IMHO, no do not take a break from adding cards. Anki will correct itself, some cards will mature faster than others for you. Those cards that you're failing now will eventually mature with nothing other than frequency to enforce them in your mind.

Get through all of RTK1 and keep doing your reviews. Eventually every card will reach mature status and your retention will go up. After all the point of Anki is to continue to use the review system for a very long time even after you complete learning the new cards to create permanent retention. Finish RTK1, then take your break and let the reviews simmer out. Then start doing vocab to help create associations to cement the meaning of kanji into your brain further.

You need to cut down on the amount you're adding daily. Adding double the amount during the weekend means you'll have that many more reviews during the weekdays. If you feel like you're taking in too much information then try limiting yourself to five new cards a day all week for a while and then when you feel like it's getting easier go to 10, then 15, then 20. Also if you feel the reviews are piling up then temporarily stop adding new cards like you did previously while you get your daily review average down.

頑張って！

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I'm not too sure what Anki classifies as a "mature" card and such, so I guess I need to read up on that. Today, there were 70 reviews and I got 17 wrong, which is not so bad I suppose! But Anki has informed me of a most terrible prophecy... tomorrow's reviews are up to 105!! As Fillanzea and mikankun have suggested, I will lower the amount of cards I add daily. Fillanzea suggested 15 and mikankun suggested 5, so I'll reach the middle ground for 10 a day for now. This is in agreement with s0apgun's suggestion to keep going, so no breaks for now. I might sneak in a quick retreat around 1600, which is where I hear many people start to feel worn out, though...

dtcamero, I used to take a long time and build up my stories, but felt burned-out afterwards. I'll try to dedicate more time towards retaining the stories as I make them up/steal them from RevTK!

And yeah, I need to cut down on those weekend cards, sadly. I really liked the weekends because I could blow past a lesson without much effort. But when I looked back, I rarely took 70% of the kanji with me! And I'm still reeling from Lesson 23, which has been the hardest so far.

Thanks for the tips, everyone.

howtwosavealif3 wrote:

You're being too obsessed with this... maybe you should focus on other areas in Japanese... or like do something fun in Japanese or something really fun/educational in Japanese like going through song lyrics.

I dunno, I've heard some people have gotten through RTK in less than a month!! I'm just trying to get past this stage so I can reap the benefits. And I do a ton of fun stuff in Japanese! I always have Japanese T.V. playing in the background, I'm constantly on the look out for cool J-Pop bands, I enjoy watching J-Dramas, I try to read video game sites in Japanese, I'm a big fan of J-RPGs and I love to annoy my friends by speaking to them in what little I know of Japanese! So, I have fun AND obsess about RTK at the same time... =o

Last edited by rucury (2012 March 28, 8:56 pm)

http://ankisrs.net/docs/KeyTermsAndConc … ture_cards

I do also think its important to keep it fun. Completing your reviews everyday is a reward in itself. There is a general concensus of this board is to not spend too much time on RTK. Get it over with and start learning the actual language where the Kanji is used in context. Like I said this will help pick up the slack on improving your retention rate in RTK which you will still continue to review everyday alongside vocab.

For myself and many others there was a burnout sensation at around 1600 but as soon as I reached 1800 the rest flew by easily. I did 25 new cards a day for 3-4 months. Just do your reviews everyday and you'll be good to go, it does get easier after a while.

Totally disagree that reading kanji in context will improve RTK rates. Reading kanji in context means you associate actual japanese vocabulary words and a number of suggested english translations for those words with the character. That completely obliterates the kanji->keyword link if you're reviewing in the not-recommended direction and blurs the keyword->kanji link if you're reviewing in the recommended direction (said blurring being the primary reason people either switch to Japanese keywords or stop doing RTK reviews a few months after completing RTK.)

Not to say I didn't read manga and song lyrics and Japanese subtitles for dramas while I was doing RTK... but I did so knowing the hazards and choosing fun over retention rate. (I did try to make -most- of my real Japanese input music and videos and very little text to minimize said blurring, but sometimes you want to read the lines you can't make out or just sit down with something to, well, read.)

This doesn't of course mean that your comprehension of the character weakens - it becomes stronger and more complex, and answering that one simple question 'what character is represented by this keyword?' becomes harder.

If you have the time to spend learning cards, then I think adding more is okay, but if you feel overwhelmed or are short on time, there's no downside to sticking with reviews only f or a week other than finishing RTK1 a week later.   In the long run, as long as you don't burn yourself out, either way is fine.  I'd take a break and avoid the stress, personally.