Comments on: How To Learn and Review Kanji Using an SRS

By: joe

joe — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 22:56:27 +0000

I like this way but what happens when you learn all 2000 basic Kanji and you go to read something in japanese. Your going to read the kana out in japanese but when you get to the kanji you will only know the english meaning, you also wont be able to speak anything written in kanji out loud in japanese.

halp

By: Finally Hit 1800 Kanji! | The Japanese Chronicles

Finally Hit 1800 Kanji! | The Japanese Chronicles — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 13:58:18 +0000

[…] new methods it really hindered my progress. Then i started reading post at ajatt.com about kanji card formats and so i tried different things, and last year i deleted my old deck and started over with the […]

By: デビト

デビト — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:40:59 +0000

If you feel like lazing your way through it (I did) you could always just jack the Lazy Kanji + Mod shared anki deck. Since it’s got all the stories right there on the card (you can figure out the elements as you go along, and if you can’t, you can also lift E-Dub Kendo’s Primitive deck to do alongside it)

Or, you could just go through the Remembering the Kanji site (google it ’cause I don’t feel like linking it, super easy to find though). Study in order (you have to register though) and you’ll be fine. What’s more, you can figure out the kanji elements from the public stories on there, or just jack them for yourself.

Most of the wonderfulness of the book is the layout. You don’t really need the book per se.

PS Kendo if you ever read this THANKS BRO, you saved my kanji

By: ライトニング

ライトニング — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:40:42 +0000

There are places where you can get the entire PDF. I got mine from a bay full of pirates…

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:59:19 +0000

Okay so ive been ajatting for about a month now listening to only japanese music(except rare occasions that are nessesary because of prior engagements) and watching my 2 japanese movies frequent enough to help not so much i get burnt out on the movies. Anyway the last few weeks i have finally gotten an srs and the 3007 kanji. Problem is i wish i could have done RTK but cant afford the book. So i used the pdf sample sparingly and have been doing the torturous way of just repeating it 6-7 times a day so hopefully i can click show up next day just to forget some of them. And im not efficiently reveiwing because i have gotten my reveiws so backed up i have 120 something due and it feels like i just keep falling further behind. I would love some advice or just anything helpful at this point because i know kanji is first on my to do list and it is fun at times when the load is down but i keep feeling like its just piling up to be overwhelming even with time boxes i feel overwhelmed. If any fellow ajatters could point me to some advice so i can consider alternative solutions to help it would be verryyy much appretiated.

By: Progress Update: Japanese (Plus My Learning Materials) | Logos Adventures

Progress Update: Japanese (Plus My Learning Materials) | Logos Adventures — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:21:09 +0000

[…] crazy, but it works. Maybe I’ll write a post about it someday, but for now, here are a couple of posts from Khatz at All Japanese All The Time to tide you over. For not, just get the book and do it. […]

By: ブライアン

ブライアン — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:12:36 +0000

Yes, write them. It ensures you spend at least some time with each character before moving on. Otherwise, you risk falling into the trap of not actually learning the characters before tossing them in the SRS, which will make reviews very painful. (For reps, by the way, you don’t even need to use pencil and paper — I just “sketch” them with my finger. However, I do write them out on paper when I learn them.)

By: ライトニング

ライトニング — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:31:25 +0000

I highly recommend writing them.
I wrote every single rep on a piece of paper, filling over a page a day.
After i stopped, my writing ability was hurt, so now i write every single rep.
My kanji reps are only like 20 a day now, i write them all out on graph paper.
On sentences, i write every single compound, so i fill probably 1.5 pages a day.
Based off my experience, i say to never stop writing them

By: cmif

cmif — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:00:39 +0000

Mine is not so much a question as just curiosity.
How do/did you other guys approach adding the kanji to your srs? Ive been going 15-20 new a day
and that takes me forever just to add to the srs. I read the RTK1 then write the kanji 10-15 times for stroke order.
After like ~200 kanji I think I get the gist of the stroke orders now. Is it necessary to write the kanji at all? Read rtk -> enter to srs
or is the writing practice integral? I feel like I’m learning them faster than I am imputing, and I would like to try 50-75 a day for maybe
a week or so just to see just how fast I can go.

By: ブライアン

ブライアン — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:45:42 +0000

Okay, I need to proofread more…
“heard from” -> “heard, from”
3 -> 今

By: ブライアン

ブライアン — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:43:52 +0000

Here’s why: despite what you’ve probably heard from the standpoint of a learner, kanji do not have readings. WORDS have readings, kanji do not. Trying to force the readings on kanji rather than words causes problems. (EX: 日「ひ、にち、じつ」　3「いま、こん」　今日「きょう」) Learn meanings so you’ll understand sentences, and then learn readings on a case-by-case basis. It will avoid a lot of confusion.

By: マルク

マルク — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:44:16 +0000

Right. Comprehension is most important. Lots of input going in. But then when you’re going through sentences, you should have readings with the kanji (in the form of furigana or similar) that way when you’re learning how to say what you normally read, you’ll have something going on in your head and coming out of your mouth. You’ll get internal monologue and slight speaking practice (mostly recommended if you took the sentence from an audio source).

Remember, this is all your call how you do it, so long as you learn the things you need to know to be fluent. And via learning the readings that way, you now know how your kanji are pronounced and you can learn the exact meaning in that specific context via the translation given or whatever you can understand from context and more lookups in a monolingual dictionary.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:42:38 +0000

So we only need to know the meaning of the kanji and how to write it?

so i don’t need to know the reading just yet? I’m curious as to why we shouldn’t. When i’m ATTEMPTING to read my manga(gotta own before ya PWN) and i do come across kanji that i know i shouldn’t focus on the actuall reading but the meaning? I’m guessing that knowing the kanji itself will piece together what’s being said in the sentence?

By: zakxz

zakxz — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:15:55 +0000

I wonder if part of the difficulty in using the SRS is that we naturally only notice what we’ve forgotten, not what we’ve retained (= a LOT). We might have 80% or 90% recall, but we only see what escaped our grasp. It’s a discouraging experience in that respect, and I don’t think it happens only to perfectionists. It has more to do with the way we recall things: most of what we do remember comes effortlessly. We’re not even conscious of it. Sure, there’s maybe 10% that we do manage to recall after a little conscious effort, and there’s some satisfaction in that. But the natural, automatic progress we’ve made is almost invisible to us. I’m thinking of trying a little experiment just to encourage me in pursuing my SRS reviews: prepare say 20 SRS cards, but only add 10 to the deck. Then, a week later, compare my recall of those 10 SRS cards to my recollection of one of those left-over SRS cards that I’ve never reviewed. Then, two weeks later, or whenever those 10 SRS cards come up again, compare them with a second of those left-over SRS cards I’ve never reviewed since the day I first made the lot of them. I’m willing to bet that three months from now, when comparing those 10 SRS cards I’ve reviewed with a card I had prepared, but never added to the deck, and never reviewed a single time, the difference will be astonishing. Memory is a natural, automatic process that works through repeated, dumb-ass exposure to the same stimuli. The result is something we carry within us, without even being fully conscious of it, like the words of our native tongue. You want your kanji cards or your Russian vocabulary to be as obviously familiar to you as the shape of the Italian peninsula or the design of the Frosted Flakes cereal box. Long-term memory isn’t a permanent photographic impression available for immediate recall; it’s something that’s so obvious to you, you don’t clearly remember ever not knowing it. Kanji number 67 becomes like Tony the Tiger.

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:09:15 +0000

I don’t know how others handle it. I read in the book and think about stories without taking notes whenever I feel in the mood for it. Sometimes, I have a good run and make up 100 stories like nothing and sometimes I just can’t think of anything at all. I also have better ideas, when I’m on the sofa looking out of the window or on a park bench. Staring at the computer screen doesn’t do my creativity any good.
I use a pre-made deck for anki and go through the kanji I read about before later in the day. Usually, I recall at least 90% then, so it’s quite fast. So there are some days in which I go through 150 ‘new’ cards on anki. (you can always click on ‘learn more’, no matter how you configurated anki) Of course, they need reviewing the next day, so I’ll do as much reviewing as possible in the next day (I review in the morning as far as I can get and maybe later again, if I have the time). If I don’t get through everything, I obviously don’t add any more cards that day, but just stick to reviewing.
However, I have anki configurated that it will show me five ‘new’ cards each day when I finished all the reviewing. So in a normal day, when I manage reviewing (i.e. almost every day, except the occassional very busy one after one kanji-flash) I make up at least five new stories. This is just to ensure, I will be through the whole deck eventually, even if the passion for making up stories ceases.

It’s not a very strict system, but it works well for me. 🙂 After all, there are only 2200 kanji in that deck, so even after a bad flash, I won’t be faced with 5000 reviews. 😛

By: ベン

ベン — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:52:09 +0000

I don’t understand your question… What do you mean by reading and reviewing? Do you mean reading them in the book in the day and adding them to your SRS in the evening?

By: Tyler

Tyler — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:40:50 +0000

Perfect analogy. 😉 Kind of like when you’re best friends with someone for so long, leave them for a while, and when you come back it’s like you never left. TV Shows, Music, Books, Manga… they’re all aquaintences just dying to know and become apart of you. You just have to surround yourself with them.

By: zakxz

zakxz — Sun, 22 May 2011 00:23:06 +0000

I don’t think of the SRS as a memorization aid, but as a familiarization tool. It’s not a stressful process of right and wrong, with a definite beginning and a definite end. It’s not about knowing something perfectly by heart, but about becoming ever more familiar with something. Imagine that you want to get to know a thousand people on a first-name basis. Have your “secretary” – the SRS – schedule regular appointments with them – every time a meeting comes up, do your best to become better acquainted with them. Sometime’s you’re tired, or not in the mood, and you don’t hit it off. Sometimes it clicks, and you make progress and become more intimate. All you have to do is show up for your appointments.

By: Beyou

Beyou — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:08:53 +0000

What process of reading RTK and then reviewing the kanji should I take? I can’t seem to find any suggestion anywhere on this blog. Would reading 20 in day and reviewing 20 in the evening be a good way to go, altering those numbers whenever needs be, or is there another way?

By: Joe4TheRecord

Joe4TheRecord — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:55:04 +0000

Do you have Japanese installed on your computer? You should be able to type it in just as you type kanji any other time. Depending on what operating system you use, the steps to use Japanese are different. I suggest checking out your language settings and it should have a place where it tells you how to switch languages / keyboard layouts.