It would be great to learn Japanese vocabulary and grammar side-by-side with the kanjis in Heisig order, i.e. for every RTK lesson, you learn a handful of words using the kanjis you just learned, as well as some sentences containing them. Every few lessons, new grammatical concepts could be included and explained.

Does something like this perhaps already exist?

P.S.: only interesting for german-speaking people, but the official german website for the RTK books offers a free pdf with some words to every RTK lesson:
http://www.kanji-lernen.de/html/-wegzehr...aner-.html

Sadly, it does not contain furigana or readings of the Japanese words.

You could use "Wegzehrung für Heisigianer" and one of the Core decks (ie. Core6k, Core10k, etc.) together.

Initially, you suspend all the cards in your core deck, then progressively unsuspend those that have vocab you studied. And since cards in the core decks include sentences you will get to study some grammar as well (mind you, the grammar there is very basic so you will need to look somewhere else for more).

For example, you come to lesson 3 and learn 一千, so you find 一千 in Core6k, unsuspend it, and that card is in your repetition cycle.

BTW, "Wegzehrung für Heisigianer" is an excellent resource - thanks for sharing.

You can always "copy & paste" the pdf content to Write, save that as .txt or .html, and then translate the German text with Google Translate (G->E works much better than E->J) and use Rikaisama to get the readings/meanings.

Due to the kanji order that RTK uses you'd have a very tough time finding a lesson plan to correspond with your RTK studies. You're going to be learning boatloads of kanji which are practically useless even to native Japanese speakers, let alone to students just starting the language.

You'll also find that many (even most) of the keywords in use in RTK are but one of several meanings of a given kanji, and so many of the vocab you'll learn later won't actually correspond to what you've learned (however, being able to recognize/write the kanji will make learning that word much easier). On top of that, even when a kanji's assigned keyword does fully and accurately match its meaning, you'll come across it in compounds which make absolutely no sense in combination.

Short answer: go ahead and focus on completing RTK, then dive into vocabulary acquisition later. Or start now, but focus on what you need, not what matches the kanji you know.

afterglowefx Wrote:Due to the kanji order that RTK uses you'd have a very tough time finding a lesson plan to correspond with your RTK studies. You're going to be learning boatloads of kanji which are practically useless even to native Japanese speakers, let alone to students just starting the language.

You'll also find that many (even most) of the keywords in use in RTK are but one of several meanings of a given kanji, and so many of the vocab you'll learn later won't actually correspond to what you've learned (however, being able to recognize/write the kanji will make learning that word much easier). On top of that, even when a kanji's assigned keyword does fully and accurately match its meaning, you'll come across it in compounds which make absolutely no sense in combination.

Short answer: go ahead and focus on completing RTK, then dive into vocabulary acquisition later. Or start now, but focus on what you need, not what matches the kanji you know.

This is the correct answer.

I would dispute that RTK has "boatloads of kanji which are practically useless even to native Japanese speakers" -- I think there are only a tiny handful of characters in RTK which might be considered useless even to native speakers (and some of those are probably in RTK just because they are or were on the Joyo list).

yudantaiteki Wrote:...I think there are only a tiny handful of characters in RTK which might be considered useless even to native speakers...

I may have been over-stating it with 'boatloads', but for quite a few of the kanji in the book the day-to-day usefulness is, well, lacking. It's not that they don't have a use, it's more that it's akin to learning the word 'quixotic' or 'alkaline'--not something you're going to be making much use of, even after JLPT1.

I'm not really basing this off my own personal experience (being only JLPT3), but more on the review I get seemingly every other day from the girlfriend (native speaker, college educated) which is this: some kanji she has literally never written since learning them in school, some she can read but not write, and many others she says she only very rarely uses.

Many of these rarer kanji are actually front-loaded in RTK, which makes trying to study along even more difficult.

tfg,

I find the RTK order, while brilliant for learning how to write kanji from memory and their basic meaning in your native language, is a very poor order for learning vocabulary. As such, learning vocabulary alongside RTK kanji for kanji is difficult. Plus, as mentioned, RTK introduces 2000+ kanji which means you'll get very common kanji taught along with rarely used ones.

There are better methods for learning vocabulary. The main method is grouped meaning (around the house, around the school, around the bus station, around the zoo, etc), however there is also a method that sorts words by the kanji used in the words which seems popular. It's entirely doable to learn smaller amount of kanji in bulk getting the benefit of learning the kanji's writing and meaning fast. After that, learn common words that use those kanji.