Formative Assessment

19 days into the challenge of learning kanji and I decided it was about time to measure the success (or failure) of my strategy with some formative assessments. So, yesterday I used Kanji Koohii to test myself on writing the 450 kanji I’d covered thus far in the RTK1 on Anki.  I put my magic slate to good use once again, writing each kanji out according to the keyword presented by Kanjii Koohii’s review testing app (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Using Kanji Koohi for Formative Assessment

 To ensure that I assessed myself well, the criteria of correctly writing the test were:

1.         The radicals must sit in the correct proximity to each other.
2.         There must be no missing strokes.
3.         There can be no extra strokes.

The result of this test can be seen in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Kanji Writing Test Results

In some respects, I was a little disappointed to find that I’d remembered under half of the kanji I’ve covered over the first 18 days of using this strategy. However, I can also look at this way; I can safely say that I was able to write 212 kanji characters completely correctly according to their associated keywords. Yes, the strategy can be improved upon, however, when I’ve read that most people studying Japanese at University manage to learn less than that in a whole year, then I’m not so disheartened at all. I know I can improve my strategy for learning as I assess my learning, analyse where the weaknesses lie and tweak things accordingly. Also, I definitely feel confident with the first one hundred kanji, I hardly forget any of those, and that’s most likely due to the Anki SRS (Spaced Repetition System) ensuring that kanji I forget most frequently appear more frequently in the reviewing process.  The other good thing about using Kanji Koohii is that it has better mnemonic stories for each kanji than I can usually think of myself. Sure, I honestly believe that its always best to write your own personal mnemonic when you can, but when I’m writing 25 each morning, I have to admit that some are a bit rubbish. Occasionally though, I see kanji that really lend themselves to me writing my own mnemonic story … the case of “Canopy” being a prime example (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Canopy

So being someone who flies various canopies I wrote “Canopy : I see myself flying my canopy over Headcorn parachute club. It’s like a towel above my head protecting my head from the sun’s rays.” Now of course, that is a little wordy and wouldn’t fit everyone else’s imaginative memory; a canopy might be thought of as something you sit under to protect yourself from the sun’s rays … but for me, a canopy is something I fly … and so if I tried to use someone else’s mnemonic it wouldn’t work so well for me.

Also earlier this week, @kanjipro DM’d me on twitter and I learned a little about the KanjiPro system for learning Kanji.  Their book will be available on 2^nd August and I will definitely consider buying a copy; their system seems really fun and I like the idea of separating the kanji that are straight pictograms out from the ones that require mnemonics to remember the radicals.  

Today I have assessed my ability to recall the keyword associated with each kanji symbol from the 480 that I’m currently up to now. A work colleague was talking to me about Timothy Ferriss’ book, “The 4-Hour Chef” book shortly after starting this blog and has kindly lent me his copy (thanks Daniel). One thing that Ferriss explains rather well, is the importance of putting a time limit on your goal. He also used a poster of the jōyō kanji … and I can see how that would help. It’s nice to be able to see how you’re progressing towards a goal; but also if you mark up which kanji you can remember and which ones you’ve forgotten, you can precisely focus your reviewing time. Previously, I’d just been making a few notes during my morning Anki session of kanji keywords that were appearing that I couldn’t recall at all. I would then add these to a study list called, “Kanji I keep forgetting” on the RTK app on my iPhone. Then throughout the week, I would run through them and rewrite the mnemonic story if need be. That seemed to mop up a few stray kanji from my “forgotten” list; but it is quite costly in time. The idea of having a big kanji poster sitting in my study that I can immediately focus on seemed a much better idea, so I looked into buying a poster. Low and behold, White Rabbit (of the kanji flash card fame) produce one in RTK order … and it’s laminated … so you can use dry markers to mark up the ones in long-term memory, short-term memory (otherwise known as ‘still sketchy’ in my language) and ones you’ve completely forgotten (or “doh” ones as I call them). The only issue with White Rabbit’s poster as far as I’m concerned is that the poster itself is quite expensive … probably worth every penny if I lived in the USA, but in the UK, the additional postage puts it into “errrr … can I do this another way” territory. So, I found a lovely person’s blog in which they’d posted the jōyō kanji in Heisig’s RTK order.

Armed with that, I thought I would just print it out on A4 paper once a week and use a couple of highlighter pens to mark up the kanji I could remember and couldn’t remember. Now instead of trying to write the kanji from their keywords, I would be reading the kanji and trying to recall the keywords. Interestingly, I did slightly better at this assessment for reading kanji than the one I did the day before which involved writing kanji. The results were that I could recall the keyword to 241 of the 480 kanji covered today (see figure 4 below).

Figure 4: Kanji Reading Assessment

So albeit a slight improvement on yesterdays writing test, the psychological boost of getting over 50% correct was quite encouraging. I still think that having a poster would be worthwhile, so I think I’ll ask how much it costs to get a laminated black and white print on A3 or preferably A2  printed at a local print shop … I’m sure it will work out less expensive than having one shipped from the USA.

I’m going to make formative assessment part of my strategy and also refine the way I mop up those stray forgotten kanji from now on. You can see that in the way there are a just four kanji that I couldn’t recall the associated keyword in the first hundred. Then they increase towards the end of the kanji I’ve covered in the first 19 days of this challenge. Interestingly, there is a block of yellow remembered kanji at the beginning of the kanji I learned this morning. As far as I’m concerned, this shows how short-term memory has formed a connection with these kanji; that’s why it’s important that I do a reflective exercise tonight before I go to sleep. The brain does all of its indexing whilst you are sleeping – I can even see the result of not reflecting on kanji for the last few nights by the fact that there are whopping great pink blocks covering the last week. I definitely think that reflective activity will increase the number of kanji to cross the chasm between short and long-term memory. Perhaps I should avoid playing video games before going to sleep … or maybe play video games that use kanji!