damn story. Or, it may well be that your exposure to real Japanese will be such that this will not be needed at all.

EasyJapanezy wrote:

You can do this, that's why I am making the videos to prove how doable this is.

You don't need to do it all at once thought. You can just tell yourself alright for a week I'm doing just kanji reviews on anki and adding 150-200 new ones a day. Assume that you will have no life for a week but it will be worth it considering all the time you will save that you wound have spent doing it in months. Just like decide on a week and go at it until you add 1,000 new kanji. then take a week off and just review.

About the speed per card, I'm either pass or fail a card within 3 seconds. you see the word and the kanji just pops into your mind or it doesn't, if it does pass it if it doesn't don't. that simple. to succeed you have to fail a lot. I fail most cards 20-25 times before I pass them but by that time I know them. Don't get hung up on any one card, just keep failing it and reviewing it with the other failed cards and it will stick.

Actually I'm at 1400 now, planning to stop at 2000~. Not much to go. I was thinking of finishing it all during the Christmas holidays anyway, so it's not a big deal. I managed to speed up my pace though, 50-100 new kanji a day. The reviews will start to be a pain in the ass at some point but not overwhelmingly so I think.

Hopefully you'll keep updating this thread (or around the forums) with your progress, I thought the pace we're moving at here was already incredible considering the difficulty of the language to us Westerners but if you can manage to get the same results in just a few days of hardcore memorization... It will be amazing. Good luck.

Last edited by Betelgeuzah (2011 December 13, 2:53 pm)

Hi everyone,

Well to be honest I didn't read through all the topic, but i'd like to bring on a little experience that did occure to me arround april 2011.
Actually the final day of exams, I decided to do my hardcore kanji process.
I ran through JLPT2 kanji in 10 days. I didn't use Anki but another software on iphone which was more practical for me when learning during the night.
I was arround 250 basic kanji known, and I decided to do 60kanji/night between 22:OOpm until 1:30 AM everyday until i finished them.

I have to admit that i was pretty frustrated at that time, that i couldn't read loads of thing due to my lack of kanji, that's why i wanted to cram it even if it was very painful.

Here's what i did, respect the timing, I remembered not watching TV when it was 22:00 since the night was gonna be once more tough.
Every morning, woke up early and made reviewing from the early start each time !

That does mean that In the 3 lasting days, I was extremely bleeding, with heavy reviewing kanji.

Well , 10 days later, when my mom came back home here in France, I felt i achieved my goal silently, she thought I have just been playing and hanging out with friends till she came back but actually I was learning vocabulary all day long..

It was really helpful for since When i went to japan for one month in summer I could really used all what I learnt and read ... also Nikkei is useful (I remembered talking about analog 放送 that dissapear in japan with a girl met in MacDonald's, that moment I was very happy and i thought "damn, finally vocabulary that I went through)

The most important thing IMO is the belief that you can do it.
I must admit that my japanese extremely suck, (actually it will suck until I reach fluent level and then native level)
but I know nothing is impossible.


Therefore next friday, I will be very excited, since I will have 2 holidays weeks "Thanks god !" I already planned an hardcore programm from 7:00 am until 1:30 am everyday
It makes me so happy..

Last week I failed at N2, i couldn't finish it and when i saw other people faces I knew I wasn't strong enough to pretend to this level, no way I pass it.

But since that day I really wanted to achieve it... even if i'm bleeding or my eyes soring ... learning japanese till my body fall down...

well this might due to one of my dream,....but anyway, just think it's possible and you will make it.

I'm thinking about doing a similar thing.
I have a really small attention span too and I usually won't do RTK for more than a few days, then I'll forget about it. ^^
I'm planning on doing 146 frames per day, hoping to finish RTK1 in 2 weeks.
I'll start early in the morning (8am) and do some breaks if I really feel tired. (Go walk for a bit, eat something, etc)
I won't do only Kanji. I've also ordered the first volume of よつばと！ to practice my Hiragana reading. (I'm not trying to understand it yet. It's just a reading practice.)
I have also the Genki 1 textbook, workbook and the answer key ordered.
I'm hoping to have that next week so that I can begin learning some grammar.

I have literally nothing to do since I have a 2 weeks break at school starting next Monday. Since I'm always bored during holidays I figured I could do something productive for once and cram through RTK1.

I don't expect it to be easy, especially on the "long" term. I've already studied the first 60 or so kanji 2 or 3 times in previous attempts so the start will be a lot easier.
I'm planning to finish the book, but if I don't make it, it's not important. I just want to get it done as quickly as possible. If I can do 1000 kanji and then go on at a slower pace, I'll feel much more motivated.
I'll keep you updated of how that goes

MrTimscampi wrote:

I'm planning on doing 146 frames per day, hoping to finish RTK1 in 2 weeks.

Good luck. I've got nothing on at the moment and have been trying to finish my remaining 500 character by Christmas, but the most I added was 74 in one day, and then I failed about 80% of them the next day, so it's tough going. If EasyJapanezy's attempt is anything to go by, you're going to find it pretty hard. I've noticed once I start to burn out I stop putting effort into coming up with good mnemonics and as a result spent my time counterproductively.

amillerchip wrote:

MrTimscampi wrote:

I'm planning on doing 146 frames per day, hoping to finish RTK1 in 2 weeks.

Good luck. I've got nothing on at the moment and have been trying to finish my remaining 500 character by Christmas, but the most I added was 74 in one day, and then I failed about 80% of them the next day, so it's tough going. If EasyJapanezy's attempt is anything to go by, you're going to find it pretty hard. I've noticed once I start to burn out I stop putting effort into coming up with good mnemonics and as a result spent my time counterproductively.

How are you approaching learning new kanjis? I've powered through from 1400 to 1900 for about 100 a day with failure rate climbing somewhere around 30% or so, which is still manageable. The only problem I've come across is the brutal Anki reviews piling up.

Honestly speaking my stories are less than stellar too. It doesn't help that the primitives are tougher to remember. But it can be done.