Hi all,

I majored in Japanese, studied abroad in Tokyo for a semester, lived in Japan teaching English for two and a half years, and passed N2 along the way. My grammar is excellent, but my reading has always been crap - I'm *really* good at guessing from context and skated by that way in Japan, but I've made it through only ~900 kanji in RTK and can actually read fewer than that. My active vocabulary is equally inadequate. I can't read a newspaper without looking up almost every word, and even when I do none of them stick.

I guess that's my big issue. How do I make things stick? I've tried Anki decks, regular flashcards, just reading a lot, and none of it stays. If it's a word or two at a time, I'm okay, but when I try to learn at any useful speed, it flies straight out of my brain.. and that applies to spoken vocab as well as written.

Has anyone else had this problem? How do you make vocab stick?

You make vocab stick through immersion. But it sounds like your main problem might be reading, which, in my opinion at least, with Japanese, requires lots of reps (in other languages, where you already know the writing system, reading usually does the job). At this point, I wouldn't bother with RtK. RtK is most useful for beginners.

You should do vocab or sentence reps. Maybe the problem before was that the material you chose to rep was too hard. Use Anki first and foremost to make stuff you've already studied stick, not to learn brand new stuff.

And look around the forum, to see how many of us use Anki decks. It's not as simple as "fire up Anki and start reviewing". There are a lot of things you can do to improve the quality of your studies.

Stansfield123 Wrote:At this point, I wouldn't bother with RtK. RtK is most useful for beginners.

I wouldn't say that, I would say RtK is useful for anyone who cannot learn kanji the "rote" or "seeing many times" way. I wasn't a beginner when I found RTK but nonetheless, found it absolutely necessary for me, and it helped me immensely. So, OP, if you're having trouble learning kanji the usual way, then stick with RTK, otherwise, think about if you're getting anything out of it, and if not, then no worries.

Since you already have decent spoken Japanese, I'd suggest not doing RTK straight up, but rather doing RTK with Japanese keywords. There are already decks and lists for Japanese keywords, although I didn't find them useful and instead I select my own keywords. (Each keyword is a word that can be spelled with the kanji in question; the front side is a sentence or phrase with highlighted kana in place of the kanji in question. Ideally I pick a sentence or phrase that at least uses the same meaning as I use in my story - words with multiple meanings can really throw you off if the phrase suggests a meaning very different from the one in the story.)

Of course I -did- do Rtk1 with English keywords so this is review and refresh so I'm not too concerned with speed of progress, only with retention. Using an existing list with less time in the dictionary may be preferable if you want to race through them.

Why do Japanese keywords at all? Because it ties your knowledge of the kanji in with other layers of Japanese knowledge that you already have. English keywords for beginners help limit the amount of information being studied in a given card letting you cover more characters because you're not learning as much about each character - but that's no savings at all when you already know the Japanese; it's just learning in parallel instead of integrated learning.

ktcgx Wrote:I wouldn't say that

The author of RtK does though. It's kinda hard to justify using something that's already a little counter-intuitive (learning Kanji through a method that doesn't use the Japanese language), for something the author doesn't even recommend it for.

And it's not like Heisig just says it's for beginners, and doesn't explain why. He gives a very compelling reason why RtK is useful for beginners. A reason that doesn't apply to advanced learners.

I suppose an advanced student can adapt Heisig's mnemonic system to his needs (and use it with Japanese keywords), but that seems like an awful lot of work.

ktcgx Wrote:I would say RtK is useful for anyone who cannot learn kanji the "rote" or "seeing many times" way.

I think anyone can do that, but it doesn't even matter, since RtK and rote learning are not the only alternatives. There are many other methods meant to help people who already speak some Japanese. There's no need to try and use RtK for something it wasn't meant for.

Stansfield123 Wrote:I suppose an advanced student can adapt Heisig's mnemonic system to his needs (and use it with Japanese keywords), but that seems like an awful lot of work.

It may be a lot of work or may be not. I would guess that someone with a decent level of Japanese would be able to come up with mnemonics in Japanese quite easily. I'm far from being good at Japanese but I just had a go at:
木の上に立っていて自分の子供を見ている人。

Stansfield123 Wrote:And it's not like Heisig just says it's for beginners, and doesn't explain why. He gives a very compelling reason why RtK is useful for beginners. A reason that doesn't apply to advanced learners.

I suppose an advanced student can adapt Heisig's mnemonic system to his needs (and use it with Japanese keywords), but that seems like an awful lot of work.

ktcgx Wrote:I would say RtK is useful for anyone who cannot learn kanji the "rote" or "seeing many times" way.

I think anyone can do that, but it doesn't even matter, since RtK and rote learning are not the only alternatives. There are many other methods meant to help people who already speak some Japanese. There's no need to try and use RtK for something it wasn't meant for.

Heisig doesn't say RTK isn't for beginners, he says it's better not to study it alongside a taught course.

And no, not everyone can do that! FFS. I used to write out kanji hundreds of times each, and could never remember how to write them the next day! I *needed* RTK. It was vital to me, no matter that I found it 10 years after I started studying Japanese. It has helped me immeasurably! I would never have been able to gain any kind of proficiency in Japanese without it.

OP: if you're having trouble reading, then read easier stuff. That's where I'd start. I had similar problems a while back until I learned to find appropriately-leveled stuff for me to read. Too many lookups = pain.

I find that I remember vocab best when I run across it within a day or two somewhere else. So maybe take your list of words, Google them, and read the web pages with the results the next day. (Articles or blogs or whatever.)

With enough tweaking and enough work, you can also make an Anki deck that does something similar, too.

Or you get get some JLPT N3 or N2-level kanji and 語彙 books, to work on vocab that way. Make sure you can do that, then go back to searching for things to read with your target vocab in them.

You'll only know if RTK will help you if you try it. It might! It might not.

[Zgarbas]

I rarely remember anything that I actually encounter when reading. My mined deck is by far my worst retention rate. Flashcard programs like renshuu.org or iknow.jp (if you feel like you don't know your core6k) helped me way more than mining into anki, or simpy looking up terms. Anki's... alright, I guess. It's free. But I much prefer it for sentences than for vocab (though I still use it for vocab, it's just not as efficient for me). I'd experiment with my flashcard programs if I were you; there are plenty out there. That being said, Anki has the wonderful tool called yomi-chan, which is what made me stop worrying and love to read in Japanese =).

Inny Jan Wrote:木の上に立っていて自分の子供を見ている人。

Of course this was meant to be a mnemonic for 親 but I just realised that it’s not formulated properly, so here is an improvement:
木の上に立っていて、学校に行っている途中で自分の子供を見ているおや。

Zgarbas Wrote:I rarely remember anything that I actually encounter when reading. My mined deck is by far my worst retention rate. Flashcard programs like renshuu.org or iknow.jp (if you feel like you don't know your core6k) helped me way more than mining into anki, or simpy looking up terms. Anki's... alright, I guess. It's free. But I much prefer it for sentences than for vocab (though I still use it for vocab, it's just not as efficient for me). I'd experiment with my flashcard programs if I were you; there are plenty out there. That being said, Anki has the wonderful tool called yomi-chan, which is what made me stop worrying and love to read in Japanese =).

Anki is a great tool if used properly... or a great time sink if not.