Hi,
I am about to start RTK 1 in the next couple of days and wondering if I could do a little extra to help myself out. I have noticed that Heisig does not give a pronunciation for any of the Kanji, would it therefore be useful to look these up as I go so I have some recognition of them? Would this be fundamentally incorrect as they change pronunciation depending on context and other kanji compounds? Would I be trying to do too much at once and infact his other books in the series would deal with this? Would I pick up pronunciation etc afterwards using the 10,000 sentence method?

Thanks for any help.

Yes, you learn the pronunciation after learning the kanji. Please read the introduction to the book.

No, yes, yes, yes, in that order.

Not to be overly brief or anything, but you already listed all of the reasons yourself.

There are purists who say not to do anything else at all during RTK, even. I'm not of that opinion, so if you were to pick up vocabulary through misc study you would be learning some readings incidentally. Don't just drill kanji readings, though. Wait until RTK2 if you must, or just ignore it altogether and learn them through vocabulary (it's genuinely quite easy that way).

Ok, thankyou very much for your responses. I just wasn't sure RTK2 was so essential after hearing many people give negative opinions. Yet I was always up for going through it just to follow the course through thus knowing I have completed the section correctly instead of mixing and matching different schemes.