[Zgarbas]

Welp. This is embarassing.
Due to some circumstances, I'm thinking of switching Unis, and it seems that all the Ph.D programmes I want to go to have written examinations in Japanese. This is a problem since I am illiterate.

You see, the moment I got to Japan, I stopped learning Japanese. I read a lot of Japanese, I take classes in Japanese and what not, but it's all a comfortable plateau. My brain is so turned off by the prospect of learning Japanese that I don't even remember some words that I've seen/heard hundreds of times; I recognise them the moment I see/read them, but if I'm talking or thinking they just refuse to come to mind (I get this with fancy English as well). I'm just naturally a lazy person, I guess. So what happens now is that I have maybe C2 level reading/listening skills and maybe C1 level speaking skills, I can type essays if I know they're going to get proofread by a native before I present them, but if I want to handwrite something...well... let's say that I get even N5 kanjis wrong. Handwriting is just something I've never really needed, and when I am confronted with handwriting it is always exhausting and stressful. We're talking mini-panic attacks if one of my classes decides to have handwritten response papers at the beginning of the class, and I have time and a dictionary then.

I'd have almost a year to prepare for the exam, but I'm not sure how to even go about it. When I tried doing RTK a few years back I failed to keep up with it since I couldn't see the kanjis as keywords anymore - Japanese keywords was a bit better, but it was essentially rote memorizing and reviewing was difficult. I also noticed recently that seeing kanjis outside context has become a bit confusing - If I have see a kanji I instantly refer to it as 'the 構 in 構造'. 

TL;DR: Has anyone learned to write later in their language study? How did you go about it? Has anyone tried practicing with 漢字検定 prep books for natives?

I remember Fabrice talking about calligraphy classes where they would teach regular writing too, maybe that's one way to go about it? You know, spend some time with a brush, stop psyching yourself out a little?

How about using Skritter? My impression is that it does a fair job of teaching you to write the kanji and recognize their meanings

(2016-04-25, 1:54 am)Zgarbas Wrote: I also noticed recently that seeing kanjis outside context has become a bit confusing - If I have see a kanji I instantly refer to it as 'the 構 in 構造'.

Lol this sounds a lot like how I functioned when I was at N2. I couldn't recall anything, but I knew what words/parts the kanji was in so thats how I would communicate what I was thinking of.

I've been needing to pick up my own studies again as well. I haven't touched my Core6k in oooh, 2 years. So I'm going to start that fresh I think. I've been considering attempting to tackle written production this go around. I have a distaste for writing as well but I've been thinking maybe if I can spice up the whole ordeal then maybe it'll be better. For me, this is simply considering getting a fountain pen and some nice inks since this is something that's been itching at my curiosity. Something else you could do (doubt I'll do it) is the kanji book method. I remember years ago someone had posted a video of a guy that basically did a time lapse of himself writing kanji over and over in notebooks and turned it into an art project almost.

With writing, there is pretty much no way around it. You have to write. RTK can probably help make it less painful, but I think there's something to be said for simple muscle memory. For most people, I'd say they might be able to get away with RTK-lite since in common everyday stuff you probably won't need that much, but Uni exams? Eh. You'll need at least 漢検3  level probably, maybe even 2. Or to put it another way, probably need to be able to write every word in the Core deck from memory, or close enough.

I can second the skritter recommendation. It's an excellent app.

I didn't go through RTK when I first started learning Japanese. I learned to read joyo kanji from Coscom (Kanji Odyssey) and I mostly focused on becoming able to guess the readings of kanji so that I could look up unknown words faster. So I never actually wrote or bothered with the "meaning" of individual kanji. Then at one point I got inspired by The Kanken Chronicles thread (http://forum.koohii.com/thread-4261.html) to also learn how to write kanji.

I went through RTK together with an Anki deck that I think I found somewhere on Anki's shared deck page but I have modified it a bit adding common words to each card. So on the front would be the Heisig keyword and a bunch of common words. In the case of 構 one of the common words would be written like this "◎造　こうぞう　structure; construction." And then on the back of the card would be the kanji, the story, and the common words written out in full: "構造　こうぞう　structure; construction." Even though I have those Japanese words I still mostly rely on the keyword when I try to remember how to write the kanji. I think the process I go through in my head is that I first look at the common words and I usually get a vague image of the shape of the kanji, and then I use the Heisig keyword to remember my story from which I can reconstruct the actual parts that make up the kanji.

Doing an Anki deck in this fashion has definitely made me able to write individual kanji from memory going from keyword to kanji, but it hasn't made me able to write all the words that are made up of joyo kanji because this requires me to also be able to pick out the correct kanji for each word. So for this I have made another deck called "Kanken" where I have (again inspired by The Kanken Chronicles) taken sentences from official Kanken books, the Kanken DS game, and this site: http://kanken.jitenon.jp/ . On the front of the card would be something like this: 面接中のタイドが悪い。And then on the back would be: 面接中の態度が悪い。

So far I have worked my way to 漢検５級 soon starting ４級. I think it's working out fairly well and I am confident that I can continue in this manner all the way to ２級. As for the time requirements, someone mentioned it in the Kanken Chronicles thread, i.e. how long it took them to reach and pass ２級 from the time they started out doing Kanken study, and if I remember correctly it should be doable within a year.

(2016-04-25, 6:25 am)vix86 Wrote: ... For me, this is simply considering getting a fountain pen and some nice inks since this is something that's been itching at my curiosity. ...

http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/product...-brush-pen

When I was studying Spanish in Spain, we had an advanced literature history class. The teacher dictated notes to the class for 45 minutes and everyone scrambled to write them down. My colleagues and I thought the teacher was just lazy. Actually, it turned out to be fantastic method to sharpen concentration, listening, spelling and grammar at the advanced level.

This is a lot tougher in Japanese but maybe a good technique to ramp up your level.

Over time, you might start with some intermediate-level audio with original written text. Maybe a short story or news clip. Then listen to a sentence one time, stop the audio, and write the sentence. At the end of the paragraph, relisten to the sentences and correct your text. Finally, proof-read your sentences. Then correct your sentences via the original text.

Also, you might start hand-writing a simple daily diary with kanji. Eventually you might aim to write your classnotes in Japanese, or at least a summary of each day's key learnings in Japanese. Get the writing corrected by a native.

If I were in your shoes, I would make a 12 month plan with specific intermediate hurdles to reach your goal. First order, I would get individual kanji writing up to speed. Then learn to write a few thousand words, even though the vocab is easy.

As you did RTK previously, and have limited time, that may be the path of least resistance vs picking up an entirely new method to learn kanji. I'm not convinced the brain actually forgets information; perhaps we just have to re-access it. What is certain, scientists have little idea of how the brain functions so no definitive answer exists here.

For vocab, I use simple two-sided vocab cards (because multi-sided cards are painful and slow); you can see the format below:

https://anki.tenderapp.com/discussions/e...f-sentence

Good luck

(2016-04-25, 9:06 am)Robik Wrote: http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/product...-brush-pen

I know of the brush pens but thats too "calligraphy" oriented and I'm not aiming for writing for calligraphy's sake right now. My main interest is in getting a pen that feels nice to write with. When I was an ALT I had discovered gel pens in Japan and those felt great to write with and I've heard some say a good fountain pen feels even better than gel pens, which has a me a little hopeful. So I think I might pick up a Pilot Metro (fine) with a converter.

I've done calligraphy now for about 8 years or so, on and off. It's good for relaxing and sort of getting comfy with the characters, but I never really found it helped me remember them any better. (But I can make some smashing squiggles that look really artsy!)

I'm going back to the writing woodshed myself, Zgarabas. I'm using an ALC book called 上級学習者のための日本語読解ワークブック by ALC. (ISBN: 978-4-7574-1929-2). It's aimed primarily at reading comprehension, but there's also a lot of "Write 200字 on what this essay is about" kind of things in it, and that's been helpful for me at remembering how to physically write stuff out. It's also been helpful for me to fix a lot of my bad 読解 habits, too. But the writing stuff has been handy as well. It may not be exactly what you need, but I figured I'd mention it.
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4757419295/

The only thing is that you need someone (like a tutor or a teacher) who also has the book who can go over your short essays.

They also make a 中級 level if you're feeling totally overwhelmed: (check it out at the local Maruzen or Kino first?)
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4757416229/

This looks interesting, it's aimed at teaching foreign students how to write 論文 properly. Even if it doesn't fit, some of the other recommended books might lead you on the right path:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4874241271/

I'm doing Core10k, even though I know about 90% of it, just to make sure I haven't missed stuff. (There's some stuff I missed, but it's kind of fun to go through old stuff and nail it down again.)

One thing you could do with any of the Core decks, since pen-and-paper writing is really important to you, is to take the kana reading field of Core2/6/10k, for example, turn that into a card called "Production2", and use that as the front, and your answer would be to write the word in kanji, either with a pen or just air-draw it with your finger.

I did that for a while a few years ago, and it was really useful until I stopped, then I forgot everything. It's like a muscle. If you don't use it regularly, it atrophies.

But it's also excruciatingly boring as far as practice goes. Add some funny pictures or something, so you don't go nuts. I would do that maybe with something small and easy, like Core2k, just to get into the habit of it, and then just write a lot with a pen and some 原稿用紙. Maybe do Core6k if you really feel like you need it.

Or keep a diary in Japanese. The only downside to that is that you wind up plateauing again, because you wind up talking about the same kinds of stuff. (Unless you keep a diary of words you want to remember or something?)

I went from the same level as you, struggling with writing N5 characters from memory, to being able to write almost anything that comes to mind within the space of a year. I think this would have been impossible if not for using Skritter, there's just no way I'd have been able to do it efficiently and cover everything I needed (3.1k characters) by using a book and paper. I only used the app to practice my ability to recall characters and write them from memory, though it also has regular SRS functions like Anki for vocabulary recall.

I got vocabulary lists that covered every character and provided at least a few example words for each one and went through them 100 at a time, sometimes for 8 hours a day, 40+ hours a week. This was only about 20k words but as an experiment I also threw in around 3k yojijukugo to see if I could recall the characters just by knowing the reading and meaning, and I think doing this greatly improved my overall ability to recall the correct kanji in typical 2 character compounds, though that's hard to prove as it might have just been my getting better naturally anyway.

There is a downside to this though, it won't really make a difference to your penmanship on paper, not to say it will get worse or anything, it'll just stay the same unless you spend time improving that separately. The other thing is it's only really good for gaining the ability to recall the correct characters, it'll be on you to know a word is 別れる and not 別かれる, it doesn't help with okurigana from my experience. Maybe the Android app can do this, I'm not sure, I've just used the iOS version.

I started at the beginning of 2015 and after a year I'm now happy with my writing ability and just spend 10-20 minutes a day doing reviews that come up. I'd say that this alone puts me above a typical native Japanese in terms of being able to recall characters from memory because I'm being tested every day on the ones I tend to forget while a native might not even know what they have forgotten and what they haven't. The good thing with Skritter is you only pay to add new words so everything learned is always going to be free to maintain.

Can anyone expand on Skritter? Is it worth it if I just have an Android phone, and no tablet? Is pricing only the $15/month? Sounds like Roketzu says otherwise, where you only pay for new words.

I've been working on writing myself, lately. For me, the challenge isn't so much the kanji themselves as it is putting sentences together quickly, so I guess I'm having the exact opposite problem that you are.

Anyway, I've been working with my tutor on writing. She writes down each kanji stroke by stroke in my notebook; I practice them a few times over the two weeks in between our sessions (to be honest, I usually do this over the weekend before...) then I'm tested on them via a worksheet with words in hiragana for which I need to produce the kanji.

Beyond that, I've been tasked with writing short papers; they started with simple diary entries, but after a couple of those (over a month, maybe) she asked me to write an essay. We go over them and make corrections (they've needed surprisingly few, which means I'm either doing better than I thought or writing way too simply).
Personally, I type them on the computer, then copy them by hand (because I make too many corrections, even in English, which doesn't go well with writing).

I've been taking things really slowly (currently, I've only gone over about 100 kanji this way, though I'll double that soon), but it really hasn't taken too much effort to do, since I can already read them. Since you and I already associate kanji with our words in the reading direction, it's much easier to learn to write words with kanji, you just need to learn how to write the kanji and then write words with it.
I think it's reasonable to complete in a year, though it might be easier to manage with Anki.

I think the most important aspects of the methods described above are the following:
- Clear reinforcement of stroke order (tracing them helps a lot more than copying, in my opinion)
- Practicing writing in and out of context (practice writing kanji, then practice writing papers with kanji)
- Testing the writing of kanji in context (in words instead of by themselves; even if those words are single kanji like 本, test it with ほん; add context as necessary, like by testing phrases instead of words)

(2016-04-26, 7:51 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Is pricing only the $15/month? Sounds like Roketzu says otherwise, where you only pay for new words.

I believe there is a free trial period of 7 days, or at least there was when I first started using it. The price is $15/month, meaning you can add as much as you want while that month is paid for, but you won't be able to add more once your subscription lapses, though you will be able to do everything else just fine. So yeah, you only pay if you want to add more words/characters. I haven't paid since November last year and am waiting until I accumulate enough new content I want to add before subscribing again. The fact I went from being very weak in writing to now feeling it's one of my stronger points has left me feeling the price was definitely worth it.

I honestly can't speak to how the Android version is on phones, though I believe all versions are currently in the process of being upgraded so as to be more unified across all platforms.

(2016-04-26, 7:51 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Can anyone expand on Skritter? Is it worth it if I just have an Android phone, and no tablet? Is pricing only the $15/month? Sounds like Roketzu says otherwise, where you only pay for new words.

I do all my skritter reps on my iphone. It's definitely worth it. I'd pick up a good stylus though. That makes it much more enjoyable. I pay $15 a month, and I'm not sure what he meant by only paying for new words. It's a very nice supplement to anki. (Or replacement, I know someone who uses it as their primary SRS for reviewing vocabulary).

(2016-04-27, 8:56 am)kendo99 Wrote:

(2016-04-26, 7:51 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Can anyone expand on Skritter? Is it worth it if I just have an Android phone, and no tablet? Is pricing only the $15/month? Sounds like Roketzu says otherwise, where you only pay for new words.

I do all my skritter reps on my iphone. It's definitely worth it. I'd pick up a good stylus though. That makes it much more enjoyable. I pay $15 a month, and I'm not sure what he meant by only paying for new words. It's a very nice supplement to anki. (Or replacement, I know someone who uses it as their primary SRS for reviewing vocabulary).

Well you can't add new stuff (words/characters) without paying, but you also don't have to pay indefinitely if you don't want/need to add new stuff, is all I meant. You can continue reviewing everything you've done just fine even after your subscription runs out. You just get this message once a day upon completing your review queue:

One other thing to try, which I saw on the Learn Japanese subreddit a few days ago is this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...injakanken
https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...jakankendx

I don't have the iOS link, but 漢字検定・漢検漢字トレーニング would probably yield the correct result. DX is the paid version.

The first link is to the free version, which covers KanKen 6級->2級, with lots of ads. The second is the paid version, (like 500 yen or so), which goes from 10級 all the way to 2級, with no ads. I've been playing with it, and it's a good little Kanji Kentei quiz program. For writing, you write the kanji out, for reading, you throw "kana ninja stars" to spell out the reading of the kanji in question. The writing recognition is pretty forgiving, IMO, as long as you get your stroke order right.

It's more quizzing than training, but it breaks everything down in chunks of 5 characters at a time, from 10級, the very basic of basic kanji, all the way to 2級, with 5747 problems.

It's all in Japanese, so no English to get in the way, if that's your thing.

[Zgarbas]

Just a small update since I got lots of amazing responses but I didn't want to reply until I got a better image of what to do
I ended up installing the kanken app for now. It's not Srs but it's definitely serving its purpose. I decided to take the kanken tests for extra kanji-studying motivation (level 6 for starters, aiming for level 2 by march!). So embarassing to be studying for primary-school level tests T_T but it's really been an eye-opener. I'm already feeling a lot of improvement, though I have to keep at it for a few months before I can tell whether it's sticking; I'm pretty proud at how fast I'm getting the hang of most of the kanjis so far. The first run I had, I wouldn't even know how to write the easiest kanjis on demand, but after I see them 1-2 times in context it gets so much easier!

It's very nostalgic to be practicing Japanese again frustrating, but kind of nice. When my schedule clears up a bit I've decided to finally keep to lang-8 and try translating wikipedia articles for practice. I am *not* looking forward to it, but such is life.

thanks everyone for the great advice! I'll post another update in a few months, partially because stuff like this keeps me motovated (silly, I know), partially because maybe there are other people who are at the same plateau and I and could use the story (megalomaniac, i know)

That KanKen app is awesome, and slightly addictive.