Hey everyone.

I am new here.
My name is Shlomi, I'm 20 years old and I live in Israel. Currently serving in the army.
A few months ago I began studying Japanese, I really got into it and i'm VERY serious about it, even if it'll take me years.
I got a problem though, kanji. i'm using Genki, and right now I am in page 103 and I think that a chapter earlier ( in the start of chapter 3 ) they srated to add kanji into the vocab though they sort of expect me to learn it by myself at the end of the book.
This is really troubling for me, Yes, I already know Hirgana and Katakana. and yes, I already know a lot of words by memory.
I just REALLY don't know how to incorporate kanji into this. in Genki, at the end of the book there are kanji practice pages, only it's way above my level as they use a lot of words that I don't know in the kanji practice sentences themselfs, that means that I see a kanji that I know the on and kun meanings of, but I don't know how to construct the sentence. this is really confusing so I decided that I can't rely on Genki to study kanji.
I REALLY want to start incorporating kanji into my studies, I don't want to wait any longer.
How can I do it in an efficient way that wont stop my studies?

My first comment would be that you should stop worrying and enjoy your studies. Learning kanji takes a fair amount of effort, and there are lots of ways to go. Personally, I would suggest taking up Remembering the Kanji, as it worked well for me. Some will point out that learning how to write the kanji is only a priority for a subset of all students, but I think it's worth some effort, and I don't know how much extra effort RTK is compared to some recognition-only study.

I don't think that RTK will integrate with Genki in any immediate way, really, other than you'll be able to recognize the kanji to some degree when you've finished RTK 1.

Good luck! Have fun!

MrFishi Wrote:Hey everyone.

I am new here.
My name is Shlomi, I'm 20 years old and I live in Israel. Currently serving in the army.
A few months ago I began studying Japanese, I really got into it and i'm VERY serious about it, even if it'll take me years.
I got a problem though, kanji. i'm using Genki, and right now I am in page 103 and I think that a chapter earlier ( in the start of chapter 3 ) they srated to add kanji into the vocab though they sort of expect me to learn it by myself at the end of the book.
This is really troubling for me, Yes, I already know Hirgana and Katakana. and yes, I already know a lot of words by memory.
I just REALLY don't know how to incorporate kanji into this. in Genki, at the end of the book there are kanji practice pages, only it's way above my level as they use a lot of words that I don't know in the kanji practice sentences themselfs, that means that I see a kanji that I know the on and kun meanings of, but I don't know how to construct the sentence. this is really confusing so I decided that I can't rely on Genki to study kanji.
I REALLY want to start incorporating kanji into my studies, I don't want to wait any longer.
How can I do it in an efficient way that wont stop my studies?

Hi Shlomi, welcome to the forum. It sounds like Genki isn't working for you. If you really want to start incorporating kanji into your studies maybe you could do what I did: take all the exericses and dialogues in your textbooks that you can already understand and follow (these can be in romaji too, it doesn't matter), and type them up yourself, inserting a kanji wherever a word has a kanji equivalent. Then practice reading your typed up versions which incorporate kanji.

Hi MrFishi, welcome to the forum.

There are many different ways you could go depending on what works best for you:

1. You could do as John555 suggests if you don't mind making your own cards. Some people like making cards because the creation process helps them to remember better. Other people like using pre-made decks because they think creating custom decks isn't worth the time it takes to make them.
2. Another thing you could do is stop what you are doing and learn kanji first. That's what some people recommend, and my be the most efficient in the long run. You may feel that doesn't sound appealing because after spending hundreds of hours learning kanji, you won't be any closer to understanding a conversation. If that's you, I'm right there with you in choosing not to learn all the kanji before anything else.
3. You could just memorize the kanji as they appear in the book. That would be more of a rote memorization task and you wouldn't be able to take advantage of the RTK system. IMHO that's not too bad of a tradeoff.
5. You could learn the 214 radicals that make up the kanji first and then proceed with option #3.
4. A middle road between the extremes is RTK lite. It's half of the jouyou janji, but the most popular ones, so that'll get you using kanji twice as fast.

I think in order for you to have some idea of how to study kanji and integrate them into your Japanese study you should think about your long term goals for learning Japanese.

What is the end point you want for your studies? Competency? Fluency? Can read a book? Enjoy anime?

When you decide your goals are, then you can look at how and what to study to achieve your goals. Personally, I hate Genki because of the type of curriculum it is. Basically, it's a notional functional style programme, a style that is very good for preparing someone in six months or so for being thrown into the deep end in Japan. It'll prepare you for most basic conversations and situations that you might find yourself in there. BUT, it doesn't focus on increasing real communication, or real fluency.

Unfortunately, I only know the genki textbook series, having never used anything else. Hopefully someone has a good idea for a different style of textbook you might like to try out?

In terms of kanji, if you decide your goals for Japanese are such that you will need to learn all of the joyo kanji set (about 2200 give or take), then my advice is to do RTK1. Personally I find breaking kanji and vocab down so I'm only having to learn one "fact" or piece of information at a time absolutely great. Others like a different approach. No biggie. You're at the beginning of your studies, so this is the time to experiment and see what works for you.

If you want to stick to the genki order of introducing kanji, what I would suggest doing is that when you encounter a kanji, look it up in the kanji index at the back, and sticky-tab it so you can find it again. Then if you know the reading of the kanji, write it out as a word (eg 食べる。たべる) a couple of times on a piece of paper, and then start making an anki deck and use that to review them.

You can also check out resources like Tae Kim's grammar guide, anki, graded readers, and nukemarine's suggested guide for beginners for tonnes of resource links and information to help you decide how you want to study. bounaparte also has a huge resource list on this site somewhere too. I might have spelt their handle wrong though, sorry.

Anyway, everyone here is really friendly and will do their best to answer your questions, but remember that everyone has their own learning styles, and what works for them might not work for you, and vice versa. Though they probably have a lot of experience that it's worth at least listening to.

Good luck!

EDIT: here's the link to buonaparte's links:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6840

Hey there Shlomi, fellow Israeli here.
As the others have said here, try to take a look at RTK.
It's a good method that has been tested by quite a few people and found effective (including myself).

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply's everyone.
I have read each comment, and I saw that some of you suggested RTK ( I presume the book ), only problem with the book is.. it's all English.
I don't know how well that does? the book doesn't tell me the kun or on readings, only what the kanji means.
Now, I am planning on sticking with Genki, though I would love to see some more textbooks out there.
I just want to make myself more efficient with kanji, so I saw some of you suggested to make a deck(?) I don't really know what that means.

Hahahaha

Yep, that's what I mean by breaking the kanji up into one piece of information at a time. It takes perhaps about 6 months of work, total, to learn all the kanji and their readings (on and kun) by breaking things down like this. Some people get it, and love doing things that way. Others prefer to feel like they're reading Japanese from the get go, even though waiting the approx. 2-3 months it takes to learn the meanings and writing will (usually) save you a lot of time overall. For people like me who cannot learn kanji the "rote" way, I really needed RTK, but you might find that you prefer another method.

EDIT:
As for your question on decks, we mean make a deck (as in deck of cards) of flashcards with the program Anki (http://ankisrs.net/).

I found it confusing at first, so you might want to download a premade deck (you can search on their site) and use that first.

So RTK is basically to learn what the kanji means?
And are you using it?

I used it yes. I *cannot* learn by rote. RTK was the *only* method that worked for me. I only barely scraped through my university Japanese courses without it.
BUT some people don't like the RTK method, it doesn't really chime for them. That's fine too.

MrFishi Wrote:So RTK is basically to learn what the kanji means?
And are you using it?

Basically, yes RTK teaches you what the kanji means. Although technically someone will probably correct me that some kanji don't have a meaning etc... But generally RTK is a system to help you recognize the kanji. The book recommends to do keyword -> kanji, a lot of people reverse it and do kanji -> keyword. But whichever way works for you, you should at least give it a try.

You might want to take a look at this thread. It just gives a general curriculum for the beginner, and adding the genki textbooks, happens to match pretty well with the materials that most people on this site are using.

I would say that RTK 1 teaches you to recognize and write the kanji. The keywords don't necessarily have much to do with any common connotation the kanji might have. Once you're done with RTK 1, there are a number of ways to learn the readings.

A lot of people do seem to do kanji->keyword, but I think it's better to do it the keyword->kanji way. Especially if you are doing any formal study of Japanese at an institution or university, since you will have to actually write the kanji from memory in your classes and exams. Also, you have to write the kanji in the kanten exams too. And I find mechanical memory helpful for me, but it might not be important for others.

Everyone's different. As a beginner, I felt really empowered by doing the Remembering the Kanji thing. I was kinda feeling hopeless having studied on my own for 6 months and the success I got really motivated me to keep going. I might have given up on Japanese without RTK.

[RawToast]

ktcgx Wrote:A lot of people do seem to do kanji->keyword, but I think it's better to do it the keyword->kanji way. Especially if you are doing any formal study of Japanese at an institution or university, since you will have to actually write the kanji from memory in your classes and exams. Also, you have to write the kanji in the kanten exams too. And I find mechanical memory helpful for me, but it might not be important for others.

I found that keyword -> kanji was more useful for the JLPT; despite the tests being multiple choice. The 'which is the correct' kanji questions at the start were very easy after switching to keyword -> kanji.

If you're sticking to Genki then it's easy to use Anki alongside.

If you're not bothered about writing then I'd just take the Kanji from the back and make cards with the example words in the section. Genki should give a couple of easy words you can use to learn the On/Kun readings, you should learn the readings from the vocab.

If you are going to write, then I would still do the above but create cards where you have to draw/write the kanji. I'd put the english and kana readings for the example word and draw the kanji.

It's probably not going to be as efficient as completing RTK, but will suffice for the ~100 kanji in Genki 1 (and again in Genki 2).

If you plan on using Nukemarine's guide I'd complete the N5 section, then read through Genki and add any additional sentences to Anki. Then complete the same steps for the N4 section with Genki 2.