[kazlock]

This gets used a lot in language learning, especially in the Japanese learning community where people are trying to memorize thousands of Kanji characters. Like the article says, the idea is that recalling a fact when you are on the verge of forgetting it causes it to be reinforced, increasing the interval before you will next forget it. Using the Japanese language SRS tool WaniKani (https://www.wanikani.com) I’ve memorized around 900 vocab/characters in the past three months (which is actually kind of slow compared to most people).

This has been a fun experience for me. I’ve always felt like my memory was poor compared to most people, but now I have proof that with the right strategy I can remember anything I want.

> Some researchers also believe that semantic priming is a factor.

When learning a new Kanji in WaniKani you are given a mnuemonic to associate with it. I find that my retention is much better when the mneumonic feels strongly associated with the shape/meaning/reading of a character.

Another thing that I’ve found helps retention outside of SRS is using/encountering an item outside of a study session. The surest way for me to remember a new word is to hear it in a show or song where I fully understand the context it’s being used in. Also if the thing you’re memorizing more of an abstract idea, then explaining it to someone else is a great way to reinforce it for yourself.

[yorwba]

When I looked at WaniKani some time ago, I got the impression (based on their description, I didn't try it) that they first teach you radicals, then kanji made out of those radicals, then words made out of those kanji. Is that correct?

I didn't try it because the approach seemed to lack context to me, and also because I already know Chinese, so learning Kanji wasn't a priority (I wanted to focus more on pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar). Instead, I built my own sentence-level SRS by taking examples from the Tatoeba corpus, segmenting them with Mecab, adding audio using Open JTalk and then scheduling reviews based on the probability of not knowing one of the words in a sentence. I've been dog-fooding it for three months now, and in theory I should be able to understand 14310 sentences from the corpus.

[kazlock]

Yeah, it does build up from radicals->kanji->vocab over 60 levels. I agree, for someone who knows Chinese already WaniKani is probably not the most effective way to study. But for people who are unfamiliar with the Chinese/Kanji character set learning radicals first really helps with mentally parsing characters with high stroke count. However as I’m sure you know Kanji readings can be a lot different from the Chinese characters they came from, so there is still some memorization work to be done.

Also WaniKani doesn’t touch on grammar at all, so it works as only a part of an overall study routine. I do wish there was a similar SRS service for grammar/reading. Building up your own decks is such a huge amount of work, and for someone who is just learning it’s nice to have a curated deck that is verified for correctness. Sounds like you have an awesome system that’s working for you though.