Zakamutt Posted May 5, 2013 Share Posted May 5, 2013 Why hello there! This thread shall be my blog, and shall both be an opportunity to sesquipedalianize my writing and detail the trials and tribulations of the Supah Challenge. A week-something ago I realized that the challenge had potential. After some wavering, and a frenzied but ultimately unsuccessful search for the sixth edition RtK 1 online, I decided I would be a cool bro and scan it for upload... oh, and it could be cool to actually use too, so I bought it online like a boss. After waiting merely a week for its arrival, I set to my schedule: I would study at 22.00 each day for around an hour. I chose to do 34 kanji a day, as the first and second lesson combined had that many kanji. Previous experience include learning all the kana from Ixrec's guide (using mnemonics that aren't completely different from stories, in a way - み was midget, incidentally), and a few Kanji/compounds learnt from radical lookups and similar. On the first day, my workload was comparatively light; I had the advantages of knowing near all the lesson 1 kanji, and the lesson 2 kanji were very easy to remember in general. The only real issue was me writing stuff at the wrong sizes and orientations, which got unacceptably out of hand. However, that just meant doing it again while reviewing, so it was mostly alright. On the second day, god five mouths / nose over/between eye slept. Yes, I was tired as fuck all day and actually fell asleep laptop on chest at around ten. While I was tired as fuck, I did decide to at least review some old kanji. Which turned out to be a massive 4. Today, I woke up at 7am, feeling just as tired as the last day. This malaise slowly subsided, and at around 15.00 I managed to get 34 new kanji in as planned (I ws not at all sure I'd be in working condition at 22.00). I note that this took quite a long time as I experienced it, but not unbearably so. I also did this with a significant amount of auditory and other distractions around me for part of it, which was not the best thing to happen ever. Getting these kanji in was significantly more difficult; some of the stories were somewhat... lacking - some I constructed my own stories for, I think. With all that said, I still remember everything after some Anki usage, as far as I can tell. The Anki deck seems to be slightly off; post a bill (a kanji which had a pretty difficult story, but I spent enough time obsessing over that I'll probably remember it anyway) did not appear and two kanji that I weren't at yet did. That said, those kanji (deca...what the hell ten days and ladle) had extremely easy stories, and I just memorized them quickly. We'll see if I continue a slightly more haphazard way of scheduling my learning at this point until I feel confident I won't be messed up at 22.00 or not, and whether it will work. On day five, I will probably also experiment with using multiple learning sessions per day - this likely has its disadvantages, but will increase my speed (I'll aim for 50 a day, probably). Motivation: medium. Able to resume after 1 day of no new kanji. Able to survive despite using a different time. 34 kanji per day workable. Well, this might well work out for me! I am mildly surprised. Zander 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mephisto Posted May 7, 2013 Share Posted May 7, 2013 Haha, 34 words a day. Good luck on your journey, and I hope you return from it alive with a better understanding of the japanese language. If you face any difficulties with the Anki, don't be hesitant to use other materials as well. The Anki is really good at making you start and keeping you motivated/working. 頑張ってね！ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted May 11, 2013 Author Share Posted May 11, 2013 Status report time! Encountered kanji: 217. No-activity days: none. Only-review days: 2 Greatly reduced new kanji days: 1 Percentage complete: ~10% I've managed to get somewhat of a habit going, though it's still rather tenuous. Especially important I think is that I do reviews in the morning; if I did the total like 120 reviews I'm getting per day now including new cards I'd go insane. One thing at the moment is that I have sleep issues. I tend to be very tired at 22, though I managed to mitigate it somewhat for today and managed to memorize most stories well. Given stories continue to be somewhat hit-and-miss. One thing caused by this, I guess, is that I usually forget to some degree around 3-5 kanji once while reviewing new cards, which is annoying but part of learning so nothing to whine about really. I've been plagued by issues of Anki skipping cards, causing me to scramble to memorize some extra kanji - which usually works out okayish, admittedly. I've managed to fix this by browsing, searching for 'deck:current "On-yomi":' and fixing up the Due numbers to align with their heisig numbers... so far. Motivation level at the moment is... well kind of meh. I'm feeling a bit ill/headachey right now and part of that was probably caused by the mental effort I put into drawing kanji and visualizing stories in my mind while reviewing. However, I think my habit building might be sufficient enough to keep me going in these silly days, and hey I reached 10% and that is awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted May 25, 2013 Author Share Posted May 25, 2013 Kanji memorized: 294 Surprisingly enough, I've managed to keep this alive, though not super-active. How? Basically, I haven't learnt new kanji that often (yesterday I did 25, though, ending because the lesson ended there). However, I never missed a review. The main issue is getting started with stuff, and finding the energy necessary (visualization and imaginatory memory work is intense for me and tires me out). After reading through Heisig's info between lessons, I got to one where he more systematically explained the method. After actually doing it this way, I've been seeing a higher success rate in memorization. Felt a bit annoyed this wasn't explained before. Oh well. Next time I learn I'll be starting the plots section. Will be interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted June 14, 2013 Author Share Posted June 14, 2013 Same old, same old. Gotten up to 344 kanji, learnt 16 today (was aiming for 10, realized there were 6 left in the lesson after that and just did them all). Sometimes I miss review days, but since I've been slacking a lot this doesn't make the reviews add up much. Memorization worked exceptionally well for the current session, so that's nice. Still takes a massive mental effort to really get the images down, though. I've also started writing the various side info I do for each rtk session in mostly (likely highly incorrect) kanji for the lulz. Does help me remember the number-kanji, at least... Pic to demonstrate this: http://i.imgur.com/wF6N4eZ.jpg (kinda big) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted July 10, 2013 Author Share Posted July 10, 2013 Surprisingly, still not dead. Found a nice, quiet desk space at this camping, which is an amazing motivator for work it seems as I learned 49 kanji this session (I was kinda shooting to do the whole of lesson 18, but I'm not going for like 25 more tyvm...). I was a bit sloppier with trying to memorize in general, which made me a bit faster and (apparently) not much worse at remembering, at least for today's review. the Elements section when i'll have to think up my own stories is coming up in like 70 kanji or so, it seems - we'll have to see how that goes once I get there. For the review today I did something which I usually don't: I wrote the kanji down in mah notebook. Partially this was because it was actually doable fro ma practical standpoint due to the desk, partly it was also as I wanted to have some extra memo aid due to the large amount of kanji involved. Wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be... Stats: Learnt kanji: 470 Percentage complete: 21% Days with only reviews: many Days missed completely: like five or so in total, maximum two in a row but that was a special case. I'll get this stuff done sooner or later, it seems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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