Betelgeuzah Wrote:You'll pretty much have to relearn the vocab with kanji anyway, so I'd just focus on grammar and to finish RTK asap.

I know it hinders the progress but I wouldn't rush these things. After RTK you're so much better off as far as learning vocab goes it's not even funny. Kana alone is pretty much useless imo.

Sorry to be blunt, but as far as my advice I wouldn't further increase my workload with vocab with RTK being quite a taxing process.

Once you have enough kanji under your belt Tae Kim's site and the deck in Anki should prove to be useful to pave the way for everything else. You'll also learn a few common vocab words there.

Shirayuri Wrote:I see... Well then, I'll largely take that advice then! I've not yet got RTK, however I will be ordering it tonight. Do I just need Vol. 1, or should I get the others too? How many Kanji would you suggest I get down before I go on Tae Kim's site?

I frequently use a dictionary on my phone that has an SRS test, I suppose doing that on the go could help if I just save the kanji? I am assuming everyone here believes RTK to be the best way to learn Kanji then? And as for pronunciation there's no huge hole appearing in peoples Japanese? (I read the start uploaded to this website, and I notice it doesn't want to focus on pronunciation etc., just learning the meanings).

Thank you greatly for the advice, I may still look at picking up a game as a casual way to bring the language alive a little more anyway though!

Quote:Also, how much time on average do people dedicate to RTK a day?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:As far as my opinion goes, you only need volume one. After that you can recognize and write 95% of the kanji you come across, and you have the tools to memorize more kanji that you might see elsewhere.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Tae Kim uses Japanese sentences when explaining the grammar, so there's kana and kanji in there. It's hard to say when you'd be "ready" since Heisig doesn't teach you kanji in the order of usefulness. So, you'll meet basic kanji seen in Tae Kim's site throughout the book.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:However, firefox has a plugin called rikaichan that explains what a particular kanji/compound means by merely highlighting the word. So in reality with said plugin you could start working on it right now without lots of extra work required! Even though you said grammar is one of your strong points I'm sure there'll be concepts you may not have fully understood yet, as the language is so different from English fundamentally.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:SRS is a great tool indeed. I think most people here believe RTK makes kanji much more manageable and I agree with them. Also, Anki has premade decks for tae kim and RTK so those would be crucial for ensuring success. The stories found on this site are a goldmine for simplifying the learning process, I greatly encourage you to use them. This language is challenging enough as-is!

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Also if you find something fun you should definitely do it! I remember playing final fantasy I on PSP which had kana/kanji/english language settings and very simple sentence structures.

Quote:Depends on your pace. With 25 or so new kanjis a day an hour dedicated to that should do. SRS'ing takes maybe half an hour to an hour.

Remember not to get stuck on a single kanji. What I found useful was to set an alarm every 2mins which is plenty to memorize the character with pre-made stories. Even the difficult ones will stick so don't stress too much about them.

Shirayuri Wrote:The only really concern I have with RTK is that, I tend to message my friends a lot on Skype in Japanese (I know enough to get by, but not enough to talk about everything I want, if that makes sense?) Now, because RTK doesn't teach any readings, how will I be able to type the Kanji on IME? I am guessing that'll come with learning the words and so on afterwards?

Shirayuri Wrote:Also, how much time on average do people dedicate to RTK a day? I have many things draining my time sadly, and as opposed to formal study, a lot of my study comes from conversing with my Japanese friends and picking up words along the way [This is obviously quite slow, though!]!

Shirayuri Wrote:When I go on Anki, will it be easy to find the pre-made decks etc? Is it an easy thing to use on the whole? From lurking I noticed an RTK app, and Anki app for my phone; do you know if these are generally considered worth their price?

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Yes it will. It'll likely be a bit discouraging to know only the basic meanings of a lot of kanji without knowing how to pronounce them or how they work in compounds, a lot of Japanese people might not understand why you would do this. That's why you burn through this book as quickly as possible! (Just kidding)
Usually an IME suggests the correct kanji characters for what you type, so if you know the meaning of the word you're typing, and you can recognize the meanings of the kanji that are being suggested, you could be able to often choose the correct kanji compound without being too sure of the readings for the characters.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:It depends on the individual how many characters you can get done in what time. I could usually only do 10-15 characters in an hour, but I always had music or videos on while I did it, and often just spaced out from the kanji and listened/watched. Also I'm not a native English speaker, so I had to look up a lot of keywords in order to have a really clear idea of what they could mean (in order to make up or understand stories clearly). You should totally be able to have 20-25 characters done in an hour (2-3 mins per character) unless you want to have all your stories be as elaborate as they can be. 20-25 characters a day will have you finish the book in what, 3-4 months? That's a great pace.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Anki has a list of shared decks with a search funtion to it. There are several RTK decks, I made my own so I don't know which one is packed with the most information. You should read the manual on ankisrs.net and experiment with the program so you understand how fields work, and how you can arrange how the information is displayed and customize the appearance of the cards.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Having Anki on a mobile device is definitely worth it, I know the one for iPhone/iPod is a bit pricey, but I'd buy it in an instant (The one for Android is free because it isn't developed by Anki's creator). Reviewing during spare time in school or on the bus has saved a lot of time for when I've come home.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:As TwoMoreCharacters stated, the mobile anki app is great. I'm actually using mine right now since I have no access to my desktop for the holidays and it's working great. The best thing about Anki for me is the cloud feature where my decks and their progress are shared across multiple devices with Anki installed. just be sure to create an account for the program to be able to sync the information.

I've had no problems with the most popular RTK deck (found easily from the app itself, I think it's #1 as a whole).

Betelgeuzah Wrote:While I wouldn't say to plow through as quickly as possible trying to be too fancy can slow you down unnecessarily as well. You'll get a hang of the characters after being exposed to them post-RTK, I think it is merely a stepping stone for the real thing (but a good one at that).

lardycake Wrote:I am almost done with RTK, have been going through Pimsleur, mining sentences from "All about particles", as well as watching a load of anime.

I am amazed by how much I have learnt in a small amount of time (2 months) from doing just these things. I went pretty hardcore at RTK the first month before slowing that down and starting the other stuff. For the last month I have been taking it really slow and steady, but it's getting insane results for the small effort I am putting in (15 mins mining sentences and 30 mins reviewing).

I can now hear stuff in Pimsleur for the first time and already know the kanji to write it out. When watching anime if writing comes up I can understand some of it, and if I don't understand it I at least am familiar with the kanji.

Feels pretty good. I'm going to keep going at this pace for a while, and then if I hit a plateau will ramp up the amount of sentence mining.

Quote:Yeah, now, I've read the start of RTK online and with the stories, am I supposed to like, physically write out the stories, or just think of them, or what? I'm sorta confused by this aspect. Also I read only the first 500 kanji have stories, so, is this the place to look for help for more if I'm not creative enough?

Quote:So, while doing RTK was there anything you did specifically to keep 'using' the Kanji, keeping it fresh? Or is it just reviewing until it's finished, then removing the 'blindfold' and marvelling at how you understand lots?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Some people write the stories so that they will remember them later. Personally I didn't give a damn and decided to just be as efficient as I could.

In reality all the stories are already findable within a click of a button if you use the ones found here. Honestly speaking I could count the times I 'forgot' a story so completely that upon seeing the kanji I couldn't figure it out with my fingers- it was a very rare occurence.

In my opinion Heisig's stories are pretty awful for the most part, and making up your own stories will slow you down. Now, I'm not claiming that you should skip all these steps- just that the amount of time you save by using a pre-determined deck with pre-determined stories is substantial, so it's worth it to consider.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Heisig explains the method in his book. You're supposed to create mnemonics- like mental images, 'stories'- using the keywords that each kanji consists of. By recalling the stories you can efficiently recreate the kanji later during the reviews. Make sure that you completely understand what you're supposed to do, though, or otherwise you'll be doing a lot of work for little success. The keywords are in English (closely or not so closely related to one of the Japanese meanings) so that it is easier to give each kanji a meaning that you are already familiar with. The great thing about Heisig's approach is that you're not trying to learn everything at once- writing, meaning, readings, compounds- but focus on a single aspect which speeds up your learning process considerably and best of all, allows you to make use of native material much faster.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Not really. I kept reviewing while occasionally reading some native material, finding it easier and easier to recognize each character. Even though I only knew an English meaning that is not relevant imo- more importantly I could identify each kanji from one another, and thus learning vocab directly from kanji became a lot easier. You could even keep using mnemonics to make the vocab stick, but I haven't found it necessary so far. Say, 'tomodachi' has two kanjis in the compound: friend and accomplished. Then you can just make up a quick mnemonic, "my friend is accomplished" which will further help in identifying the word later.

Quote:I see; so just downloading a pre-built RTK deck on Anki should do me fine, then? Do you write things out a lot too to get the stroke order down? Do the stories somehow link to stroke order, or is it just the top-to-bottom left-to-right thing you generally follow?

Quote:So far I have the impression that I'm supposed to; 1) Study the kanji, read Heisigs story/Make my own/Look at the pre-built Decks 2) 'Learn' it 3) Move onto a new Kanji and repeat 1+2 4) After like an hours worth, review the Kanji through Anki on my own schedule.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Yes, just get the most popular deck. I do tend to write the characters quite a few times while thinking up the mnemonic, but really it just helps me focus more than anything. Also, while reviewing I write each kanji once at best. It's not a problem as the keywords build up over time and usually only one keyword per kanji is unfamiliar to you. Stories can link to keyword order if necessary. Which side the 'insect' keyword is on etc.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Generally I suggest reviewing the new kanji the day after studying them. So if you study 20 kanji today you should time it so the same 20 kanji are added to the anki deck the day after. Reviewing them the same day is not necessary imo.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:The stories are found on this site, rated by users so the most popular stories (generally the best ones) are the first ones you'll come across. The anki deck only has the keyword+kanji, with a link to the story on this site.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Few more things. Success rate on new cards isn't that important. 70% success rate isn't alarming, although higher is of course better.

chamcham Wrote:When it comes to explaining RTK, I hate doing it because then the other
person thinks they knows how it works and starts complaining about the method
without having ever tried it.

So now when people ask me about method, I'm going take that line from "The Matrix":

"I can not tell you what the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself".

And then I'll proceed to give them the 12-chapter sample PDF of "Remembering The Kanji".

haplology Wrote:RTK character meanings are generally of less use to me than the whole process of learning the characters. While the meanings can be somewhat helpful, I'm hoping to eventually know enough compounds that the true meaning becomes more evident. However, I had problems before trying to learn kanji because I would mix up characters all the time. 嬉しい and 嫌い can look rather similar, yet after RTK, it's hard to imagine mistaking one for the other. Same with 梅 and 海 or that type of thing.

haplology Wrote:I have found it slow going through vocabulary. I know enough to be able to make myself generally understood - but if I turn on a podcast I often catch about 10% of what's going on. Pretty frustrating. For some reason I can't burn through Anki decks - I'm slowly working through Core 2k - at the halfway point right now after several months. It's also difficult for me to find enough native materials at my level that are interesting - not a fan of anime, etc.

Quote:Right, this sort of links to what I've been getting most confused over. I did some reading the last few days before posting back here, and it seems that it is suggested I use the SRS on this website? And that it can be many days between tests on the kanji? Based on this, where does Anki fit in? Or are people using Anki instead of the SRS built in on here?

Quote:Are they found when browsing cards under the SRS thing, or somewhere I missed while looking? Sorry!

Quote:My only real question is, if I do lesson 1 today, is it time for lesson 2 tommorow? I'm sort of confused as to this 'how many days' until you review thing to get the LTM trained.

Quote:or just trying to use this site for the stories and Anki for the SRS?

Quote:does Anki work on the same 'days break' system as this sites?

Shirayuri Wrote:Right, this sort of links to what I've been getting most confused over. I did some reading the last few daysbefore posting back here, and it seems that it is suggested I use the SRS on this website? And that it can be many days between tests on the kanji? Based on this, where does Anki fit in? Or are people using Anki instead of the SRS built in on here?

Quote:And, based on the the Author has said I shouldn't be reviewing daily; does Anki work on the same 'days break' system as this sites?

Shirayuri Wrote:is there a way to set the cards to be shown randomly but added in order added?