I'm nearly done with RTK1 (hallelujah!), have completed a basic/intermediate grammar course and now want to focus on kanji reading and vocab so I bought Kanji in Context reference book and plan on buying the Workbook vol.1.

Thing is I don't really have a clue as to how to use this in the most useful/efficient manner in Anki. I'm probably gonna end up typing all the workbook sentences in Anki with hiragana on the back. What else ? Maybe add a japanese definition from an online dictionary ? Maybe also create cards for Kanji's alone, with readings on the back, maybe heisig# or even keyword ?

Also, would the KiC iOS app be a worthy alternative ? I've tested the trial version and thought its handling was pretty bad.

Finally, I have the excellent "Japanese" iOS app that gives several sentences for each vocab word so I'm wondering if buying the workbook is really worth it as I could go with said app's sentences. Probably not though, as I guess the KiC's workbook sentences are created upon the reference book's concept of including kanji's you already know.

The thing I know for sure is that for the next month I have 100% free time so I want to spend as much time as possible on this. Any tip/suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

I don't have much to say about your main question, having never used Kanji in Context, but

TyroneLove Wrote:Maybe also create cards for Kanji's alone, with readings on the back, maybe heisig# or even keyword ?

I don't suggest this one - memorizing readings in isolation would not only probably be more difficult but also less useful than learning them within the compounds they make up. Also, Heisig's keywords are often baffling compared to what the character is actually used for, or at the very least can give you a false sense (because of the multiple facets of many English words) of the 'meaning' of the character.

Better to study vocabulary than characters in isolation.
Better still to study sentences than vocabulary in isolation.

I studied KiC without the workbook. It was mostly fine. Some of the sentences can be kind of difficult if you're not familiar with some of the grammar, but the ones I didn't understand became good things for me to talk about with my Skype language partner. Wikipedia was also helpful since a lot of them are about news items, politics, or economics.

KiC is kind of a weird thing, and you might be better off studying from the Core2k/6k sentence packs instead. I don't regret having done KiC, but Core might have been better.

My cards were really simple. They just had the sentence on the front, and then the sentence on the back with furigana. I studied with a dictionary program called Tagaini Jisho on Windows(or Jedict on Mac) that displays the definition of any word you have in your clipboard.

So I had my dictionary program right up next to the flashcard window, and I could look up any word I didn't understand extremely quickly. If I couldn't read or understand the words/grammar/meaning of the card then I failed it. I started from the beginning and worked through to the end. By the time I finished, I was able to pass JLPT N1 without a whole ton of extra work beyond the drill books and reading a novel or two.

That ios app hasn't been updated in 5 years. I'm surprised it still works at all.

erlog Wrote:I studied KiC without the workbook. It was mostly fine. Some of the sentences can be kind of difficult if you're not familiar with some of the grammar, but the ones I didn't understand became good things for me to talk about with my Skype language partner. Wikipedia was also helpful since a lot of them are about news items, politics, or economics.

KiC is kind of a weird thing, and you might be better off studying from the Core2k/6k sentence packs instead. I don't regret having done KiC, but Core might have been better.

My cards were really simple. They just had the sentence on the front, and then the sentence on the back with furigana. I studied with a dictionary program called Tagaini Jisho on Windows(or Jedict on Mac) that displays the definition of any word you have in your clipboard.

So I had my dictionary program right up next to the flashcard window, and I could look up any word I didn't understand extremely quickly. If I couldn't read or understand the words/grammar/meaning of the card then I failed it. I started from the beginning and worked through to the end. By the time I finished, I was able to pass JLPT N1 without a whole ton of extra work beyond the drill books and reading a novel or two.

How long was it from start to passing JLPT1?

Thanks for the replies so far. erlog, how many new cards a day did you add/review on average (how many kanji from the reference book/lessons) ? How much time spent daily ? How long did the whole thing take ?
Also, I've never made a custom deck so any tip about that aspect would be appreciated.

How long it took me to get to JLPT1 is not really an interesting conversation because I've been studying Japanese for nearly 10 years at this point, and not always with my current level of dedication or success.

I started studying KiC in spring 2011 after I had not touched Japanese at all for 2 years, but had passed JLPT2 in 2008. It took me about 11 months to work through all of KiC. My target was around 225-275 reviews per day. I added a whole lesson on any day where the number of cards due was less than 200. Some days this meant I added 2 new lessons, and other days I didn't add any new lessons at all. I just let my Anki targets make those decisions for me, and concentrated on doing the reviews every day.

I always added entire lessons at a time because keeping track of which sentences I've done or not done is super annoying. It's much easier to check off entire lessons. Similar to RTK there's a few hard/long lessons in KiC that you probably will want to split over 2 days.

Reviews took about 60-70 minutes to do 225-275 cards. I got more efficient with reading as I worked my way through the book, though. So by the end I was finishing those reviews in more like 40 minutes.

I typed up all the cards myself, and I'm not certain I would recommend that. I did learn to type pretty fast in Japanese, and it was good reading practice, though.

There's a private spreadsheet(access given to those who've purchased the book/app only) linked below that you can request access to that has a list of the sentences in a digital format that's more easily importable into Anki:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing

I'm a bit confused. I just bought the first volume of the Kanji in Context workbook and downloaded the anki deck, but the cards don't seem to match the order of my workbook's lessons. Sample lesson 1 of KiC lite has kanji different from the workbook's lesson 1 and also from the anki deck's first few kanji.

I know there's a revised edition of Kanji in Context, maybe this is the issue. Could anyone give me the first few kanji of Kanji in Context revised edition? Maybe they match the ones in anki... And the first few kanji of the full KiC app? Otherwise, does anyone know of resources (anki, etc.) available for the older edition of the Kanji in Context books.

This would help a lot, thanks!

Which deck do you have? I just downloaded the one with ~7,825 notes and checked it quickly.

On my quick look, I have no idea what order they are in, but you can select the "c01" "c02" etc. tags etc. and it will give you just the vocab from section 1, section 2 etc. which appears in the middle of the pages, and there is a dotted line that distinguishes the end of one section and the beginning of another.

Hope that helps.

have a look at this older thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130656
There's an existing anki deck for KIC with audio, example sentences and everything! For me it was very helpful.

Thank you for the precious tips erlog, I hope I'll be able to show the same level of dedication throughout my study of this method as you did.
So this means (as I said I'm a newbie regarding custom decks), that you didn't set a limit to your daily new cards and reviews and that you set Anki to show you the new cards first, right ?
If I understood correctly, you waited to have less than 200 reviews to add 25-75 new cards (a lesson or two), that you reviewed right away.
I think I'm gonna start with a lesson everyday and follow on your footsteps, see where this leads me. Once I'm done with the first 350 basic kanji I'll start an intermediate-advanced grammar course on the side (I've bought the "Tobira : Gateway to Advanced Japanese", looks great).

hyvel Wrote:have a look at this older thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130656
There's an existing anki deck for KIC with audio, example sentences and everything! For me it was very helpful.

Thanks for the link. I manage to get my hand on a ridiculously impressive deck thanks to a poster from that thread^^

Thanks for the suggestions. I just started the first lesson of the KiC workbook while using an anki deck I could find thanks to hyvel's link.

I've finished RTK1 and all but the three last chapters of RTK2 but my grammar level is not so good, so I wonder whether I'll be able to follow KiC to a point where I'm not having to look up vocabulary and grammar points for every sentence.

TyroneLove please let us know how you go with KiC and Tobira. I'm indecisive whether I'll just go straight for KiC or also use a textbook like Genki 2, Minna no Nihongo 2 or Tobira, which seems to be a level up from those.