Hey.
Before I begin : since it's not my mother langage (french is), my english may not be very clear sometimes. Sorry for that.
I've been doing the RTK method for several months now, I have "learned" something like 610 kanji. So I'm far from over. But I can't do it intensely with my studies, I usually add 5 kanji a day and that's it.
The thing is, I've been doing more and more mistakes during my reviews. And yes, it's only natural since the number of kanji is growing day by day, but still, when I look at how I have trouble remembering certain kanji now, I can't even think of how it will be at 1500+ kanji.
Someone told me that the purpose of RTK was not really "remembering" the kanji, it was more something like "getting use to see them", that is to say seing them as drawings of some sorts, not weird and unrecognizable signs. Do you agree with that ? If so, what's the point of learning key words for 2000+ kanji ? I mean, do you still remember them all when you come across them during a reading ? Does it really help to learn word pronunciation, later on ?

Thank you.

Hm, for me "getting used to see them" is part of the "get rid of the alien feeling" one might experience when facing kanji, but it's definitely a side effect, since when you apply RTK method you "remember" the kanji in order to write it.

Quote:do you still remember them all when you come across them during a reading ? Does it really help to learn word pronunciation, later on ?

Sure, I mean it feels like maybe half? of the keywords are the most frequent meaning of a kanji, and when it's not it will familiarise you with a rare meaning.

RTK is not useful per se to learn pronounciation (unless you include readings in your story), but vocabulary is two-fold, a kanji part and a reading part, so once you know the kanji part, and once you know the on-reading of the kanji (or of the kanji group which often share a reading because they have a common radical), then indirectly it helps.

I have a question for you though, are you doing RTK in English? I ask because in hindsight I think I would have memorised quicker and better if I had done RTK in my native language (also French).

Also if you have trouble remembering stuff, maybe you're not applying the method that well? Like focusing on verbal mnemonics when you should focus of seeing the picture of your story in your mind.

"Also if you have trouble remembering stuff, maybe you're not applying the method that well? Like focusing on verbal mnemonics when you should focus of seeing the picture of your story in your mind."

Can we take for granted that "focusing on verbal mnemonics" is necessarily a bad thing? Visual memory may be more or less pregnant, depending on people. I remember memorizing mental associations based on the catchy sound of a sentence combining the keyword of one kanji with the mnemonics of its components, or on a play on words.

Sometimes, my mental movie theater seems to have nothing compelling to offer, and words may come to my rescue!

The research I've read recently says that, while some people may have a preference for visual vs verbal/written learning, almost everyone has better results when using both at the same time.

With that in mind, I try as much as possible to process my stories both verbally and visually/imaginatively, and let whichever sticks stick (that is, I don't mark a card wrong unless I forget both).

RTK has more than one purpose.  If, for some reason, you need to be able to write the kanji by hand, it does a fantastic job of helping with that (this is actually still pretty useful for fast lookups of kanji for which you don't know the reading).  More universally though, it gives you a "hook" for each kanji - something fixed in your memory that you can then associate other things with, like alternate meanings, readings, vocabulary, context, etc.  The fact that the keywords are related to one or more meanings of the kanji is a (very substantial) bonus.

Yes, people have some types of memories that are more prominent than others, but in my understanding visual memory and imaginative memory are a bit different. One feels like retrieval from sensory data while the other is basically fantasising. That is, one focuses on shapes while the other focuses on forms. And I think Heisig (rightly) assumes that one is more universal than the other, because imagination is more about organising (a blurry) space than trying to "see" something in detail. Which is no different from writing really, you can write your "r" and "b" any way you want, as long as the form of the letter is close to its conventionnal form it will be understood. Heisig just expands on that. I don't know, it's probably just my perception.

(2016-04-01, 3:45 pm)jmignot Wrote: "Also if you have trouble remembering stuff, maybe you're not applying the method that well? Like focusing on verbal mnemonics when you should focus of seeing the picture of your story in your mind."

Can we take for granted that "focusing on verbal mnemonics" is necessarily a bad thing? Visual memory may be more or less pregnant, depending on people. I remember memorizing mental associations based on the catchy sound of a sentence combining the keyword of one kanji with the mnemonics of its components, or on a play on words.

Sometimes, my mental movie theater seems to have nothing compelling to offer, and words may come to my rescue!

Try making every primitive element's mnemonic into a noun, especially a character you know (ex. 人　Mr. T 足 pirate/peg leg 襟 John snow (for the cloaks radical, since he has a black cloak in Game of Thrones)

I tried RTK twice and failed around 600 like you may be doing, and the third time I did the above and it worked wonders all the way through RTK3.

nouns.

(2016-04-01, 8:28 pm)Dovetron Wrote: I tried RTK twice and failed around 600 like you may be doing, and the third time I did the above and it worked wonders all the way through RTK3.

I also failed around frame 600, but eventually figured it out. When adding a new note in Anki, I pick my favorite story (or two) from Kanji Koohi. I copy-paste into Anki and use the text styles to set the key word bold and the primitives italics. Those stories are usually more memorable than Anki stories.

Before doing this for each new kanji, I had a low retention rate. After I started this procedure, it got much easier. It forces me to actually visualize a story as Heisig suggests, rather than merely associating the character with its associated primitives (which doesn't stick) and moving on.

There are a lot of kanji, so you might also try learning the RTK Lite frames first (covers over ½ of RTK 1). Also, try limiting yourself to 10–20 new kanji per day, but be consistent about reviewing and learning.

For me, rtk is a way to be familiar with a given set of kanji. The effective goal is to be able to write a character given an english keyword, but my real long term goal is to be able to read, i actually do not care that much about being able to write, it s just that i think learning how to write a character is the best way not to confuse two similar looking kanji.

If you make too many error and spend too much time reviewing, just stop adding card for a while. I think it s better to go slowly but steady, than to rush and burnout.

I think the easiest way not to forget charcter is to make some emotionnal mnemonic oneself, too bad it takes so much time :-)

i disagree with people who think only visual story are ok, i sometimes remember some kanji "story" with puns and sounds.

I think Dovetron's tips about using primitive as nouns in story is really good.

I would aslo suggest not relying too much on heisig keyword, but to choose yours in french or whatever, use jisho and rikaichan to get an idea of the "meaning" of a character, and pick one you like.

Some of my personal keywords turned even into list of keyword or sentence to avoid confusing them with other keywords.

swamp: marecage où il y a takusan de crocodile
depression: depression (au dessus du jardin)
value: valeur d une variable en php

If you know an japanese word already, use it as a keyword for a kanji.

Dont rush.
Dont stop.

Thank you for your replies. 

I'm using both verbal mnemonics and visual memorization (with stories). Most of the time, only the latter. But there are kanji which really bother me since I can't find a proper way to memorize them, because no coherent story comes to mind when I'm looking at them (even the highest rated stories by the members of koohii fail to help me). Also, I'm not trying to learn how to write kanji, the only thing I'm really looking forward to is being able to read japanese texts, in order to enjoy the books/games I've always wanted to understand.

Eratik > Yes, I'm doing RTK in English. Because the french course of RTK doesn't exist in Memrise. And I'm using this (website + android application) to learn the kanji instead of anki. While I generally don't have any problems understanding english, I'll admit that there are a number of words that I struggle to remember as well. It would definitely be quicker and more efficient for me to do this in French. Because I pretty much have to remember both the kanji and the english word in some cases, which is, as you can imagine, confusing.

I don't have Memrise, but when I type "memrise" and "maniette" in google it gives me this straightaway.
http://www.memrise.com/course/618453/les...the-kanji/

Oh. I wonder if this was created between me starting with the english course and now... I'm pretty sure I didn't see it back then. Anyway, thanks, I think I'll be switching to this now.

EDIT : Turns out I'm keeping the english course. I can't mark a kanji as "learned" in Memrise. I can only ignore it. But if I do so, the kanji will not appear during the reviews. So I have to relearn all the kanji I want to review later. I'm certainly not gonna do that with hundreds of kanji, so... that's it I guess. Too bad, french would have been great. ^^

Have you tried this?
[mark as learned on Memrise]
"It does exist, by changing the URL shown when you're learning words for a particular level from "/learn/" at the end to "/auto_learn". But it seems to be broken currently, I get a "Could not load the session" error or even causing the browser window to crash. Have reported as a bug."

Also you're only one third in, it might not too be late to switch to Anki/Ankidroid (which has a Maniette deck)...

Yep, tried it, doesn't seem to work. I get the "Could not load the session" error everytime.

I can actually create my own course in Memrise with french words instead of english, and by doing this the auto-learning will be available (only creators can mark words as learnt without actually learning apparently). The thing is, I have to copy/paste 2000 kanji with as much words, which is gonna take a little while.

It seems you can bulk import?
Take the following spreadsheet, download in Excel format, remove the columns you don't need*, then import in Memrise. It should work.

*since this list includes RTK3, you should remove lines too.

(2016-04-04, 6:10 am)EratiK Wrote: It seems you can bulk import?
Take the following spreadsheet, download in Excel format, remove the columns you don't need*, then import in Memrise. It should work.

*since this list includes RTK3, you should remove lines too.

That's perfect, I was searching for a spreadsheet like that ! Thank you very much, I'm going to do this right now.

You're welcome. ^^