Hello

I have decided to study again but i am worried about ending up being burned again and give up as i did several times already... So i wonder if you could give me some advices or at least your opinion on my study method right now.

My japanese level is upper intermediate, my listening and kaiwa are very good as i have been watching dramas and talking to japanese people very often for years. But my vocabulary and specially kanji skills are far from being acceptable.

Passed 2kyuu long time ago, but my kanji skills greatly deteriorated from then... So now i want to basically focus in kanji and vocabulary absortion.

What i am doing now is using RTK keyword method, but, i am not following RTK order. Long time ago i got an old kanji book from a japanese friend that orders kanjis not in radical nor usage order but in non radical kanji parts order... Let me write a few examples:

衛緯違偉　　　OR 　　羽翌翼習扇　　OR　　役疫没投殺設

Basically i am using an RTK anki list and modifying the meanings when necessary and just assigning them a number of lesson to study them when i need them. I am doing just production of the kanji, so writing them using only the keyword.

As for vocabulary, i took a core 10k anki file and i just pick the sentences that use the kanjis i studied that day and assign them the same lesson number i used for the new kanjis. I add new sentences or words when necessary.

Basically i am studying 17 kanjis a day, as that gives me around 50 new i+1 sentences a day, was doing 34 but i was afraid of having an enormous number of reviews later so i chickened...

About the sentence file cards, i basically chose white colour for the sentence font so i can only see the target word in the initial card, i try to give an accurate meaning from memory then using the mouse i make the sentence visible and try to read it aloud. Then press spacebar and the audio comes... And i check if my reading and word meaning was correct.

My problem is that i feel that i am trying to memorize the full sentences, when i am testing myself i try to create a full sentence only seeing the target word, actually i can reproduce several sentences i am learning from memory... This take me a long time in my reviews...

Should i just check them as ok if i know the word meaning just seeing it and then if i can read the sentence without making mistakes? I have been always like this... I never know when i did learned properly something, so i think i wasted too much time cause of this... Also i am afraid of being used to the sentences more than adquiring the new vocabulary...

Should i do some kind of production for the vocabulary? as i am now only working on recognition, do not know if recognition study will be enough to be able to use the words in an active conversation later... Want to do the things properly once and for all this time...

Thanks in advance

PS: Sorry about my english...

Hi. No need to apologize for the English! I'm always impressed by people writing in a foreign or second language, because I know how bloody hard it can be.

So, you burned yourself out in the past? And may I ask if what you are doing now is different from what you did then? It seems to me, and this is just my impression, but you are trying too hard. The Anki study sounds great, but maybe you need to re-think how you are going about this overall. I suggest you consider balancing out the time you spend SRS studying with enjoyable reading. As much as possible. If you read stuff that is fun and interesting, and closer to your level, it will be relaxing, and also help you learn at the same time. The idea is to have more fun, and so therefore reduce the chance of burning yourself out.

Now the tricky part. OK, if you are living in Japan, maybe not so tricky. Just go to Bookoff and spend a few 万円 on a decent collection of easy to read books and manga. Get recommendations from people or look online for recommendations. If you are not in Japan this part may be a bit more expensive, because of shipping costs/purchasing things which are new. But in any case, I would aim at spending as much as you can on stuff that you can read. Reading is the key to really knowing your Kanji.

Here's a site that might interest you; http://tadoku.org/

crosspath Wrote:What i am doing now is using RTK keyword method, but, i am not following RTK order. .

Why can't you just use RTK1 as Heisig recommends? That's what I did and I finished RTK1. I didn't use Anki or anything. Keep it simple!

Now that I have RTK1 under my belt, reading is a total breeze because all the new kanji my reader introduces are already familiar to me.

The other benefit of RTK1 is that the first 15 lessons in my Japanese reader are handwritten in what I like to call "Japanese chicken scratch writing", in vertical columns. Sometimes it's hard to make out the handwritten character, but from RTK1 I know exactly how to write it.

Later in the book it switches to actual Japanese printed typefaces. The author claims that the first lessons are in handwriting so the student can learn how Japanese looks like when written by hand but I wonder whether they did that to save money on typesetting costs (the book was printed in 1963).

@Danchan

I am reading a bit sometimes, but don't have a lot of time, have several books and mangas i bought in Japan time ago.

@John555

I do not use RTK method cause i know already several kanjis and vocabulary, also think that studying vocabulary and kanji at the same time is a better approach, at least for me. I bought rtk 1 and 2 years ago and the system was not working for me, but i am still using most keywords from the book.

I break kanjis into radicals and that way i remember them, and i chose the special order i spoke about cause i remember making lot of mistakes with similar kanjis in the past, so studying all the similar ones at the same time makes me become aware of the problem from the very beginning, so i can focus on the kanjis i have problems with. If i fail a kanji thinking that is a different one then i mark both as failed and study them again.

Thanks for your replies... I am specially interested on opinions on your way of testing your sentence lists, kanji testing is easier. Specially want to listen opinions from people that used anki for a while and succeeded while using it.

Thanks