Hello,

I am a first time poster here, but I have been lurking for quite a while now. I have been living in Japan for 2 years, originally in Kyoto, but now I live in Kanagawa near Yokohama. I have had a lot of practice with spoken Japanese, but little to no experience with the written language aside from Hiragana and Katakana. I recently ordered RTK1 and am looking forward to it's unique approach towards learning Kanji. I suppose my main question is in regards to the best method of learning pronunciations to actually expand my verbal knowledge of these many new words I am preparing to learn. I have a very good fundamental understanding of Japanese. I know my grammar very well and am fairly competent of engaging in limited conversation with Japanese speakers. I suppose I just want to understand the best way to translate my knowledge of these Kanji into a spoken application. (Though I realize I may already know some of them)

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. and I apologize in advance if this topic has been explored in previous posts. I just wanted to illustrate the fact that I am by no means a beginner in terms of Spoken Japanese, so I felt this put me in an awkward position in regards to the methodology employed by the source material (i.e. RTK1)

From what I understand from this, you are more or less a beginner with written Japanese, but in an upper level for spoken Japanese and overall understanding of the language?

^If so, I feel like textbooks might be boring, since you probably wouldn't learn much new. Although if you are curious I recommend the Genki series. It does have some reading exercises and teaches some kanji. But if I were in your position I might make sure my kana is solid, learn some of the more frequently used/useful kanji (this is where I would look to my Genki textbook, although I wouldn't buy it just for the kanji), and then look for some short stories to practice reading with. Graded readers in particular might be useful for you, such as: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Graded-Re...4872176243 and the other books in the series as they offer stories of different difficulty to practice your reading skills as you go along. Although I'm not sure where to find the rest of that particular series, as it was bought though my school. And the stories might be a bit uninteresting, but they can be useful to get you into reading

RTK is a good idea. Your Japanese is already pretty good right?
After RTK, I would recommend doing something like a core2000 deck to get practice reading kanji. I would also recommend watching Japanese tv with Japanese subtitles as well. Its a great way to have both spoken and written words reinforce each other

Head down to Book Off and buy the most interesting looking thing you can find with full furigana. Read and repeat until you can read stuff with less furigana.

Organised study of kanji is a good idea too and will no doubt speed up the process quite a bit, but for recognising words it's hard to beat seeing them thousands of times. If you already know Japanese there's no reason to subject yourself to Core to do it - I guarantee that even the worst dumbest children's book will be more enjoyable than that (not that there's any reason to read the worst dumbest ones - there's plenty of good ones out there, especially if your Japanese is legitimately good).

There are some alternative versions of RTK out there for people who already know Japanese - stuff with Japanese keywords and such. You might want to look into those.

So, RTK1+3 don't teach pronunciation at all the way they are normally done, since the idea is to take just one part of an enormous task out of the stream of learning and focus on it in isolation - so you just associate keywords with kanji.

However.... if you already have good spoken Japanese, there's no reason you can't change the keywords to Japanese keywords. Ideally, words that you already know that are actually spelled with the kanji.

You'll end up changing keywords around anyway, or at least most people do. Some of them are too close to each other, some are kind of obscure and reflect both Heisig's age and his particular academic background, and at least one that I recall - 'nightbreak' - isn't even a real word.

Choosing your own Japanese keywords -does- mean that you will have to use the book simply for the system and launch right into making your own stories, and that this site's shared stories may not be as useful.

On the other hand, for any given keyword/kanji pair that Heisig gives, there is almost always -a- word in Japanese that uses that kanji for the same meaning as the keyword, so a lot of the time you may simply be able to tweak the story a little. I like to have a short sentence or phrase that is at least reminiscent of the story that includes the keyword as my hint.

This gives you only one reading for each kanji to start with, but that's more than beginners using the English keyword system get and people still find that useful! Also when you have just one word that you know that uses the kanji - it's really easy to produce the kanji in a computer. When look up a word the dictionary app/site doesn't care what method you use to produce the kanji as long as you produce it.

Regarding your first question, about evaluating your language ability: I think that the ILR has the best self-assessment for language ability that I've seen:

1. ILR Speaking Self Assessment
2. ILR Listening Self Assessment
3. ILR Reading Self Assessment
4. ILR Writing Scale Description

Based on what you have said, I am guessing that you will find your speaking and listening score higher than your reading and writing. But even with speaking and listening I am guessing that there is a cap on how high you can go without learning kanji - for example, I think that it would be hard to reach S-3 without knowing a lot of kanji.

When you get the Hesig book I recommend starting with the introduction. That may sound silly, but he really explains what he attempts to accomplish there, and how to use the book. After going thru a few chapters I recommend taking a look at

1. Using a SRS flash card system like Anki or this site to help you drill them
2. Looking at what some people here call "RtK lite", which is a re-ordering of them that a) preserves Heisig's dependencies and b) introduces them in roughly the same order you'll learn them in a course.

Regarding your second question, about integrating RtK (which gives you kanji-writing ability tied to a single keyword) with the rest of the language: I recommend working with a qualified teacher for that. Since you live in a large city in Japan it should be possible to find one you can meet in person. If you wanted to start today, though, or just wanted to have lessons in the privacy of your own home, you can take lessons online as well. The two services that are commonly recommended on this site are The Japanese Online Institute (JOI) and italki. Both are very affordable.

Wow, thanks for all of the great replies! I suppose I will elaborate a bit more on my situation. I am already very familiar with My Kana and some of the more basic Kanji. I suppose my biggest fear in starting RTK is that I really want to expand my vocabulary more and I feel like the RtK step may only delay that. I have a great private tutor for Japanese that I meet with twice a month for about 2 hours. She gives me homework like listening to podcasts and explaining to her what people are talking about from "this time-this time" and she will give me a general idea such as the topic of the conversation. She also has me write daily journals of a few sentences all in Kana and checks over them when we meet. I have almost no problems conjugating verbs and understanding grammar. I know almost all of the verbs in japanese and use them as frequently as possible to keep my skills up. I think my biggest problem in SPOKEN japanese is that I often hear new words that I haven't heard before which severely limits my comprehension in a conversation. When someone throws a new word out there, it throws my whole train of thought off the rails when I am trying to listen haha. I have always been told that learning kanji is the best way to improve your vocabulary, but I feel like' heisig's way, though I am sure it will help a lot in the long run, isn't really the best way to do that. Is there anyway I can review the kanji with Kana keywords in ADDITION to the english words? Also, does the CORE2000 focus on actual words? or is it focused on individual kanji? I have also been told that learning WORDS as opposed to individual kanji is a better way to learn. Sorry for the wall of text!

I think RTK with Japanese keywords might be worth a try in your case.
https://sites.google.com/site/wrightak2/

Some people don't like it because it lacks context sentences, but it still has advantages compared to drilling core right away:
- the order of the kanji, Heisig's order allows you to learn one kanji building block at a time in a steady (i+1) way, while core is random
- unless you do Core the production way (from kana to writing the kanji), Core won't be any good because in the example sentences you'll have a lot of different and new kanji at the same time (leading to attention overload which will make learning difficult)

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It doesn't sound harsh at all. I am not intending to portray myself as an extremely proficient Japanese speaker, otherwise I wouldn't be trying to learn!! The main reason I want to do RTK is so I can rapidly increase my vocabulary in the future. I don't consider my own mental dictionary to be particularly small. When I lived in Kyoto, I lived in a very tiny town with almost no English speakers in it. I actually acquired a pretty large dictionary while living there just because there was little to no English help available from the locals. It's still not enough knowledge to hold any type of extended or deep conversation such as one revolving around politics, current events, philosophy etc. but I am very good at listening and "thinking" in Japanese. I would say upper beginner is an appropriate term for my level. I usually get stopped up when I run into kanji, so I believe that recognition via RTK should help immensely for committing new words to memory. I guess I was kind of just looking for decent recommendations from people. For example, I took a spin through the core 2000 the other day and barely found any words I was unfamiliar with. VERBALLY, anyway. I don't know much of the kanji, but from a listening standpoint, it was all very basic. Perhaps I should do RTK followed by the core 6k? Or perhaps kanji in context? Maybe I could do flash cards with Japanese sentences? Read manga with furigana? I am more looking for opinions from someone who could help me figure out the best way. All my study has been verbal more or less, so finding reading aids and materials suitable for my level is important to me. I tried JFBP1 and it was so simple that it just bored me to death. T_T

Kabukicho Wrote:Hello,

I am a first time poster here, but I have been lurking for quite a while now. I have been living in Japan for 2 years, originally in Kyoto, but now I live in Kanagawa near Yokohama. I have had a lot of practice with spoken Japanese, but little to no experience with the written language aside from Hiragana and Katakana. I recently ordered RTK1 and am looking forward to it's unique approach towards learning Kanji. I suppose my main question is in regards to the best method of learning pronunciations to actually expand my verbal knowledge of these many new words I am preparing to learn. I have a very good fundamental understanding of Japanese. I know my grammar very well and am fairly competent of engaging in limited conversation with Japanese speakers. I suppose I just want to understand the best way to translate my knowledge of these Kanji into a spoken application. (Though I realize I may already know some of them)

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. and I apologize in advance if this topic has been explored in previous posts. I just wanted to illustrate the fact that I am by no means a beginner in terms of Spoken Japanese, so I felt this put me in an awkward position in regards to the methodology employed by the source material (i.e. RTK1)

This article by JLPT Bootcamp gives an alternate way to gauge your JLPT lvl based on your ability to do various things in Japanese (e.g. N2 criteria: "Can you explain some complex situation to a station chief or police officer? (e.g. return a lost wallet and be able to get through the paperwork.)")

http://jlptbootcamp.com/2011/04/an-alter...udy-hours/

In terms of Kanji, found this post useful on different approaches to learning kanji.
http://www.tofugu.com/2014/02/14/the-dif...8Tofugu%29

Breaks learning Kanji down to "camps"

1)Repetition
2)Flashcards
3)Vocabulary & Context
4)Reading Reading Reading
5)Heisig’s (RTK)
6)Mnemonics With Meanings and Readings
7)Mnemonics With Meanings, Readings, and Vocab

I'll quote the pros/cons list of each "camp" but it's best to read the entire article to have a better perspective of each "camp". Also it's not wrong to combine them either. It's however you feel best utilizes your time and whichever allows for better retention.

1)Repetition

Quote:Pros: Will keep you busy for a long time. Easy to assign to your students.
Cons: Quite inefficient for most people.
Resources: Most teachers who follow the “traditional” methods, which is most of them

2)Flashcards

Quote:Pros: Keeps things organized. You can easily see what you know and don’t know. Combines well with other things.
Cons: Not a “method” on its own.
Resources: Anki, iKnow.co.jp, Memrise

3)Vocabulary & Context

Quote:Pros: Learn a lot of vocabulary, learning in context.
Cons: I think the order you learn things is slightly less efficient than the opposite direction, but it will depend on the person
Resources: Various Anki decks, any vocabulary deck, any vocabulary list

4)Reading Reading Reading

Quote:Pros: Solidifies what you already know
Cons: Isn’t going to teach you a lot of kanji, unless you do this a lot, at which point it may be better to spend that time learning the kanji first, and then do this a lot later as it’s great review and practice.
Resources: Anywhere with a lot of Japanese text to read

5)Heisig’s (RTK)

Quote:Pros: Learn the meanings of the joyo kanji really, really quickly
Cons: You don’t learn the readings, and the meanings is the easiest part! Oh no, still the hard part to go…
Resources: Heisig’s Remembering The Kanji

6)Mnemonics With Meanings and Readings

Quote:Pros: Reading and meaning are both learned. Mnemonics allow for quick learning.
Cons: Without vocabulary, this things can get kind of shaky. Also, if you don’t know which readings to learn (sometimes there are a few options) you could end up learning very unimportant readings, wasting your time.
Resources: Kanji Koohii

7)Mnemonics With Meanings, Readings, and Vocab

Quote:Pros: Everything reinforces everything else, meaning your memories are strong.Cons: Slower at first and requires you to spend more time per kanji. Also, if you don’t know what vocabulary to learn, you’re going to learn a lot of unnecessary vocabulary.
Resources: WaniKani, KanjiDamage

td;lr ごめん

Hope this helps!

.

I've done RtK a while back, and I'm happy with the results. I now also understand Japanese on an intermediate-advanced level, and read at an intermediate level (just telling you this to show that I'm not just talking out of my ass, and I also don't have any kind of a bias against Heisig's book).

With that in mind, I don't think RtK is a good method for you. I really believe that it's only useful for beginners. The author also intended it solely for beginners.

The reason why it's good for beginners is because beginners have no other way to get accustomed to Kanji. They have no other reference point to individual Kanji, except the English keywords. So they benefit from an English language introduction to Kanji.

But you don't, you're better off with a Japanese language introduction to them. Beginners can't just dive right into actual Japanese text, it would be too steep a learning curve. But you can. You can dive right into drilling simple vocab (or sentences, whichever works better for you - I'm partial to sentences myself) and reading easy manga.

P.S. If you want to experiment with RtK first anyway, at least consider only doing RtK ultralight (the most common 500 Kanji + the necessary primitives) instead. Don't spend 200 hours on this (it's how long it would take to do the full 2000 Kanji - and it's a hard 200 hours, not fun at all). Spend those same 200 hours drilling Japanese vocab readings instead, and you'll be further along than having done RtK.

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Hold on guys. Let me just be clear. Grammar is probably one of my strongest points in the entire language. The main thing I want to focus on is building my vocabulary, especially once I finish RTK. I have been doing RTK for about 4 days and have learned about 200 Kanji So far with a 94 percent retention rate. I am already starting to tie in kanji to words that I am familiar with, so I can see very well how this system is going to help me in the long run. I suppose the problem is that when doing things like the core 2000, I learn SOME vocabulary, but most of it is simple sentences that I am already very familiar with. It seems more geared towards reading comprehension and word recognition than anything else. I think I will breeze through core 2000 rather quickly, but quite frankly, I am looking for a better way to just drill words. any good recommendations on decks for just vocab words? maybe like a 1000 most used words deck encompassing adjectives, nouns, etc.? I am not sure if I mentioned, but I live in Japan. I speak Japanese every day. I have completed every lesson in the Pimsleur series. My main focus, (aside from learning to read and becoming fluent) is to build my vocabulary to be able to have more sophisticated conversations with people. Core 2k is great for learning new words (though it is relatively slow-going) but I am looking for something that isn't drilling the same sentences over and over and over again that are super simple you know? I guess more complex sentences with audio would be ideal so I can get used to listen to more fast paced speaking.

Kabukicho Wrote:Hold on guys. Let me just be clear. Grammar is probably one of my strongest points in the entire language. The main thing I want to focus on is building my vocabulary, especially once I finish RTK. I have been doing RTK for about 4 days and have learned about 200 Kanji So far with a 94 percent retention rate. I am already starting to tie in kanji to words that I am familiar with, so I can see very well how this system is going to help me in the long run. I suppose the problem is that when doing things like the core 2000, I learn SOME vocabulary, but most of it is simple sentences that I am already very familiar with. It seems more geared towards reading comprehension and word recognition than anything else. I think I will breeze through core 2000 rather quickly, but quite frankly, I am looking for a better way to just drill words. any good recommendations on decks for just vocab words? maybe like a 1000 most used words deck encompassing adjectives, nouns, etc.? I am not sure if I mentioned, but I live in Japan. I speak Japanese every day. I have completed every lesson in the Pimsleur series. My main focus, (aside from learning to read and becoming fluent) is to build my vocabulary to be able to have more sophisticated conversations with people. Core 2k is great for learning new words (though it is relatively slow-going) but I am looking for something that isn't drilling the same sentences over and over and over again that are super simple you know? I guess more complex sentences with audio would be ideal so I can get used to listen to more fast paced speaking.

If you want complex reading passages you should try this well-known reader I am currently working my way through. You'll learn tons of vocabulary while going through it. The advanced fiction and non-fiction selections are apparently at a very high level. (There's no audio though).

Take a look at the book on amazon, and also at what some of the reviews of it say:

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Reader-Le...der+miller

You could probably configure the Core 2k/6k deck to do just words, and test kanji -> reading. That type of card is fast to review. If you know the kana words already, and are familiar with the kanji from RTK, those cards would be very quick to learn too. Words with more than one reading might need an extra hint in the question to tell them apart, but sometimes the sentence didn't help with that anyway.

Quote:Is there anyway I can review the kanji with Kana keywords in ADDITION to the english words?

That's a reasonable thing to do. If you're using this site to review, you'll need to edit the "keyword" to have both words in it. If you're using Anki, you can add an extra field for the Japanese word. Either way, it would be possible to import someone else's list if you wanted. Or you can choose words that you know, as you go along.

.

Kabukicho:
Sorry to say, but this thread stopped being about your question a long time ago. They're just rehashing an old argument, pay them no mind.

Anyway, I said it before, but I think you should go and buy some books with furigana and read them, taking note of the words you don't know. The best thing about living in Japan is cheap access to books, after all
It sounds like you have a sizable vocabulary already - going through premade decks is probably a waste. Make your own deck out of words that you encounter in life.

@Kabukicho
Indeed, your topic has been derailed by whiny people and people who have to argue points into the ground. I won't claim to not be one of those people at times, but the fact remains.

As previously suggested, I think that for your level of knowledge, you should just start reading. If audio helps you, you can try NHK Easy (less because it's written to be easy and more because they always have audio and optional furigana; not to mention you get the benefit of reading articles on everything, which can be quite interesting); you could also try Nayr's sentence deck (can't remember the name off the top of my head) if you want a premade resource, since he convinced his wife voice the sentences through some sort of sacrifice (it also has furigana, but if your memory of words is mostly based on sound, then it could help to have voiced material).
Personally though, I'd say it's best to just start reading; if you want to practice writing systematically, you could do RTK, but otherwise, you should have enough context from your vocabulary to pick up on the general meanings of kanji.
After you get your reading speed up a bit, you can use closed-captions on the television or something.
Books and games are still probably going to be your best bet, though.

@Learning-method-argument
How in the world can you people get so caught up on methodology that you start to sound like children fighting over superheros!? Not naming anybody, but you should know who you are.
Argument and discussion are welcome (in relevant threads), but derailing threads with stupid arguments is poor etiquette.

john555 Wrote:Right. Then how do you explain how nineteenth-century American college applicants were able to pass Latin and Greek entrance examinations which required translation from English into Latin and Greek? They learned Latin and Greek through grammar-translation and were able to translate into e.g., Latin, complex passages like the following sample from Harvard's 1896 entrance exam:

It's because nineteenth century American colleges didn't have any Romans or ancient Greeks on their staff, to evaluate those translations and laugh at how silly they sound to a native speaker.

We'll talk more when you use the method to pass yourself off as Japanese on a native forum. Then you will have proven that it works.

To OP:

I agree with Aikynaro and sholum that your best course of action is just to grab vocab from native media (books, manga, anime, etc) and use those resources to increase vocab comprehension.

How To Conquer the Intermediate Plateau of Japanese
How to Get Through the Intermediate Japanese Plateau
The Eternal Sorrow of the Intermediate Learner: “Are We There Yet?” Syndrome

These 3 articles regarding the "stuck" intermediate Japanese learners get and what to do about it should help. But 2 out of the 3 articles suggest focusing on vocabulary more than any other aspect because you have a decent grasp in the language. Don't worry too much about kana, you can learn that in a day rote or a week. Whatever pace you choose.

And kanji you can learn along side vocab which can be done with methods 2-5 in the previous post that I mentioned for example.

As for the AJATT article, imo wasn't really all that helpful lol (don't hate me AJATTers) in what to do. Just says that "immersion" will get you through. But this quote was pretty spot on in how Intermediate Japanese learners such as myself and I can assume what OP must feel:

Quote:It’s been said that humans are quite sensitive to acceleration (change in speed), but have a very poor grasp of fixed speed 1…The thing is, you don’t even need a biologist to lay it all out for you. Anyone who’s flown on a plane with or without snakes has experienced this first-hand. On a passenger plane flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo, the most exciting (terrifying?) part is the acceleration during takeoff. When you’re up in the air traveling over the Pacific Ocean, though, the speed feels no different than it would if you were riding in the family Ford Taurus. Even though the plane is moving the fastest during the middle of the flight (at about Mach 0.8 — that’s almost the speed of sound, be arch!), it’s always the middle of the flight that is the most boring part. We are faced with the most amazing of ironies: the fastest part of the flight seems the slowest.

Basically illustrates that "stuck" feeling very well with this airplane example. We adjust to the rate that we started learning Japanese and it's now feeling stagnate. If anything, on is still learning but doesn't necessarily see the initial payoff.

I hope this helps

sholum Wrote:@Kabukicho
Indeed, your topic has been derailed by whiny people and people who have to argue points into the ground. I won't claim to not be one of those people at times, but the fact remains.

...

@Learning-method-argument
How in the world can you people get so caught up on methodology that you start to sound like children fighting over superheros!? Not naming anybody, but you should know who you are.
Argument and discussion are welcome (in relevant threads), but derailing threads with stupid arguments is poor etiquette.

I agree that the thread has been hijacked.

I would suggest that the moderator to implement some features that StackOverflow has to mitigate this - upvoting and downvoting replies and questions, posting people's reputation as opposed to their raw number of posts and implementing a "comments to posts" feature comes to mind.

[RawToast]

I thought the argument had stopped the last time I checked. Anyway, the deductive/inductive debate has been moved to here:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10819&page=3

RawToast Wrote:I thought the argument had stopped the last time I checked. Anyway, the deductive/inductive debate has been moved to here:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10819&page=3

Thanks! We definitely need to keep arguments confined to a separate thread...particularly if they're not winnable!