NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:I use core6k because I'm lazy. All the more power to you for going straight to native material it is not easy at first but people say it gets easier. I will be a lot happier though knowing I don't need to stop every other word to make an Anki card and when i do its because I genuinely want to learn the word. Core6k is easy. That makes it accessible and a great stepping stone to get people higher into Japanese. Not everyone does AJATT some people prefer to study from textbooks and its not our place to judge.

Even Khaz states that the best way to do AJATT is what the individual enjoys the most. If that means immersing oneself in the language and studying from textbooks, then it's pretty much "Kosher". I think a lot of people miss the point of a lot of what the guy has said, a lot of the time.

Given the somewhat rhapsodic approach to expression, it's not really surprising people get lost in what he is actually saying (that said, I thoroughly enjoy said writing style).

uisukii Wrote:

partner55083777 Wrote:

prink Wrote:Not really what he was asking, but... Nah, Heisig is good, and you shouldn't throw around your opinion as though it were fact.

I agree with Inny Jay for the most part, but I feel like he was leaving out an good argument for not doing RTK. It takes a lot of time. A lot of time that you could be using to study words, grammar, or native materials.

I agree that learning about kanji and radicals will really help you with Japanese in general, but I don't see any reason to do all of RTK, unless you want to learn how to write.

Is 14 days too long? That's how long it took me to start and complete RtK. The simple fact that most kanji now do not look "foreign" to me -at all- means that parsing sentences now involves one less vital element to have to remember. The general grammar is starting to sink into my brain a little and I'm finding the greater problem remembering kanji readings. Not having done RtK and trying to juggle grammar, readings AND trying to recall the physical struggle of each kanji would have taken up far too much mental space.

Comparing studying before doing RtK to now is like comparing diving in the ocean with a snorkel to diving in the ocean with scuba gear. While the terrain is still unknown, at least I don't have to worry about drowning in a sea of squiggles.

....
How...did you complete RTK in 14 days? I genuinely want to know this because the sooner I can get this outta the way, the better.

Do you still review?

I go with a lot of the advice from the ajatt site but not everything... personally I prefer core10k over pre-made cards because:

1. I'm plenty motivated... the enjoyment of native media is like a stimulus you need if you get bored easily
2. The cards have audio - a huge plus if you have any interest in pronouncing these new words correctly
3. I don't have to waste time making new cards...

This last one became the biggest point for me... I was spending soooo long making new cards, and I would only learn maybe 20 new words if I spent 1-2 hrs doing that. And I hadn't even started my reviews yet!
Now I can learn 35 new words a day, do my regular reviews, and read a little in the time it took me just to make new cards.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:....
How...did you complete RTK in 14 days? I genuinely want to know this because the sooner I can get this outta the way, the better.

Do you still review?

Probably very much the same as most people, only instead of stretching those half and hour a day or so I guess a lot of people may do, I spent two weeks, sometimes 12+ hours a day learning, writing and reviewing RtK. The only difference is that I had the time available, wanted to get it done, and did pretty much nothing else aside getting it done.

The huge daily reviews slow down rather quick after the last cards have been reviewed, and it may seem odd, but it was easier to remember older cards I was forgetting, the more I powered on. I guess because so many of the later kanji involve many of the earlier kanji.

I still review, just not a great deal anymore. There are about 1000 cards waiting to be reviewed. If I cared enough, I could probably knock them off in a few hours. Last time I checked I was averaging around 300 and something cards an hour, in RtK.


I guess how I did it was following through with a plan which involved a lot of mental preparation. I'm a few days away from starting another more intense run of learning and reviewing (not RtK, actual Japanese- thank god). The only thing stopping people from really dramatically increasing their Japanese over a short period of time is the mind.

If you are at all familiar with weightlifting or powerlifting, you may have heard of John Broz's training method, which essentially puts the individual through an intense few weeks of barbell squats, maxing out; adapting to fatigue and increasing lift numbers in a period of time most would think impossible. The key factor is that your brain will often tell you that you are tired long before your body is.

How does this factor into study? Well, it's about consistency. I was basically reading, writing out kanji and reviewing to I either become too distracted/bored/tired, then removed myself from the environment- enough to clear my mind but not enough to get comfortable and distracted- then return and repeat the process. Over the course of a few days my reviewing become more efficient, less tiresome, and I was spending more time studying and less time taking breaks, mainly due to my mind adapting to the workload.

If you can set mini-goals; daily-goals; even hourly goals if it provides a little extra motivation to continue, it all helps take the edge of the stress, provides a sense of reward for the brain, and in combination allows for a greater volume of information to be accepted without being blocked by stress and lethargy. A good night sleep to organize all file away all of those becoming familiar kanji, and a sober disposition, are both vital to aid in the process. In fact, the very first day I started at 一, not a single drop of alcohol went into my system. After long enough, the process becomes routine-like and the main problem won't be trying to finish, it will trying not to get too ahead of yourself.

But pre-made anki cards are so boring to review - I find it awseome how my own cards often bring back memories of what I was doing at that time etc. Core cards are just...plain boring to review. And since 20 or so cards would be completely new to me, which would make the review process require much more time, so adding cards vs. "learning" from Anki kind of evens out - one gives you cards that are more fun to review though.

And I usually wrote down sentences from websites or games; it takes max 20 sec to write down a sentence, or a minute if I can't guess the reading of a kanji. I usually add them to Anki after I've gathered them and then it takes 5-10 minutes making Anki cards. I usually add between 10 and 20 a day. Also, when you add your own cards, the review phase is much less painful as you should be familiar with all of the already.

In books, I just mark the line and "collect" the sentences later, so tihs doesn't disrupt my immersion really.

Copying sentences from websites is much easier though... though I find it easier to remember the readings if I type the cards out myself.

So total time spent with anything anki related is probably less than 30 minutes in total per day. And there's also the 10-15 minutes spent doing RtK.

uisukii Wrote:Even Khaz states that the best way to do AJATT is what the individual enjoys the most. If that means immersing oneself in the language and studying from textbooks, then it's pretty much "Kosher". I think a lot of people miss the point of a lot of what the guy has said, a lot of the time.

Given the somewhat rhapsodic approach to expression, it's not really surprising people get lost in what he is actually saying (that said, I thoroughly enjoy said writing style).

But that might be because the fellow speaks in riddles at times.

But this is kanji.koohii though, and nukemarine's suggested guide is burnt into the minds of everyone here. I always preferred forums like htlal, but this forum is nice when it comes to kanji related stuff, and I like the "what's this phrase/word" thread.

I stopped reviewing RTK almost immediately after I finished it. It sounds stupid and I did end up forgetting a lot of the stories and kanji, but it really didn't matter. I started Core 6k right after and cemented the kanji as I learned words containing them. As an example, it's true that I didn't recognize 紺 at all when I encountered it in Core 6k, since I skimped on RTK reviews at the end. But I still learned the word with no trouble in Core 6k because at that point I just didn't need RTK as a crutch anymore.

Based on that, I can see where Inny Jan is coming from about just not doing RTK. I think that's a bit extreme though; I was only interested in reading and not writing and RTK still helped me immensely because ~2000 kanji was just too much to take in without any systematic approach. If I could do it over again though, I'd have done RTK Lite instead of the whole thing. RTK was helpful because it made that large number seem manageable, but based on my experience now, it seems like overkill and even a waste of time to apply it as much as 2000 kanji. And fourteen days is pretty unrealistic considering many people have day jobs, school, or just want to do other stuff besides cram for 12 hours... In my case, I'd probably come to hate the language if I did something that grueling (and to make time for it, I'd have to spend all my vacation days and then some... a terrible waste).

dtcamero is pretty spot on about what's good about Core 6K. I work 40 hours a week; I don't want to lose free time I have using methods that waste time. Core 6K is just the most efficient way to learn useful vocabulary in a short period of time. It takes no more than 30 minutes of my day, and it's mindless. If I continue with this schedule Anki dictates, I'll know the 6000 most frequently used words in Japanese by March 2013, with pretty much no active effort on my part. This way, I have plenty of free time after a long day of work (which I can spend looking at native material if I feel like it, and no need to get Anki involved with this), and I'll have Core 6K done in a few months. I don't care that it's "boring" -- it takes so little time and RTK was far more boring and time-consuming.

I'm not trying to convince you to do Core 6K Stian, but you should understand that different people have different situations for which different methods work, instead of calling them "shit". If I had to actively prepare Anki stuff while trying to genuinely enjoy native material, I'd be much more likely to forget one day, not feel like doing it another day, or just quit altogether.

I kinda use the word "shit" a bit too losely, sorry about that. When did you start doing core? I tihnk I'm going to reach 6000 cards by the end of summer, so I'm not lagging too much behind. Adding Anki sentences is trivial though, and that is kind of the last part of studying, and once I've collected 10-15 sentences, I leave the sentences for later and add them to anki before going to bed. Sometimes I even just copy them all from one lifehacker.jp article, even a short one and that takes even less time. I am so used to it that it is as regular as breathing to me, and Anki reviews are never really boring - I cram through about 100 reviews in 20 minutes (according to the Anki timer at least). I read slowly due to my vision though (my sentence font size is about 75 and I can barely read it decently on a 18" laptop), so you might even do this even quicker.

I never really add sentences from books any more simply because it is tiring due to the fact that I have to use a 7x magnifying glass to just read. Damn the Japanese authors and their microscopic kanji. :p

I'm having fun, and you are probably too, so I guess either way is alright.

The general principle of language learning is that no matter how you do it, as long as you do it regularly and have enough contact with the language in it's native form, you will become fluent one day.

EDIT: I also add some Japanese defintions in my sentences as well, because the English definitions might be a little fuzzy at times; for instance, 予感's English defintion was weird, but the Japanese definition「何か事が起こりそうだと前もって感じること。また、その感じ。」made it very obvious.

Inny Jan Wrote:Do you find yourself trying to determine Heisig keywords when reading this?

No. That would be silly, and that isn't the purpose behind RtK. Like I said, it helps me identify kanji innately and differentiate between similar kanji. In my experience, being able to do that makes it much easier to pick up on kanji readings as I see the same kanji appear in different compounds.

uisukii Wrote:Is 14 days too long? That's how long it took me to start and complete RtK.

First off, that is very impressive, and your dedication is admirable. But there is one caveat: that's how long it took you to go over RtK once, and review most of the kanji 2-3 times (I'm assuming you used spaced repetition).

Then, you continued to review them for the past month (and you're slightly behind on your reviews). So you've been studying for 6 weeks, and you're still not as proficient (at writing the characters) as someone who has gone through RtK at a slower pace, in let's say 3 months. They will by now have reviewed (and written) most of the kanji 5-6 times, the difficult ones 10+ times. Considerably more work, and considerably more proficiency in writing and differentiating between the characters. (and it is worth being able to do that with more ease, because it then makes it easier to learn to read: you can focus more on the other aspects of your study; time taken at this stage saves time at the next stage).

In conclusion, I think the optimal method for learning the Japanese writing system involves finding a balance between the time allocated to RtK (benefiting from the extra proficiency) and the obvious benefit of moving past this stage quickly. I think two weeks is the most extreme you can be, and you would've been better off taking longer: I'd say 6 weeks - that's also Heisig's opinion; given your dedication, you could've spent the leftover time in those six weeks focusing on listening comprehension instead, by watching/ listening to Japanese media.

Please don't take this as an attempt to flame: I am speaking in hind sight, and am in fact guilty of far bigger errors than "going through RtK too quickly", in my study of Japanese. I am openly admitting that your approach is better than mine was, but I still don't think it is optimal. Taking six full weeks before moving on from this stage is my (in hind sight) estimation of the optimal time, instead.

To answer the OP, after you finish (if you have the time and motivation, in six weeks, if not, longer - but unless you're a surgeon or a CEO, at that point you are probably just wasting time to laziness) I would advise keeping up with reviews until you know for a fact that it's stupid to continue. How do you know that it's stupid? The same way you would know that it's stupid to make an Anki deck of audio of common spoken English words and writing them as the answer: you'll know it's stupid when the answers are all trivial. P.S. The suggestion to modify the deck, by adding Japanese readings as extra help, to Heisig's keyword, is sound advice. Knowing the keywords is not the purpose here, after all, knowing the characters is.

About the boringness of the Core decks:

I was surprised when I started doing an N1 vocab book about a month ago. It's a book of the 2000 words that appear most often on N1. I made the Anki cards myself, and put them into the exact same format as my Core 6000 deck. The book included audio files so I added those too.

Even though the book just contains the information on the cards (word, definition, example sentence, sound file), and thus is no different from Core 6000, I enjoy it much more than Core 6000. I think it's only because I typed it myself, which is interesting.

I think the moral of this story is that the human brain is silly.

Tzadeck Wrote:About the boringness of the Core decks:

I was surprised when I started doing an N1 vocab book about a month ago. It's a book of the 2000 words that appear most often on N1. I made the Anki cards myself, and put them into the exact same format as my Core 6000 deck. The book included audio files so I added those too.

Even though the book just contains the information on the cards (word, definition, example sentence, sound file), and thus is no different from Core 6000, I enjoy it much more than Core 6000. I think it's only because I typed it myself, which is interesting.

I think the moral of this story is that the human brain is silly.

I have the same experience. I haven't done Core 6k but I have a deck called Tanuki Ultima. I only use it as a last resort because it's so much more boring than my own handmade decks, even though I pick many of my words from lists.

I also think I learn most of the words during the adding phase and not the reviewing phase so I definitely don't consider it a waste of effort to make the cards myself. If I was given the option to automatically create all my anki cards, I would decline.

Taishi Wrote:I also think I learn most of the words during the adding phase and not the reviewing phase so I definitely don't consider it a waste of effort to make the cards myself. If I was given the option to automatically create all my anki cards, I would decline.

That's how a study them as well. This means that I kind of know 75% of them the day after I added them (the rest? forgotten).
I also struggle much less reviewing those I typed out from Zelda rather than those I copied from for instance lifehacker.
I noticed the sharpest decline (in recalling the readings) when I started going J-J, and added example sentences and words from a dictionary. I've given up on that though; I only add a monolingual when I can understand the definition more or less perfectly.

Another thing that works in a language much more similar to one you already know, is this:
- Copy a few paragraphs form a article (news, wiki, etc.)
- Write down every new word
- Add translation/definition and part-of-speech (adj, noun, etc.)
- Memorise from original word->translation/def and translation/def->original word
- Reread the article
- Then, add Anki sentences. (I'm more picky in German, because I only add about 5 sentences a day in that language.)

Do not stop ever. Use an SRS app and open it up every once in a while to review old kanji. Ideally, your SRS app takes into account "late" reviews, which means it will adjust the interval correctly even if you don't review the kanji when you were supposed to. I know anki seems to be the most popular choice of app out there, but I hate it. I have had very good results with flashcards deluxe though, an iOS app and I think it is out for android now, too, but I could be wrong.

I got them here on this website. Would have sold my soul to the devil to get them over to anki without having to "relearn" them all.

I have scraped the top stories from this site into an anki deck if you want I can send it to you, or if you use flashcards deluxe I can share the code with you to download it in that app

Would that mean I have to "learn" the cards again?

Stian Wrote:I got them here on this website. Would have sold my soul to the devil to get them over to anki without having to "relearn" them all.

There's a plugin for that, isn't there?

Well, I wasted an hour trying to even import it... It seems to import everything as one field...

awayand Wrote:Do not stop ever. Use an SRS app and open it up every once in a while to review old kanji.

Or you could listen to a podcast or movie or something, stop after each sentence, and try to transcribe what was just said. If that's too tedious, just transcribe it in your head and just jot down the kanji in the sentence. Depending on the source this can be as challenging as you want, and it associates a Japanese word as used in native material with the kanji, instead of a Heisig keyword.

Tzadeck Wrote:About the boringness of the Core decks:

I was surprised when I started doing an N1 vocab book about a month ago. It's a book of the 2000 words that appear most often on N1. I made the Anki cards myself, and put them into the exact same format as my Core 6000 deck. The book included audio files so I added those too.

It sounds like those 2000 words are not in Core 6k. What's the title of the book you're using?

awayand Wrote:Do not stop ever. Use an SRS app and open it up every once in a while to review old kanji. Ideally, your SRS app takes into account "late" reviews, which means it will adjust the interval correctly even if you don't review the kanji when you were supposed to.

Why ought one "not stop ever"? Have you gone through the process of RtK yourself?


EDIT: from a purely production point of view, that is to practice physically writing out a range of kanji, to keep them "fresh in your head", so to speak; what is stopping someone from printing out Japanese wikipedia pages and/or Japanese newspaper pages and literally copying out sections by hand? If the retention rate of RtK Anki is high and not a primary concern; the prior suggestion could serve purely as writing exercise.

Even though it may not make sense -the actual text that is- the point of RtK isn't to be able to read Japanese. A single rough translation of a common reading, of which often isn't reliable for "understanding" native texts, isn't in any meaningful sense comprehending Japanese. That is what you study after RtK.

Stian Wrote:Well, I wasted an hour trying to even import it... It seems to import everything as one field...

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3857512054

Try this?

Anki (2) doesn't let me run it...

I am only able to edit and delete it.

EDIT: The plugin now works, thanks to frony09. You find it linked above and it is updated.
Hopefully this wasn't too much Anki tech ...

Yea I finished rtk september 2011 and have been reviewing since. Trouble is, since then I have learned a lot more Japanese words and the English keyword causes me to pick the wrong kanji often.

An example would be 匿 'hide' I see the keyword and immediately think 隠す failing the card. So I have started putting common readings on the flashcard to make distinguishing the card easier.

I wouldn't stop reviewing them, myself. I did...and now I'm doing RTK again. It might not work out this way for everyone, but for me I feel it was the biggest mistake I've made with my Japanese studies, definitely regret it.

If you have everything in one Anki deck, they shouldn't pose too much of an issue, and the ones you're most familiar with will quickly move to such long intervals they won't pop up too often anyway.