1. Over 4 years ago.
2. i don't know.
3. i don't know.
4. RTK is not nearly as important as people make it out to be.

To answer your question number 4. Don't worry about failing 10 of your cards. Just start studying japanese now. They'll sink in eventually.

I don't really study anymore. I just speak and listen to japanese in my life. I also read and write (at work).

Don't think of RTK as something you need to 'graduate' from. If you've gone through the book and reviewed enough that you can now remember say 80%, you really ought to focus on other studies. At this point you'll cement the kanji better as you learn their readings, vocabulary and usage. You're going to be doing a lot of dictionary look ups etc anyway, so it really doesn't matter if you're a bit foggy on a few kanji here and there. Language learning is like that. Fuzzy at first and then comes clarity. It's kind of like drawing a picture. Don't focus on finishing off details, until you have the whole picture roughly sketched out.

edit: forgot to mention. I completed RTK in a couple of months and then didn't even touch it. I still remember kanji just fine. I also did RTK3 a couple of months later in a pretty rushed manner. Objectively I'm not sure how useful RTK3 was.

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 February 17, 3:57 am)

1.  How long ago did you compete RTK?
3 months ago
2.  How many cards are due, per day?
40 cards
3.  What is your average fail rate, per day?
Around 10%
4.  Any comments?
Finishing RtK1 was extremely useful for me. It tremendously boosted my Kanji learning. I find it so easy now to learn using using KO2001. The projected time for finishing KO2001 is 4 months only.
However, you should know that you don't have to perfectly remember ever single card in the RtK1, as sooner or later you will "cement" that knowledge using vocabulary that utilize those Kanjis.
I don't think that I'll abandon that RtK reviews someday, coz they're already getting less and less everyday. And, according to Anki graphs, I'm supposed to start having days with no or very little reviews in about 6 months

fifo_thekid wrote:

1.  How long ago did you compete RTK?
3 months ago
2.  How many cards are due, per day?
40 cards
3.  What is your average fail rate, per day?
Around 10%
4.  Any comments?
Finishing RtK1 was extremely useful for me. It tremendously boosted my Kanji learning. I find it so easy now to learn using using KO2001. The projected time for finishing KO2001 is 4 months only.
However, you should know that you don't have to perfectly remember ever single card in the RtK1, as sooner or later you will "cement" that knowledge using vocabulary that utilize those Kanjis.
I don't think that I'll abandon that RtK reviews someday, coz they're already getting less and less everyday. And, according to Anki graphs, I'm supposed to start having days with no or very little reviews in about 6 months

Interesting.  Your fail rate is the same as mine.  I can't predict the number of cards due, since I'm doing RevTK, but it seems like I will have 10 cards due per day forever.  So I'll never even reach the zero cards due per day, like you.  But no matter, I'll do what most these guys do and move on to sentences only and native content.

Last edited by foodcubes (2012 February 18, 8:13 am)

I personally stopped using RTK after using it for 2.5 years. Why may you ask? It's because I felt it was weighing down on my retention rate. I started forgetting a lot of the story but not their meanings. Plus it wasn't training to write the kanji from memory but from their stories. It did enable me to write/understand their meanings but I write kanji from native material nowadays. I think using monolingual RTK cards would help but it would take a lot of time and I don't feel like starting RTK all over again.

I'm basically at the point where native material is the way to go.