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+--- Thread: Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? (/thread-12291.html)
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - alabonka - 2014-10-27
So after 2 months I finally hit the 900 mark and the big 千 is within reach. I was wondering if anyone took a break for 2 or 3 days upon reaching 1000 or at least kept on with the reviews but put a halt on learning any new kanji. Also, did you find the second half of the book more difficult/challenging than the first? I've heard a few people saying 1600-1800 was quite a struggle.
Anyway, here's my progress ^^
http://imgur.com/MLHUDck
Thanks guys.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - john555 - 2014-10-27
alabonka Wrote:So after 2 months I finally hit the 900 mark and the big 千 is within reach. I was wondering if anyone took a break for 2 or 3 days upon reaching 1000 or at least kept on with the reviews but put a halt on learning any new kanji. Also, did you find the second half of the book more difficult/challenging than the first? I've heard a few people saying 1600-1800 was quite a struggle.I finished RTK1 back in March 2014. When I hit 1,000 I didn't stop my routine, I just continued on.
Anyway, here's my progress ^^
http://imgur.com/MLHUDck
Thanks guys.
It's true, the last couple hundred are really tough to get through because you finally just want it to be over!
To get to the end after reaching 1,500 (when I felt burnt out) I just put thoughts of finishing out of my head and continued on as before. I still remember...1,700....1,800.....1,900. I'll never forget the day I finally reached 2,042. I wrote "FINIS" in big letters in my notebook underneath the story I made up for "sign of the snake".
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - Sauzer - 2014-10-27
Everybody seems to hit a wall somewhere in the 1xxx area. The only thing I can say though is that any time I've let up on new additions (be it in RTK1 or Anki, anything) and just done reviews, my motivation to do ANY of it crashes. Keep on moving! Besides you've still got RTK3 to do after that! haha
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - alabonka - 2014-10-27
Ahh thanks for the replies guys. I think I'm going to just treat it as another day. I love how at the start of lesson 27, Heisig states 'This lesson will take us beyond the halfway mark. From there on, it will all be downhill' when from what I've heard it's quite the contrary! I guess it's not great to even take a few days off as it might turn into more... I can't wait to reach the "sign of the snake" although I was hoping the last kanji to RTK 1 would be 終 haha. This site is so hopeful and encouraging, thanks again. Hope to join you at the finish line soon.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - john555 - 2014-10-27
I remember years ago I came across a comment posted somewhere on the internet by a snippy, bitchy woman who snapped "I don't know ANYONE who actually finished this book [RTK1]. Everyone I know quit halfway through".
LOL. I wonder if since then she's discovered this website.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - ktcgx - 2014-10-27
Well, before I discovered this site I sort of did hit a wall, and didn't really do much after 1000 because I only had physical flashcards to use to review (don't do this. Ever.).... but koohii got me back on track
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - john555 - 2014-10-27
alabonka Wrote:Ahh thanks for the replies guys. I think I'm going to just treat it as another day. I love how at the start of lesson 27, Heisig states 'This lesson will take us beyond the halfway mark. From there on, it will all be downhill' when from what I've heard it's quite the contrary! I guess it's not great to even take a few days off as it might turn into more... I can't wait to reach the "sign of the snake" although I was hoping the last kanji to RTK 1 would be 終 haha. This site is so hopeful and encouraging, thanks again. Hope to join you at the finish line soon.I still remember when I got to #1,955 (I think that's the number), the "talking cricket" from Pinocchio. I remember thinking I can't take much more of this.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - jessem - 2014-10-28
There used to be a page on the koohii wiki that had comments for every chapter...useful little tidbits like "Short chapter but some difficult kanji so take your time here. Some people replaced the keyword for あ radical from 'underwater' to 'cowboy.'" It was a great source of moral support for me going through RTK. But I can't find it now...anyone know where it disappeared to?
As far as planned breaks, I don't remember celebrating 1k with a break. I think I was too excited about FINALLY reaching 1k to slow down! But I did take days off. You don't have to add new kanji every day. It's true that you kind of want to rush through RTK, so you can get to reading and applying kanji, and doing fun stuff with it. But burn-out is the really enemy in learning Japanese. If you want a couple days off from learning new materiel, you're allowed to take them! Don't feel bad! Just please, keep up with your reviews. It's when you take breaks from reviews that your Japanese suffers, and you lose progress.
がんばって！
It's going to be so awesome when you can look at kanji with confidence and wisdom.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - ktcgx - 2014-10-28
Ta Daaaaa!
http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Walkthrough
Took a bit of looking though.... things have changed around lol
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - alabonka - 2014-10-28
Yeah I completely agree with you Jessem about getting through RTK quickly to start learning 'real' Japanese. Obviously I can't say much about being a victim of burn-out because I'm only at 900 kanji but hopefully the funny stories on Koohii keep me going, it's really encouraging seeing the stories of people who have been here before - it's like browsing through an old photo album looking at your ancestors or something haha.
ktcgx, that walkthrough looks great! I'll be sure to read through it.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - Woodgar - 2014-10-28
I know around 1500/1600 I got really sick of the whole thing, and started looking through the first few parts of Tae Kim's grammar guide as a "distraction".
It was actually quite inspiring to find I could follow along with the easier examples just using the raw Kanji recognition I'd gotten so far. I think it was this simple revelation of "blimey - this RTK thing actually works!" that helped me push through to the end.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - jessem - 2014-10-28
I actually started playing Zelda games in Japanese when I reached 500 kanji...only a little bit and I didn't understand much of it, but I remember within the first 5 minutes of the game people were talking about the 城, and I was so excited because I recognized it as "castle." That time might have been technically better spent on learning new kanji, but it kept me motivated. As long as you don't get frustrated when you don't understand the native materiel, I think it's okay to start looking at some of that and previewing all the fun stuff you'll be able to do when you finish RTK. It shouldn't be a priority, and it shouldn't be homework that you feel bad when you can't understand it. But if it inspires you, get some easy manga or something and start recognizing kanji!
It was near the end of RTK I started looking for games with furigana and easy manga and kid's books that I thought I'd want to read, and I started to buy a couple...every time something arrived in the mail I got so excited to be able to understand it. I bought 二の国 but didn't let myself open it or play it until I finished RTK. That was a good motivator!
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - Matthias - 2014-10-28
I just had a look at my records: Yeah, one day of break - but it seems that it was not for celebration, I just doze off ...
It is not really downhill afterwards, the more cards you have, the more chances you have to mix up things. And the revisions do pile up. There is a comment in my records for one day, when I did not add cards, that it was to reduce the revision bow wave in front of me.
All in all there weren't too many 0 days. There was one block quite in the beginning, when I sorted my paper flash cards, to be able to take any notes over into SRS [those were the days ...]. Then there were days with 0 cards because of travelling, death of my daughter and due dates at work.
Very interesting to look back. As a conclusion I would say, do not plan in extra days for celebrations, instead use them when you need to reduce revisions and also for coping with life.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - yogert909 - 2014-10-28
jessem Wrote:I actually started playing Zelda games in Japanese when I reached 500 kanji...only a little bit and I didn't understand much of it, but I remember within the first 5 minutes of the game people were talking about the 城, and I was so excited because I recognized it as "castle." That time might have been technically better spent on learning new kanji, but it kept me motivated. As long as you don't get frustrated when you don't understand the native materiel, I think it's okay to start looking at some of that and previewing all the fun stuff you'll be able to do when you finish RTK. It shouldn't be a priority, and it shouldn't be homework that you feel bad when you can't understand it. But if it inspires you, get some easy manga or something and start recognizing kanji!Dunno. Whatever works, but doing one thing at a time creates a condition for burnout. Nobody said you had to finish RTK before proceeding. There's a lot of different skills that we have to learn in order to be fluent in Japanese and I don't see why you have to do one or the other to the exclusion of the others. Even if you want to finish RTK in a hurry, why not start learning a little vocabulary and/or try reading some things(like you did) just to keep things lively? Not only is it more fun but I believe that the different skills naturally reinforce each other and are better studied in parallel.
It was near the end of RTK I started looking for games with furigana and easy manga and kid's books that I thought I'd want to read, and I started to buy a couple...every time something arrived in the mail I got so excited to be able to understand it. I bought 二の国 but didn't let myself open it or play it until I finished RTK. That was a good motivator!
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - yogert909 - 2014-10-28
Matthias Wrote:...Then there were days with 0 cards because of travelling, death of my daughter and due dates at work.Sorry to hear that Matthias. Who wouldn't take time off from anything if that happened.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - weatherman - 2014-10-29
I did and am taking a long break after reaching the 1200-1300 range. I plan to start adding new kanji again in a few weeks or a month, but right now, I'm reviewing the ones I already know while also learning actual words, which is a lot more fun. I just needed the motivation of learning something a little more tangible before continuing on with the kanji stories; however, I still wouldn't recommend stopping now unless you really feel you need to. Keep on trucking.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - Django - 2014-10-30
Weatherman's idea sounds good - I think that what matters is not losing sight of the bigger objective of learning to read and write in Japanese; if you stop studying kanji altogether, when you come back you may find that your momentum has evaporated altogether and that it's surprisingly hard to get going again.
With this in mind, I think, as was mentioned in the original post, that you need to keep up with your reviews. Preventing burnout is important, but coming back to a veritable mountain of expired kanji can really take the wind out of your sails. You don't need to add any new kanji when taking a break of sorts, but you might want to consider going through the failed column if it's been growing in size.
I've also found that it's worthwhile having the occasional day or off from adding new kanji, particularly if you've been adding kanji at a high rate. Again, don't forget to review expired kanji, but do spend the rest of the day with your RTK book closed.
As for the second half of the book being more difficult, the problem for me lay in the increasing number of seldom-used primitives. The more often a primitive crops up the easier it is to remember, by and large, but, quite possibly in the 1600 to 1800 range you quoted, there are a few primitives that need to be remembered to write a very small number of kanji, which was something that really slowed me down for a while. But, like many others, I got there in the end, and so will you!
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - RawToast - 2014-10-30
I've always tried to avoid stopping adding new cards until I've completed adding cards to a deck. When I feel like the review load is becoming insurmountable I just drop the new card count down to a low value (such as 3) for a week. You will still progress whilst getting a small break.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - TurtleBear - 2014-10-30
Honestly, 1000 didn't feel like much of a landmark to me. Since I'm using the sixth edition, that wasn't the halfway point, anyway. Still, with how subdued my reactions have been thus far, I don't think I'll celebrate until I reach the end in another two weeks.
Maybe it's because I took two years of Japanese in college, so my comprehension of the language is already decent. The only major hurdle I have left is kanji, which means I can dedicate all my time to this.
If someone wants to take a break to learn vocabulary and grammar, I'd recommend it. You don't need kanji to learn verb conjugation.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - AussieTrooper - 2015-02-04
Nah. I found 1000-1200 pretty easy, so carry on with it.
I'm now at 1350, and after 1200 it gets really hard, with similar keywords, and the 'thread' primitive used soooo many times. If you want a break, I'd wait until 1200.
Did anyone take a break at the 1000 mark? - erlog - 2015-02-04
john555 Wrote:I remember years ago I came across a comment posted somewhere on the internet by a snippy, bitchy woman who snapped "I don't know ANYONE who actually finished this book [RTK1]. Everyone I know quit halfway through".The thing is, even if you don't finish, it's still a tremendous resource. The process and the way of thinking about kanji it teaches has helped everyone I've recommended it to immensely even though most never finished. Hell, I didn't finish RTK1 until after I'd already passed JLPT N1. However my years of struggling and languishing around the 1400-1600 mark still put me way ahead of the curve for all the years I was studying.
LOL. I wonder if since then she's discovered this website.
Taking a break is fine as long as you try to make that break productive. A lot of people start to feel antsy around a certain point, and want to start using the kanji they've learned. So they take a break to study more vocabulary/grammar. Then they come back to RTK when they find themselves needing to progress with kanji some more. It's normal and natural. Don't fret too much about it.