Tobberoth Wrote:

wonderflex Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:Go and do it. Just don't forget to do your RTK reviews.

Side question: Should I be reading aloud?

No, not until you're better at Japanese pronunciation and Japanese pitch. Reading out loud when your Japanese isn't good might give you a habit of using the incorrect pitch or pronunciation.

Try shadowing instead. Read a text you have audio for, then read it out loud together with the audio. That way, you'll get the benefit of reading, without the danger of sounding odd and thinking it's correct.

Dare I say it, things like KO and smart fm are good for giving you an idea and how things ought to sound and how they're paced.

Pacing is important because of where the stops and starts are in Japanese kind of highlight what you are saying in a way, especially with conditionals and such.

I believe IceCream started, but never finished, RtK. I remember her saying that she doesn't find it any trouble learning to read Kanji she encounters, but she probably can't write them I guess. Maybe she can comment.

kittycate44 Wrote:Tobberoth:

fair point, I can see how it would be much less of a hassle because kanji wouldnt be "random" squiggles but i think the person who wrote this post has learnt enough kanji to be able to differentiate, and they seem anxious to start also ^_^

It would be interesting to see how well and at what pace and level of understanding people who complete ALL of RtK learn at compared to those who only knew a few hundred, or even a few characters before. Are there any posts on this do you know?

xxx

I don't know, unfortunately, I only have my own experience to go on. I learned kanji in a traditional manner for over a year, probably over 800 kanji. It's hard for me to tell because I learned the readings, examples words and such at the same time, so my knowledge of the kanji varied greatly. I knew how to write 今, I knew several readings and several words... for 礼, I knew one example word and one reading, but I always mixed it up with 札. That's one of the problem I find with traditional methods, you never feel done and you never feel secure in your knowledge. With RtK finished, you can at least be sure that you differentiate and write all those kanji.

As for how big the difference is in learning, I think it's big, but it also depends on what hundreds of kanji you know and what level you're at. For a complete beginner learning from textbooks, knowing 200-300 kanji is more than enough, if those 300 make up the 300 used in basic learning texts. However, if you're at JLPT2+ level, knowing just 500 kanji would slow you down to a crawl.

After a night of sleeping on it I've decided that I'm not going to go onto trying to read ahead of time, and I'm not going to work on RtK Lite.

Although reading now would make me feel like I've accomplished something outside of writing, it just wouldn't make sense in English to learn to read when you only know a portion of the alphabet. Sure, even with RTK1 I wouldn't know all the Kanji, but at least anything I don't know will have to have kana provided with it (right?).

Also, RtK Lite sounded like a good option for about two days. It covers about 93% of all the text found in Wikipedia but the scary thought is that the remaining 7% comprise almost as many individual Kanji as the first 93%.

So, long story short - I think the only logical thing [for me] to do is fight the urge to cut corners, especially seeing how RtK is already a savings over traditional learning.

Total kanjis you need to learn: 3000
It is not the best use of the learning time to learn first 3000 kanjis , and then readings grammar and vocab, because you won't be using the less frequent 2000 kanjis or so until you have an intermediate level of japanese. So, you are wasting learning time reviewing kanjis that you won't use for more than one or two years. I think this would be far more efficient:

1. RTK LITE (up to 1000 kanji) (equivalent JLPT 2)
2. Readings, grammar and vocab (equivalent JLPT4 and JLPT3)
3. RTK1 complete (up to 2000 kanji)
4. Readings, grammar and vocab (equivalent JLPT2)
5. RTK3 (up to 3000 kanji)
6. Readings, grammar and vocab (equivalent JLPT1)

RTK LITE is a subset of Heisig's RTK, including the primitives necessary for those more frequent 1000 kanji. For more info, check:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=993&page=1
If you are already studying RTK, you can switch easily. For example, when I was at frame 600, I switched to RTK LITE, so I keep reviewing the 600 already learned, but began to add new kanji in another sequence. Once I finish RTK LITE, I will have learned 1300 kanji (not 1000 because started from frame 600).


http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1770

Here's my (general, since it looks like w-flex already figured out what they want) advice: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid63983

Though now I'd point out that you can do RTK Lite in the smart.fm2001 order (see last cpl pages of the RTK Lite thread), so you can do RTKana, then that version of RTK Lite while learning basic grammar through Tae Kim/DOBJG/Manga Way, since studying grammar doesn't require kanji or anything besides understanding how the language fits together.

Then when you finish that version of RTK Lite and the basic grammar you can start doing smart.fm sentences in the KO2001 order, since you now know the kanji in those sentences, and the grammar in those sentences is basic. While you're doing those you can go back and do the other RTK kanji, then maybe switch to Intermediate Grammar and C6k, subs2srs, et cetera.

Then there's modding RTK with Japanese keywords, or just doing 50-100/day to get standard RTK done quick, or using subs2srs to make your own corpus in your preferred order, I guess to each their own. I almost wish I could go back! hehe.

I think it's much faster and easier to read Japanese by going bottom-up and systematic by doing RTK, but yes, plenty of people have learned, if not to read Japanese, then to visually skim it and have a basic recognition of common/easy words. Probably helps the more experience you have with the language so you have a framework to fit it into, and varies from person to person... I still just think that's way too slow and superficial a process, though, too easily hindered. It's a seductive logic, however, though I protest the general idea is too similar to: http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2...94050.aspx and http://scienceavenger.blogspot.com/2007/...-fake.html ... The trick there being that you actually have to be very familiar with the components that comprise the language to be able to get by with skimming when increasing amounts of complexity are introduced.

I think something similar happens with people who dive into reading and don't focus much on grammar and speech, so even if they can't properly understand the nuances and tones of the language through details and subvocalization and the experience that comes with that, they can get the gist of things. That's why when new forum members really into AJATT log on and post about how amazing their reading is after 2-3 months, I just sort of roll my eyes.

IceCream Wrote:well, you're probably right overall, but i don't think those things really show that you are, though. The point was that you recognise words as a whole, or picture right? But all those examples show is that if you jumble a picture enough, you can't recognise it anymore. Isn't that obvious?
So it's kind of a false comparison. A better comparison would show that you read complex words with individual letters. But i don't think it really does show that, or is true.

i'm not sure what the difference would be between reading something and recognising / understanding it, along with subvocalisation, (is subvocalisation just reading to yourself / saying things in your head?) Doesn't the subvocalising make more of a difference than photographic knowledge of a kanji? i dunno...

also, i guess im being kind of picky cos i haven't slept in a while, but i think it's good if people come on here and are happy with what they've acheived in 3 months. I know i am!! It's got to be better than constantly slamming yourself, right?

hehe, I wrote my comments before having my morning caffeine, hope they didn't come across as too passive aggressive or snarky.

What I feel it shows is that even when we've developed our recognition of pieces of a language where we can 'spell' it from the bottom up and instantly recognize the shapes and demonstrate skill in that respect, even then, once you begin introducing complexity, chaos, in some way--in the English example through scrambling, the ability to read begins to rapidly decompose.

Now what if one couldn't even spell those words, then imagine instead of words+letters we're talking about kanji_components-->kanji-->words-->no_spaces (which kanji usually makes up for); that surface recognition you can acquire through vocab study w/o RTK will also become more difficult once interference (larger pieces of text, similar words, new words, situational distractions, whatever) is introduced, and not only that, but if you're learning a kanji from its shape and using rote encounters/deemphasized focus to lead you down to apprehending the primitives and strokes, it's naturally going to be be slower than actually targeting and learning those components and how they shape the kanji, so it's not only weaker but slower than using RTK to go bottom-up till recognition is both robust, complex, and immediate. I think the limits I could recommend someone to being passive, going roundabout like that, is once RTK is complete, doing passive recognition sentences rather than active recall (well, depends on the card types).

Also, I think 'photographic' (hehe, reminds of accusations that Heisig had eidetic memory) would be a better metaphor for trying to memorize a picture as a whole, rather than being able to picture a whole based on intimate knowledge of its parts accumulated through a quick, systematic method.

I was just using subvocalization as another example of a superficial type of reading that's incomplete or otherwise awkward. Maybe it's just because to me, 'text = the nuances of sound + its visual construction + the associated meaning', but if someone tells me they're 'reading' when they're actually just kind of visually puzzling together clumps of meanings and monotonic, clumsily emotive sounds for a hole-riddled understanding of the text, they're not actually 'reading', though I'm sure they'll get there eventually. I think most of my fellow English students read like that, I believe some of them can read entire novels in a month by now! Though I'm loathe to imagine what the language looks like after being butchered in their heads...

Anyway, I said I just rolled my eyes, and that's just for the people who come in with their cups full, as Bruce Lee might say, filled more with ego than vim and vigor. Hardly constitutes an indiscriminate negativity about the passion of learning that I clearly share.