vix86 Wrote:Maybe this is why RTK wasn't the best fit for me. When I had started, I was going into it with the vocabulary I had gleaned from watching anime (so about 100-200 words) plus I had worked through about half of Japanese for Everyone. That, and I was seriously having difficulty working with stories, and producing kanji from that.quark Wrote:I know this will probably be considered bad advice, but if the OP is getting that stressed out, they should put RTK away, and just focus on watching and listening to a lot of Japanese.I don't think there is anything wrong with putting the RTK away and focusing on real Japanese. The reason why people try and recommend that people start with the RTK first is because after you start learning tons of words and then try and come back to the RTK you often have a hard time making Heisig's keywords fit within your model of Japanese.
But then again, I'm working with KO2001, and have kind of hit a brick wall around 816, which is roughly where I was when I stopped using RTK. I've had to really ease up on how many new kanji I learn. I have now gone from 5-10 a day, to 5 a week, maybe. All my exposure now is coming from reading manga, kids novels, and Rocket News.
Maybe the key to learning Japanese is realizing that you're going to have to experiment and try a bunch of different methods at first until you find something that works.