So, after finishing RTK1 way back in March, I've been very very slack in getting onto the readings. My original goal was to have the onyomis down by the end of June, and be substantially through the kunyomis by now. Suffice it to say that hasn't happened.

Anyway, I thought I'd post here as a bit of public accountability, that my goal for the summer holidays is to go at 70 onyomis a day, following the heisig method, and be done by the end of August.
I've got an old RTK2 deck I'm using, which I'm slowly cleaning up as I go through, so I guess I'll make that public when I'm done, in case it's useful for anyone.

Also, I really like heisig's method, so I'm going to stick with it for the onyomis at least...

So, here's to finally getting those suckers nailed down, eh?

Don't learn onyomi or kunyomi separately, its stupid. STUPID.

Learn vocabulary and new words and learn the Kanji used in them at the same time, after completing RTK1 this shouldn't be difficult to do and you will pick up the readings naturally.

Learning them separately is not only difficult because they are so hard to retain but also a complete and utter waste of time.

Considering the onyomi section is entirely vocabulary based, I don't see what your objection is...

Learn however you want. Sounds like you are enjoying and progressing. Good luck with it.

ktcgx Wrote:Considering the onyomi section is entirely vocabulary based, I don't see what your objection is...

Okay fine, then let me change to "Learn vocabulary and new words IN CONTEXT"

I didn't realise this thread was in RTK2 forum because I just tend to search by new posts and click ones that look interesting. So I downloaded the book quickly and looked through, and it seems to teach by grouping characters together with the same onyomi and the same radicals. Some vocabulary are listed but they seem to be for examples rather than what you are supposed to be putting your energy into studying.

And even then, learning what is essentially a completely random list of vocabulary words would still be a waste of time (if that even is your plan). Not only are you missing the context those words would be in but lots of them aren't even common and are probably a waste of time learning at the less advanced stages.

Its just a bad idea all round.

If you have finished RTK 1 already then you have already spent plenty of time learning Kanji in isolation. Stop wasting your time on that and start learning the Japanese language itself.

uisukii Wrote:Learn however you want. Sounds like you are enjoying and progressing. Good luck with it.

Thanks!

Nightsky, you got it wrong... the vocab is what you use to remember the reading, much then same way in rtk1 when new primitives are remembered by using them in kanji... I really do hope you understand what I just said... the kanji are grouped by reading, designated by the same signal primitive. Since you never bothered to even try rtk2, why are you telling me I'm wasting my time? You obviously know nothing about that method.
Also, I live in Japan... I have plenty of context all the time. I want a more structured approach.

ktcgx Wrote:Nightsky, you got it wrong... the vocab is what you use to remember the reading, much then same way in rtk1 when new primitives are remembered by using them in kanji... I really do hope you understand what I just said...

Sure, I even addressed that saying its still missing context as well as being essentially random (in that there are plenty of less common words in there). Learning what is effectively random vocabulary strikes me as being very far away from the "structured approach" you are looking for.

That said, I think here we can just agree to disagree and that's fine. As long as you are putting the time and effort in that will always trump any different methodology anyway, so if that works for you then good luck and have fun with it.

EDIT -- Actually one thing I wanted to add was that I did something similar when I was studying for JLPT years back. I had a Kanji book which was just a list of 2000 characters with a few vocabulary words for each one. It was handy for learning the readings of a few Kanji I hadn't seen before (I still remember learning 煩わしい from it) and although it was slightly helpful for JLPT it wasn't much help for Japanese as a whole.

That's pretty much my only experience of learning vocabulary based on Kanji I wanted to learn, as opposed to learning the Kanji from words I want to remember. I don't think it was very efficient or worthwhile at all learning that way around, but everyone is different and perhaps other people have had far more success with it than I felt.

(oh and I can take back my "STUPID" comment, that's reserved for people who just want to memorize that 生 can be read as う、ふ、せい、なま、。。。。。。 etc)

It is structured in the learning of onyomis. We probably have very different learning styles...

ktcgx Wrote:It is structured in the learning of onyomis. We probably have very different learning styles...

Okay. I'm happy to back off this thread completely and stop replying if its bothering you, otherwise in the interest of debate I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. You are supposed to be learning 70 onyomi a day and that's probably more important to you than any conversation with me =)

How long have you been studying by this method of separating out the Onyomi for?
How are the results so far?
Why do you feel its necessary to study them separately? What is your goal? What is the efficiency increase you are expecting from doing it this way? What problems were you having before with your previous study method?
What sort of level is your Japanese now?

If you don't want to bother with this then that's fine too. I'm just genuinely curious that's all because to me it seems a really strange way to "structure" one's approach to Kanji characters.

U

NightSky Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:It is structured in the learning of onyomis. We probably have very different learning styles...

Okay. I'm happy to back off this thread completely and stop replying if its bothering you, otherwise in the interest of debate I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. You are supposed to be learning 70 onyomi a day and that's probably more important to you than any conversation with me =)

How long have you been studying by this method of separating out the Onyomi for?
How are the results so far?
Why do you feel its necessary to study them separately? What is your goal? What is the efficiency increase you are expecting from doing it this way? What problems were you having before with your previous study method?
What sort of level is your Japanese now?

If you don't want to bother with this then that's fine too. I'm just genuinely curious that's all because to me it seems a really strange way to "structure" one's approach to Kanji characters.

I hope you appreciate me typing this out on my tiny phone for you...

Basically, I started rtk2 awhile ago, but school's been busy this year (I'm a teacher here) so I fell off the wagon, and hadn't studied anything for several months. Probably about 4 months. I literally just got back into it this weekend. So it's been 2 days, and so far it's fine :p

Why am I studying them separately? Heisig has been the only thing that has worked for me. I mean the ONLY thing. I don't even know how I got through uni... I would literally write out kanji hundreds of times and the next day couldn't remember a thing... So I'm going to stick with heisig, because none of the other methods anyone here has advocated has ever worked for me, but heisig does.

As for my japanese level.... studied since intermediate school, have a bachelor's and have lived here for 3 years, but it's a fair bit lower than you'd expect from that info because I hate studying, and suffer from low energy all the time...

So there you have it...

I learned on and kun "out of context" and found it really helpful.

But if you're taking that approach you should try to immerse yourself in reading material as soon as you can.


*To the people who advocate learning kanji solely from context- why not do both? Why not learn on/kun separately and expose yourself to contextual material at the same time?

[RawToast]

NightSky Wrote:EDIT -- Actually one thing I wanted to add was that I did something similar when I was studying for JLPT years back. I had a Kanji book which was just a list of 2000 characters with a few vocabulary words for each one. It was handy for learning the readings of a few Kanji I hadn't seen before (I still remember learning 煩わしい from it) and although it was slightly helpful for JLPT it wasn't much help for Japanese as a whole.

That's pretty much my only experience of learning vocabulary based on Kanji I wanted to learn, as opposed to learning the Kanji from words I want to remember. I don't think it was very efficient or worthwhile at all learning that way around, but everyone is different and perhaps other people have had far more success with it than I felt.

That could be made more efficient by only learning vocabulary that is frequently used. That way you avoid learning rarer words like 共産 and 拗れる. It isn't far off Nukemarine's guide really...

RawToast Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:EDIT -- Actually one thing I wanted to add was that I did something similar when I was studying for JLPT years back. I had a Kanji book which was just a list of 2000 characters with a few vocabulary words for each one. It was handy for learning the readings of a few Kanji I hadn't seen before (I still remember learning 煩わしい from it) and although it was slightly helpful for JLPT it wasn't much help for Japanese as a whole.

That's pretty much my only experience of learning vocabulary based on Kanji I wanted to learn, as opposed to learning the Kanji from words I want to remember. I don't think it was very efficient or worthwhile at all learning that way around, but everyone is different and perhaps other people have had far more success with it than I felt.

That could be made more efficient by only learning vocabulary that is frequently used. That way you avoid learning rarer words like 共産 and 拗れる. It isn't far off Nukemarine's guide really...

Also, I'm aiming for JLPT1 and a high kanten level, maybe level 2, so I think with the kanten in mind, heisig's approach seems better and more efficient to me... But I'll try to keep you all updated with my progress.

ktcgx Wrote:I hope you appreciate me typing this out on my tiny phone for you...

I did! Thank you for that

ktcgx Wrote:Also, I'm aiming for JLPT1 and a high kanten level, maybe level 2, so I think with the kanten in mind, heisig's approach seems better and more efficient to me... But I'll try to keep you all updated with my progress.

That's actually really interesting. I'm somewhere around N1 too so our skills are probably not miles apart, so I'm even more suprised about you want to learn Onyomi separately. If you are close to N1 surely you already know the majority of readings for the Joyo kanji?

NightSky Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:I hope you appreciate me typing this out on my tiny phone for you...

I did! Thank you for that

ktcgx Wrote:Also, I'm aiming for JLPT1 and a high kanten level, maybe level 2, so I think with the kanten in mind, heisig's approach seems better and more efficient to me... But I'll try to keep you all updated with my progress.

That's actually really interesting. I'm somewhere around N1 too so our skills are probably not miles apart, so I'm even more suprised about you want to learn Onyomi separately. If you are close to N1 surely you already know the majority of readings for the Joyo kanji?

Haha, aiming, eventually... I'm somewhat short of N2 right now... everyday stuff is fine, it's the rest that I still suck at...

ktcgx Wrote:Haha, aiming, eventually... I'm somewhat short of N2 right now... everyday stuff is fine, it's the rest that I still suck at...

Fair enough. Good luck!

NightSky Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:Haha, aiming, eventually... I'm somewhat short of N2 right now... everyday stuff is fine, it's the rest that I still suck at...

Fair enough. Good luck!

Thanks! Gonna need it....

So day 4 and still going at it... All the kanji that I learnt from before have now been reviewed too, and I'm up to frame 783 (having skipped the kanji with no onyomis, about 80 or so). I don't know what my percentages are, because I can't understand Anki's graphs.. But at any rate, I think it's too early to say, I guess? Anyway, I feel like it's going well...

Another 2 days, and 140 more onyomis done. There are a lot of reviews each day, but I'm hoping there'll be less as time goes on...

ktcgx Wrote:Another 2 days, and 140 more onyomis done. There are a lot of reviews each day, but I'm hoping there'll be less as time goes on...

There'll only ever be more until you slow down / stop / finish adding new cards. It's supposed to eventually level out at ~10*added cards/day IIRC, but I don't think you're going to reach that point with only, what, 2200 cards at 70/day?

Deciding to skim through all the everyday readings today, since I know 90% of them... Hopefully this won't come back to bite me...

Well, what with a festival on the weekend, I slipped a bit, but managed to do a massive catch up yesterday, and am back on track.^^

As someone who loved the method in RTK1 but wasn't really into RTK2, how are you retaining the info in RTK2? To me it seems that Heisig just organized it for you and said go at it without giving you a method of remembering the onyomi/kunyomi.

learningkanji Wrote:As someone who loved the method in RTK1 but wasn't really into RTK2, how are you retaining the info in RTK2? To me it seems that Heisig just organized it for you and said go at it without giving you a method of remembering the onyomi/kunyomi.

Well, a major reason for me not getting stuck into it quickly initially was that it's much harder to figure out compared to RTK1... but I'm finding I quite like his signal primitive groupings, they make it reasonably easy to remember the readings, but for the others that give me trouble, I tend to try to make up a quick story using the keywords of the kanji, and that's usually ok. There are a few that give me trouble, but that's basically because I have an awful memory anyway. I'm using anki, and editing a deck I found as I go along, adding in signal primitives to the front of the cards and also chapter symbols so I'm not trying to look for patterns where none are. It slows me down, but I think it's better in the long run.