I`m at frame 780, and I feel like my rention started a nose dive around 700. I`m not sure what I`m doing differently, but I seem to be spending lots more time reviewing than I used to. I have about 100 failed cards. I seem to be failing 1/3 of the cards that I review. Is this normal?
What should I do? Should I slow down or stop completely until I have these under control (which makes sense, but would also be very discouraging) or should I keep plowing on?
Thanks!
Last edited by blackstockc (2007 October 24, 1:31 am)
2/3 is a pretty low retention rate. Depending on how fast you are going, I think you should be able to maintain 80+% retention, at least.
I don't think you should stop adding cards (at least for me, it was important to maintain some "momentum" even if it's just a few cards per day), but you should definitely reexamine the way you're constructing and thinking about your stories. Spending some extra time coming up with more memorable stories for the cards you're having trouble with will produce great results down the line. Also, make sure you're visualizing your stories properly as you practice.
If that doesn't help, maybe if you try to describe the way you are creating and reviewing your stories we can help you out in more detail.
Last edited by shaydwyrm (2007 October 24, 1:42 am)
vosmiura
Member
From: SF Bay Area
Registered: 2006-08-24
Posts: 1085
I'd say you just passed through one of the harder sections. Some of the later sections will be like a breath of fresh air. I found the state-of-mind and finger sections difficult to work through, but what I did is reviewed and every time I got one wrong I went back to the study area and spent a minute or two to try to strengthen the memory of the story. Over time (like over about a week or so) they all cemented and I now find them easy to recall, including ones I thought I'd never manage.
I think with the Leitner system used here on this site, you need to make sure you've memorised the kanji to the point where you can remember them for a few days BEFORE adding them to your stacks. The Leitner system will stop you from forgetting by reviewing at the right time, but you have to already have learned it. So spend a day or two just testing yourself on new kanji before adding them to the RevTK stacks.
Since a while I've been using Anki to review (it comes with an RTK deck), and Anki can let you repeat stuff while you are learning it. I find its early review spacing useful while learning new kanji. You can control how soon the kanji are reviewed. At first if you keep failing it asks you every 10 minutes. Once you've managed to remember after 10 minutes fairly easily you can then choose to review in 1 day, or ~4 days or ~8 days. For hard kanji I like to schedule them to 1 day, to make sure I can at least manage 24 hours before letting it go unanswered for 4 days.
I find that if you wait 4 days, in that time you might have studied 100+ cards and then if you find that you've forgotten a large part of the last 100 cards you've studied it is really daunting.
Last edited by vosmiura (2007 October 24, 2:27 am)
In my experience, I'd say: don't stop! I did that when I was around ~500 and I wanted to catch up with my reviews and, one thing or the other, I ended up stopping my studies for more than 2 months. I wasted so much time!
So increase your reviews (if you can) and find out what it is about your stories that you forget. You probably know this already, but for each kanji you should somehow burn an image in your mind, and sometimes it takes a while before you realize what that image was. I often discovered that the picture that came to my mind when looking at a kanji was different from the story I had chosen in the first place, for some reason. I then changed the story to fit my "intuitive" image and that worked perfectly. (most of the time these "images" are really crazy or weird, but they work!)
I don't know if that helps.
CharleyGarrett
Member
From: Cusseta Georgia USA
Registered: 2006-05-25
Posts: 303
"adding no more than x a day"
My pet peeve is arriving to find 60+ expired kanji to review. I can only hit the site once a day, so if it's too much for one sitting, then it's too much. The only way I've come up with to avoid having the planets align and dumping a ton of reviews on to the same day is to limit the entry into the first box (either from learned failed kanji, or adding new kanji).
So, the only point I'd add is just to consider learning the failed kanji before adding any new ones, but only allowing yourself to "learn" a few a day.
And the key to memory is association. We tend to not bother to remember (or even notice) the mundane. If you're going to remember your stories, they have to have some pizzaz to them. As nac_est said, you want to pay attention to what comes to mind already when you say the keyword. Don't fight what is already there, but then link that to a story with some juice, something memorable, and that story leads you to the writing of the kanji.
