This month I've made the mistake of not sticking to my plan to learn ten kanji a day by studying daily. As a result, I'm suddenly losing ground. My memory is like a funnel. A stream of words drips out of it at a steady rate. If I pour in a lot of words, then I'm ahead. If I don't, my mind is eventually emptied of all I've learned.
I had worked up to about 450 characters in the last two months. After goofing off this week, I'm confused. I don't know what I know. I look at a kanji and my mind freezes up. I will have to take a review test and then, as the British put it, revise..
I feel discouraged. I planned my run, but failed to run my plan. Sigh. Back to work..
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
May 16, 2002
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I feel much better about my studies today because it turned out that reviewing kanji once learned is much faster than learning them from scratch. It only took an hour or so to relearn the stack of cards I had forgotten. I think the main factor of my success this time is my constant review. I take my cards everywhere, and look at them whenever I'm riding in the car, or standing in a line. and even during commercial breaks when watching TV. In learning a language, it is clearly not sufficient to master one lesson and move on to the next. You must revise the previous lessons over and over and over.
Comment by: M Sinclair Stevens. Posted May 17, 2002 03:00 PM.
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A stream of words drips out of my mind at a steady rate.