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Currently I’m working through kanji but I’m noticing that I forget them alarmingly fast, despite daily study sessions.
Right now I’m working through RTK using Anki solely. I do two sessions daily, one is a drilling session for past-studied kanji (usually about 80-90 or so cards), the second is dedicated to learning new ones (always 20 new ones per day). I’m finding it’s getting harder and harder to retain them all, even ones I thought I’d mastered.
Is there anything I can do/use to complement the daily Anki sessions and fortify what I’ve learnt? I’m not so much concerned with the readings (I’m letting vocab take care of that), what I’m trying to memorise are the meanings and (most of all) how to write them quickly and on command.
Cheers for any advice.
When you add 20 new ones every day, I don’t find it surprising that you get overwhelmed. That’s a lot of new information, so remembering it all requires a really good technique and a great brain.
I would suggest you to pace down.-
This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by
Cimmik.
Hmm, that’s a pity. I liked 20 because (I thought) it would give me a good speed-to-workload ratio, but I guess the workload’s too much.
Still, it’s the older kanjis that give me the most trouble. The more they age, the harder it gets to remember them. I feel like just doing Anki once or twice a day isn’t giving me enough exposure to them and thus “use it or lose it” comes into effect.
If there was a method (be it an app, website, whatever) where I could just continuously drill all the RTK kanji in a particular range, I could do random drills whenever I have downtime and probably hold onto them better.
It’s time consuming and awful, but there is something to be said for rote practice. Write them out a lot. Like a lot a lot. When you learn your 20, write each of them out like 50 times. Mix it up though. Like don’t just write one out 50 times, then write the next one 50 times. Write one, then the next one, and so on, and then do it all again 49 times. Or whatever number you choose. Write until you’re arthritic or until your pen explodes.
It’s slower than my old Jetta that set itself on fire, but it does have a decent shot at improving your retention.
Other than that, your best bet is slow down. Try 5/day for now maybe. The unfortunate reality of learning such a complex character system is that it’s a lot of information and you’re aiming to learn it all in a fairly short period of time. You can either go at it slow and spend a lot of time on it, or you can have no friends but get through it quicker because you’re spending every free minute of every day studying. Who needs friends though right? :P
I haven’t tried this myself, but you might consider keeping a spreadsheet. Have each column be your day, and have 20 rows, each with one of the kanji keywords for that day. So A1 through A21 will be everything you learned on February 24th. Then on the 25th, B1 through B21, and so on. On a separate worksheet, have the same layout but with the actual kanji itself. So for example on the keyword sheet, cell A5 will say child, and on the kanji sheet, cell A5 will say 子. Every day pick one or two at random from each column on the keyword sheet, and see if you can write the kanji for it. I’d say if you have trouble with it, review that whole day. If it was easy, don’t worry about that day yet. Eventually you’ll have to review all the days and it might turn out to be a crap idea. But hey maybe it’s an okay way to do it. I mean yeah you’ll have 110 columns, but it’s not that different than with Anki, really. After a while it becomes pretty damn messy when 473 reviews all fall on the same day.
Keep calm and kanji on, brother. Keep trying different things. Make stuff up. You’ll figure out what works for you. Maybe pick up a book called “You Can Have An Amazing Memory” for $1.70 on Amazon. Or $20 if you’re in Canada. Like me. Because fuck Amazon. Shenanigans, I tell you. Anyway, it’s supposed to be pretty good and you may find some of it useful.
I haz a blog http://maninjapanchannel.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLQzB-1u-dgI actually disagree with Justin on this about pure, high-exposure rote memorization. Its a recipe for burn-out, and at least in my experience, any short term gains will be lost over time. If you’re having trouble remembering a kanji, you should try to improve your mnemonic. Make it more visceral.
Different strokes (heh) for different folks. It’s not for everyone. Personally I find the rote thing kind of relaxing. Throw on some tunes, bash out some kanji.
But that’s what this is all about – figuring out what works for you. If rote doesn’t, stop. Try something else. There is no universally right or wrong answer.
I haz a blog http://maninjapanchannel.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLQzB-1u-dgJust finished a review, it was pretty brutal. First half went good (mostly really old, easy kanjis) then when I got to the more recent ones I kept on missing them. Really discouraging, but I think it’s helping me come up with better strategies.
I do agree that the workload I’ve given myself was too ambitious. It worked fine when starting out but now that I’m several hundred kanjis deep it does get WAY too overwhelming. I’ve lowered my amounts in Anki and we’ll see how that goes.
The rote method sometimes does work for me, I’ll often fall back on it as a last resort. I think my biggest problem is a lot of my stories are too simple or generic and don’t “stick” or often get confused with kanji that have very similar meanings (of which there are an infuriating amount). I’m not very creative when it comes to those, sadly.
I’m gonna try maybe putting off learning new ones and just doing reviews for a while until I’m certain I’ve really learnt the ones I have.
Cheers for the advice!
You could check kanji.koohii.com for other stories. It’s all community submitted stuff. For me I find the offensive and smutty ones tend to stick pretty well. But I’m not a good person, so, that may just be a me thing.
But hey sounds like you’re on the right track to figuring things out! That’s good! Keep it up!
I haz a blog http://maninjapanchannel.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLQzB-1u-dg -
This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by
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