Started on RTK 1 two days ago. So far it is extremely good. I am doing 50 Kanji a day and at the very worst I tend to miss 10% when reviewing. My only question is this. Is it bad if I have to see the kanji visually to recall the meaning? For example, I can only recall a few Kanji if I just remember their meaning. However, the opposite way I can almost always remember what the kanji meant. Basically, if I see the kanji I have no problem remembering it's meaning. If it's the other way around though I can't really recall it. Is this a bad way to memorize it? Like I said, I've done about 100 Kanji by this point and at worst I get 10% wrong when going through the book and reviewing. I review by covering the meanings. I cover the meanings and guess based off of the visual picture. I also ensure I do not read the text associated with the kanji so that doesn't give it away either. Overall, is it okay if I learn like this? It seems to be working very well so far, but could this hurt me in the long run? Writing kanji is not much of a huge deal for me. I am aware of the review on this site, but feel it does not work for my visual recognition learning. I have to see the kanji to recall the meaning. It just doesn't work if I guess based off of the meaning. My #1 priority is being able to read kanji and recognize the meaning of them. So writing the kanji is no huge deal to me. Thank you to anyone who replies.

Not at all, that is far and away the most important aspect and the rest will come over time naturally as you drill more and definitely once you start learning the language. Being able to go from concept to kanjii is pretty unimportant.

Out of the four uses reading/writing/speaking/listening it only affects writing which will most likely be the least prevalent of the four. Additionally, only handwriting is affected because your IME will only need you to choose it from a list while typing. Even when handwriting you'll get your point across if you use hiragana for the kanji you can't recollect.

The point of learning the meanings is in my mind,
1. To be able to get general meanings of words you've never seen before
2.Help in the acquisition of vocabulary by linking words/compounds with concepts
neither of these is really dependent on meaning->kanji translation.

stratzvyda Wrote:Not at all, that is far and away the most important aspect and the rest will come over time naturally as you drill more and definitely once you start learning the language. Being able to go from concept to kanjii is pretty unimportant.

Out of the four uses reading/writing/speaking/listening it only affects writing which will most likely be the least prevalent of the four. Additionally, only handwriting is affected because your IME will only need you to choose it from a list while typing. Even when handwriting you'll get your point across if you use hiragana for the kanji you can't recollect.

The point of learning the meanings is in my mind,
1. To be able to get general meanings of words you've never seen before
2.Help in the acquisition of vocabulary by linking words/compounds with concepts
neither of these is really dependent on meaning->kanji translation.

This is simplistic and not entirely correct.

The simplest explanation I would give is that you should put the most important information on the back of the flashcard.

The kanji is the most important, not the keyword, so put that on the back. I believe almost everyone here does it that way.

If you read the English part of the book, you'll find that you're not supposed to be reviewing kanji->keyword but keyword to kanji. Learning the other way is valid (although you won't be able to write for a long time if ever), but if you're going to learn the other way you may as well get rid of the book and learn your radicals instead.

You'll also find that reviewing by going through the book is an extremely bad way to review - it doesn't let you easily skip things that are easy, and the order of the characters is fixed and gives you obvious clues especially when similar characters are grouped together, which in RtK they usually are.

I strongly recommend you stop reviewing by covering things and use an SRS program. If you don't want to use this site's review, then try Anki. If you don't want to use a computer program at all, then look up the Leitner system and keep physical flashcards carefully sorted.

Also, it's -really really- easy to recognize the first handful of kanji. 1-10 are the numbers, 1-3 are simply giveaways! Mouth, eye, sun, tree... dead easy. Even water barely takes squinting. When you get to jumbles like key 鍵 and sacrifice 犠 they start to all look alike, and that's where the method pays off.

oefirouz Wrote:The simplest explanation I would give is that you should put the most important information on the back of the flashcard.

The kanji is the most important, not the keyword, so put that on the back. I believe almost everyone here does it that way.

I'm curious what the purpose of that is. Being able to produce the kanji is of less importance(to me at least) than being able to understand the word or text. For example if you see 夜間　being able to go from night->夜 and interval->間 will not help you at all when you come across it. With the reverse you can instantly get the meaning of night time. In the end pick what works best for you, but i know i use kanji->meaning extremely frequently and frankly have never needed meaning->kanji because you go meaning->word/phrase when speaking or writing

I'm totally down for using a flashcard program. Just is there a way I can make it so that the kanji appears and then I hit the spacebar or s button to make the meaning appear? Basically, the reverse of the standard way?

Cerberus_Red Wrote:I'm totally down for using a flashcard program. Just is there a way I can make it so that the kanji appears and then I hit the spacebar or s button to make the meaning appear? Basically, the reverse of the standard way?

yup, it's easy to do with Anki, they have a deck that does that and links to dictionaries/here on the card to check stroke order etc. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3711455699

stratzvyda Wrote:I'm curious what the purpose of that is.

Heisig devotes quite a few pages to explaining the purpose of his system at the beginning of his book, but the short of it is that you have to learn to -write- the kanji one at a time if you want to write them at all, and even if you don't want to write them for writing's sake, the analysis that it takes to reconstruct the character ensures that you'll properly recognize every stroke.

I don't believe that people who learn by simple recognition flashcards are going to be able to distinguish characters that differ in very small ways. Mostly this isn't going to matter because in context which character is meant will be easy to read, but -sometimes- it will bite you when reading, and more often than that when writing and you have to choose in the IME.

I learned the recognition way too, and was forever mixing up similar kanji unless I had very recently reviewed them; I wish I'd known about the RtK method years ago.

PS: As touchscreens proliferate and handwriting IMEs improve, too, 'handwriting' isn't such a useless art as all that, although at the moment it's still easier to use the pronunciation if it's known, at least for me. But they are getting better.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

stratzvyda Wrote:I'm curious what the purpose of that is.

I don't believe that people who learn by simple recognition flashcards are going to be able to distinguish characters that differ in very small ways. Mostly this isn't going to matter because in context which character is meant will be easy to read, but -sometimes- it will bite you when reading, and more often than that when writing and you have to choose in the IME.

See the difference is you haven't used the method and are surprisingly dismissive about it and make a lot of strange assumptions with no reference, I know I have absolutely no problem reading/writing by hand and distinguishing similar characters having learned by this method and never really did and I don't believe I'm particularly special. I know theres no way i wouldve finished if it wasn't for Heisig's insanely awesome order and groupings.

This is isn't something I made up, it's something done by tons of people to great success even people who previously did orthodox heisig, the deck i used basically followed http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ard-format though altered to use mnemonics on the back because stories are awesome.

The best(and probably only) way to learn to write kanji is by writing kanji. Regardless of the method if you don't write out kanji as you do your reps you are going to suck at writing kanji.

I wrote plenty of kanji in my pre-RTK drills. You can use lazy kanji if you want, but it's not that many reps in an SRS before the RTK+SRS method has you at year+ intervals, and for the majority of characters I'd only fail them once or twice. RTK+SRS works quite well.

I'm not making my assumptions with no reference. I've read the lazy kanji article, I've read RTK's introduction, and I've tried plenty of learning methods. Obviously I can't go back and do the lazy kanji method now, nor do I want to. It's too similar to methods I tried that didn't work well for me to want to try it.