All right, I just started! After hearing about RTK a few months ago I bought the book and feel in love with the introduction. One thing that stood out is when he says that the people who had success with his method were self-studying. I realized that since I was taking a class already and had weekly tests about the vocab and Kanji I was learning, I couldn't really do both at the same time. I was already studying a few hours a day for my class.

My class ended on Monday and I began that night.

I aspire to be able to read material written by and for native Japanese speakers, and this method seems like the fastest (only?) way to achieve that goal. Can others weigh in on this? Does this system really work? If you have a goal like mine, does the RTK system really help?

I found this forum while looking to connect with other people who have completed or are currently using the RTK system. I have previously lived in Japan and while there maybe met 1 foreigner who was literate. So until reading the introduction to RTK (which I got from a translator btw my goal of being able to read intellectually interesting material in Japanese seemed like a pipe dream.

Some support from other people who have completed this system would be very helpful to me as I embark on this new chapter of my relationship with the Japanese language!

You won't be able to read anything at all by doing RTK, but you'll be able to recognize almost every kanji out there. Yeah, it does work.

Helltrixz Wrote:You won't be able to read anything at all by doing RTK, but you'll be able to recognize almost every kanji out there. Yeah, it does work.

Yes. I have learned the hard way that "kanji does not equal vocabulary". For example, I have an anki deck titled "kanji recognition" that has about 500 kanji in it which I know very well. By that I mean on sight I can give a meaning or two to most of them.

I also have a few decks of vocabulary that I am working thru mostly thru my classes: minna no nihongo 1 and genki 2.

Basically: learning to recognize new vocabulary with "easy" kanji (i.e. kanji I already know) happens quickly. Learning vocab with "hard" kanji (i.e. kanji I have not already encountered) is painful and slow. And there are many kanji that I do not know. I gather that one of the main advantages of the RTK method is that the familiarity you gain with the kanji makes it easy to learn new vocab. Is that correct?

I also want to point out that at this point - the point at which I picked up RTK - I had completely given up on learning to write the kanji by hand. I correspond with a number of native speakers via email and text. The only time I am asked to write kanji by hand seems to be for kanji tests in my class, and even then I forget them as soon as I'm done with the test. There are maybe 50 or 100 that I can do by hand, and the rest just don't stick in my head. Towards the end of the class I stopped studying for the kanji exams - I was willing to fail - because the 5-10 hours of study it would take me to pass the kanji exam seemed to be better spent on learning vocabulary (which I retain better and can use when typing and speaking).

I guess the point of the above anecodes is that in my experience the skill of writing kanji by hand seems to have little practical use in and of itself (e.g. most writing is done by computer these days). But if a consequence of RTK is that it moves me into a completely different place in terms my relationship with the written language (e.g. speed to learn new vocabulary), then it seems like a good investment to me.

What do people here think of this? I am on the verge of making a big time commitment to this system and am hoping more experienced people can give me some good guidance about what to expect from the investment.

Thanks.

I'm just beginning the kanji stages myself. Ultimately, however, I'd say that it depends on how much you personally enjoy the language when deciding to learn how to write it. Writing isn't entirely necessary.

For me, I like the idea that when after I learn kanji, I'll be able to read and write them, rather than just being able to read them. Meaning that I'll be able to just stand at a random place with a pad of paper and be able to pull kanji from memory rather than just needing to see kanji in front of me in order to try and reproduce it.

Writing will help you be able to pull something from memory better, something you might not be able to do that quickly if you only know how to read.

Personally speaking, when I was a beginner, I had an overblown idea of the importance of recognition.
Kanji readings are the things to worry about, since you can't be 100% sure the way something is read unless you look it up. Same goes for the meanings as well.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that by learning vocab with kanji (showing a vocab word in japanese, and testing it's reading/meaning) also gives you the benefit of leaning how to recognize it as well. If you start to mix up words with similar kanji, you'll probably fail them and look them up again, where you can then note the individual differences.
However, just learning to recognize an individual kanji and assigning a keyword doesn't give you the reading experience. Yes, people do it later, but you have to do it anyway, right?
I'm also kind of curious (if anyone has some experience with this), but how much time does completing RTK actually save? Assuming you do RTK and then Core 10k vs just Core 10k?

I found some posts from people who completed Core 6k here: http://iknow.jp/qa/topics/496-Anyone-com...id-it-take

One person says 250h to master Core6k after doing RTK, and comments:

Quote:If you learned the kanji first (with heisig for instance) it shouldn't take you more than 250-300hours, if you didn't expect the course to take 2-3time longer to master.

IIRC, RTK took me ~150h so it should save time if that claim is true.

Thank you for the link.
I finished Core 10k in about 360 hours (I finished adding the last new cards, anyway). My retention rate was around 76% at that time, but it's climbed up now to 80%.
I did do half of RTK, but dropped it. I'll admit it was useful as a guide to getting exposure to different "primitives" or some such a lot faster - so used as a tool to deconstruct kanji, it's efficient.
I've heard some people use RTK as a base, and substitute Japanese vocab instead of English keywords. I wish I'd thought of that when I'd started.

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:I've heard some people use RTK as a base, and substitute Japanese vocab instead of English keywords.

That’s actually quite effective – especially when you add audio on the front. For example:

Front:
early evening(*) よい{{Audio}}

Back:
early evening よい【宵】{{Audio}}
宵
{{Primitives}}
{{Story}}
---

Front:
lower ひくい{{Audio}}

Back:
lower ひくい【低い】{{Audio}}
低
{{Primitives}}
{{Story}}
---

(*) Heisig’s keyword for that one is wee hours. To far from the Japanese meaning for me so I changed the keyword.