So I'm back to japanese after a 2 years break. I had reached 1184 learned kanji with RTK at the time but have now forgotten about 70% of them, though remembering them through review of the book w/ RevTK's definitions is mostly quick so far.

I wanted to share my method to get your input so here it is :

- Grammar : "Le japonais en manga" textbooks (I'm french). Should review the first volume in a couple of days as my knowledge of basic grammar is still pretty good and I used to browse through this book a lot back then. Then I'll start volume 2 which is a really good textbook to reach intermediate level (had studied about a third of the second book on my first journey).

- RTK : Reviewing about a hundred of kanji, twice a day. I estimate I should feel confident to start learning new ones in about 3 weeks and then at a rate of 100 new ones a week and reviewing 200 a day.

- SRSing : I've started Core2k and should be able to review the first couple of decks pretty fast then learning new cards at a rate of approx. 30/day. I also create vocab decks from words I gather from my texbooks and jpod101 podcasts.

- Exposition : I play japanese podcasts in the background whenever I'm reviewing/doing whatever else. Watching anime (with english subs so far, will replace by jap subs when I'm done with Core2k) as well as variety shows everyday. Plan on ripping watched anime/shows to listen to audio. Listen to jpod101's japanese-only audio blogs (they're awesome for beginners).

- Reading : got a subscription to Hiragana Times on iPad. It's fantastic for beginners as it enables me to start reading good level japanese with english translations and furigana. Not ideal for intermediate and onwards but for now it does wonders. Also bought a few easy japanese manga and a couple of children novels I'll start reading a bit later.

So that's pretty much it so far. I plan on spending 3 months wwoofing in japan starting next september. There my goal is to only keep SRSing my kanji and speak as much japanese as possible. In the 4 month until then I should be able to : finish RTK1, complete Core2k and be done with my intermediate texbook (also I have 100% free time btw).

Are you sure that RTK is a good use of your time right now? I would think that vocabulary, listening, and speaking skills would be much more important if you're going to be spending 3 months in Japan soon. The reading you're planning on doing will all have furigana and knowing all the kanji as per RTK won't help much at all for other things if you don't know the words that they represent.

If you have timed level-appropriate Japanese subs for the anime you're watching, it might be a good idea to look into subs2srs, which will give listening and vocabulary a boost. I don't know where your vocabulary is at, but I suspect that after Core2k the subset of anime you can watch and understand with Japanese subs will still be very small and in most cases there's probably not much point in chucking out the English subs.

What novels and manga do you have?

I started using subs2srs back then with the 時をかける少女 deck but found it was really slow and painful.
I don't think learning kanji is a waste of time even in my case, I got a lot of time on my hand anyway. I've spent a couple of months in Japan last year and the fact I could still recognize many kanji in signs, ads, names etc. was very satisfying and useful to some extent.
The jap manga I bought are yougeko no chi, bleach and rosario to vampire as well as a couple of novels in the aoi tori collection (one is called 黒魔女さんが通る).

I didn't mean I felt I could understand most anime after completing Core2k but my level of understanding would probably good enough to make watching them without eng subs interesting and useful imo.

Your methods sound good. If you think that reading up on the grammar in French is better you should keep that up. However, I think that the Tae Kim guide may be also translated to French and that one is good at explaining the grammar in a way that might differ from the usual textbook approaches. It requires you to know some kanji however, but not too hard stuff.

I recommend you to try reading native material after Core2k. It doesn't hurt to continue to Core6k though - for me the deck had a lot of useful words the whole way through, but to make reading native materials feasible I dont think you need to learn all 6k words.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Your methods sound good. If you think that reading up on the grammar in French is better you should keep that up. However, I think that the Tae Kim guide may be also translated to French and that one is good at explaining the grammar in a way that might differ from the usual textbook approaches. It requires you to know some kanji however, but not too hard stuff.

I recommend you to try reading native material after Core2k. It doesn't hurt to continue to Core6k though - for me the deck had a lot of useful words the whole way through, but to make reading native materials feasible I dont think you need to learn all 6k words.

I have bought the Tae Kim method back then (the big orange book) and thought it explained a lot of things in and interesting and simple way but it's lacking in the sentences dept. IMO, but I'll go back to it again to get a different view on some grammar points for sure.

TyroneLove Wrote:

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Your methods sound good. If you think that reading up on the grammar in French is better you should keep that up. However, I think that the Tae Kim guide may be also translated to French and that one is good at explaining the grammar in a way that might differ from the usual textbook approaches. It requires you to know some kanji however, but not too hard stuff.

I recommend you to try reading native material after Core2k. It doesn't hurt to continue to Core6k though - for me the deck had a lot of useful words the whole way through, but to make reading native materials feasible I dont think you need to learn all 6k words.

I have bought the Tae Kim method back then (the big orange book) and thought it explained a lot of things in and interesting and simple way but it's lacking in the sentences dept. IMO, but I'll go back to it again to get a different view on some grammar points for sure.

If you have read the Tae Kim and felt that the sentences department is lacking, then my recommendation to you is the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series. The bad side is that its in English (though your English seems good), the good side is that there are a lot more sentences and most of the words you will encounter are included in Core2k/6k. The Basic Dictionary is plenty enough and it goes more in-depth than Tae Kim when it comes to, say, particles. It is a "dictionary" so reading it all the way through may be tedious, but I guarantee that every single page will be more or less useful to you.

I actually use jgram to get more sentences for specific grammar points after each lesson of my books but I'll give the DJG a look, thanks for the tip (and yes I can read english of any level).

Edit : just did and it does look great, only positive reviews on amazon, but it's not cheap so maybe later^^

Edit 2 : After thinking about it some more I've decided to order it Thanks again Betelgeuzah.

TyroneLove Wrote:I actually use jgram to get more sentences for specific grammar points after each lesson of my books but I'll give the DJG a look, thanks for the tip (and yes I can read english of any level).

Edit : just did and it does look great, only positive reviews on amazon, but it's not cheap so maybe later^^

Edit 2 : After thinking about it some more I've decided to order it Thanks again Betelgeuzah.

Good call, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is probably my most valued book :p

Received the book yesterday and man, am I glad I started this topic ! This book is absolutely priceless. I've read through the "characteristics of japanese grammar" and all the appendixes (the extended sentential unit part is pure genius) and feel my japanese skills are gonna skyrocket with this thing. Highly recommended !

I'm glad you have found it useful! I certainly did.