I would recommend you to use a notebook with little squares like that :
http://www.siteduzero.com/uploads/fr/fil.../93730.png

Using a 2*2 square to write the kanjis, it can help you write the kanji better because you're using too much space for some of them.

Here's another great resource for generating squared paper to suit your needs. It's been posted before I think, but it is worth mentioning again.

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/genkoyoushi/

You can choose your own paper size, grid size, line weight, colour and so on, and get it generated as a PDF.

Thanks, good suggestion. This will stop me being so careless. I noticed when I write a character I usually put the primitives all over the place and don't really compress them well except when its necessary (for eg. the woman in intimidate). I am far more interested in the reading side of things but it helps to pick up some good habits.

KanjiMood Wrote:

welldone101 Wrote:oooh pretty kanjis!
I like people sharing pictures. Very motivational.

Yes, indeed it's also motivational for me to track my progress here. So you can ban me if I stop posting

I'm on frame 450 now. I'm beginning to wonder if its worth starting sentences after RtK1, after frame 1500 or after RtK3 even (which I'll do after RtK1). It seems some people start doing sentences around frame 1500, anyone have ideas about this? Or should I only do RtK1 even though I have time for supplemental learning?

If you have the time, there is absolutely no reason not to start sentences immediately. Even in the beginning stages of RTK, you will quickly see a few kanji in sentences that you now know how to write. It's reinforcing. (I suggest getting sentences from iKnow at first.) And the more frames you have mastered, the more frequently this is going to happen. If you are like me (you may or may not be like me), you will find the dual attack mutually reinforcing. It's nice to see kanji you now know in "real life", and it just makes you want to know more kanji. (So much, in fact, that I have skipped ahead in RTK to look up a few frequent kanji that are not introduced until the last quarter of RTK -- and this is certainly not going to slow me down or interfere one bit with finishing RTK.)

I see absolutely no reason other than time constraints for waiting until RTK is finished to begin actually learning the language you ultimately want to master.

Wally Wrote:If you have the time, there is absolutely no reason not to start sentences immediately. Even in the beginning stages of RTK, you will quickly see a few kanji in sentences that you now know how to write. It's reinforcing. (I suggest getting sentences from iKnow at first.) And the more frames you have mastered, the more frequently this is going to happen. If you are like me (you may or may not be like me), you will find the dual attack mutually reinforcing. It's nice to see kanji you now know in "real life", and it just makes you want to know more kanji. (So much, in fact, that I have skipped ahead in RTK to look up a few frequent kanji that are not introduced until the last quarter of RTK -- and this is certainly not going to slow me down or interfere one bit with finishing RTK.)

I see absolutely no reason other than time constraints for waiting until RTK is finished to begin actually learning the language you ultimately want to master.

I agree with you 100% Wally. I entered a few characters into google and found my eye becoming better trained to spot small kanji and what they were. I don't think its good to see the big version in RtK all the time. I also don't see any reason to wait until I've finished because it would be like trying to avoid Japanese outside of RtK which is bizarre.

Also, recently I've found myself visualizing the whole shape of characters whenever I hear someone say the keyword, I think I even did that in a dream this morning.

KanjiMood Wrote:I'm on frame 450 now. I'm beginning to wonder if its worth starting sentences after RtK1, after frame 1500 or after RtK3 even (which I'll do after RtK1). It seems some people start doing sentences around frame 1500, anyone have ideas about this? Or should I only do RtK1 even though I have time for supplemental learning?

I don't know what to tell you about doing things simultaneously with RTK, as I've been doing it without much of a choice.

I would however definitely recommend holding off on RTK3. I can't really talk, I suppose, not even being half way done with RTK. But I have studied Japanese for 4 years, so I'm already at an intermediate level. I feel like doing RTK3 would just be putting off actually learning real Japanese. It's funny, you see people who are learning Japanese without RTK putting off learning the kanji, and then you see people using RTK put off learning the rest of Japanese. At some point you have to cross over, and it's a bit hard to do because you've already gotten good at using one method. You need new strategies for learning different skills.

Jay Rubin wrote a wonderful book of insights into the trickier parts of the Japanese language (called Making Sense of Japanese--highly recommended for people at an intermediate level), but only devoted two pages to Kanji. He said

"Kanji are tough. Kanji are challenging. Kanji are mysterious and fun and maddening. Kanji comprise one of the greatest stumbling blocks faced by Westerners who want to become literate in Japanese. But kanji have nothing to do with grammar or sentence structure or thought patterns or the Japanese world view, and they are certainly not the Japanese language." (92-93)

this thread has been motivating, I have to been to lazy with RTK and had only made it upto lesson 10 after 2 and a half months of owning the book. the past 2 days I have been working hard and I am about to complete part 1 of the book

joe_bevis Wrote:this thread has been motivating, I have to been to lazy with RTK and had only made it upto lesson 10 after 2 and a half months of owning the book. the past 2 days I have been working hard and I am about to complete part 1 of the book

Nice one, warrior!

Tzadeck Wrote:At some point you have to cross over, and it's a bit hard to do because you've already gotten good at using one method. You need new strategies for learning different skills.

So what do you think would be a good strategy for learning the other aspects of Japanese? Would you start with the kana? Tae Kim's guide? Then do sentences? It would be very handy to know this as then I can start learning Japanese outside of RtK too.

As for RtK 3 I will do it straight after RtK1 (if I haven't gone insane), no reason not to I would imagine.

Personally I really don't see why one should rush into RtK3 right away. I've studied Japanese for more than 2 years now and I finished RtK1 quite a while ago and I've focused on sentence mining and exposure since and it's VERY rare to run into kanji not covered in RtK1.

Knowing the extra 1000 kanji in RtK3 is a good thing, but it's not all that important. The kanji are rare at my level, I don't see how someone who is just starting out with tae kim, genki and similar running into RtK3 kanji any time soon. Hell, at least 400 kanji or so from RtK1 almost never pop up either...

There's diminishing returns for all forms of learning and at RtK3, it's quite diminished. For someone who wants to get on with their studies of the actual language, I see no problem in skipping RtK3 and taking the new kanji as they come... or at least wait with RtK3 until you know the basics and want to get into more advanced stuff.

I see your point, I would definitely put sentence mining above RtK3 of course, but I'd still like to get it out of the way eventually.

By the way, which range of frames do you think are the most difficult in RtK1?

So far (frame 475) the difficulty has remained more or less the same, the only difference has been remembering more drops, hooks, crosses and primitive form variations. I feel the "difficulty" just depends on how effective your stories are.

Don't be fooled by the first half of RTK1, I did about 1000 in the first week and didn't miss a single review, then everything came to a grinding halt after that.

somukeru Wrote:Here's another great resource for generating squared paper to suit your needs. It's been posted before I think, but it is worth mentioning again.

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/genkoyoushi/

You can choose your own paper size, grid size, line weight, colour and so on, and get it generated as a PDF.

Thank you somukeru! Very useful to have this.

danieldesu Wrote:Don't be fooled by the first half of RTK1, I did about 1000 in the first week and didn't miss a single review, then everything came to a grinding halt after that.

Yeah, I'm worried about becoming overwhelmed in the latter stages. But we'll see..

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally I really don't see why one should rush into RtK3 right away. I've studied Japanese for more than 2 years now and I finished RtK1 quite a while ago and I've focused on sentence mining and exposure since and it's VERY rare to run into kanji not covered in RtK1.

I run into them daily through normal interaction with society. Not just easy ones like 誰 either. That said, I'd recommend just learning them as one comes into contact with them. Doing RTK3 full out, unless you are already at a very high level and just want something structured to study, is a waste of time. You're better off actually learning Japanese after RTK1.

KanjiMood Wrote:So I'm halfway through day 3 and I know about 250 kanji, I can recall nearly every character from its English keyword, some of them nearly instantly. However, I'm having trouble reading the Kanji first then thinking of the English keyword - it takes almost twice as long. Plus I have trouble distinguishing different fonts and sizes (especially small ones like on websites)... When will I get better at doing those things? When I start doing sentences? Or does it come before that? Or am I just doing something wrong?

Other than that though everything is fine and dandy.. It helps my motivation tremendously to have a purpose when doing this. Hopefully I'll be finished with RTK volume 1 within the next 17 days but I have a feeling things will get harder...

Hi KanjiMood! I have to say I am very impressed, actually I am beyond of that, I am amazed and a little confused too. I have been doing Rtk1 for ~3 months and I am at 1130 plus the new ones I will study today. I have been doing 20 to 25 a day but sometimes coping up with the failed stack, the new Kanji learned, the new Kanji to learn and the daily ~100 reviews (I wonder how many daily reviews is normal when you are finishing the book) is just overwhelming so there have been days when I don't do any Kanji but bring that failed stack to zero. I spend about 5 hours or more doing this every day.

If I understand correctly, you are doing 100 a day, that is 4 times more than I do, so we are looking at... well we are looking at that I just described but 4 times.

1. How many times you write (practice) the Kanji when you review it? I write them about ~10 times each one.

2. How much time you spend making up stories? I often use the stories in the Study area but at least 30% are my own stories so I do spend some time creating them.

3. How well you remember the Kanjis when you remember them? I make sure the stroke order is correct and every primitive is there (drops and everything ) I also make sure I remember the story even though the earlier stories have been fading away and the Kanji sticking in the back of my head so it comes out naturally.

4. How do you handle the failed stack? My average best is 80% and my average worst is 60% so in my routine I study and restudy my failed Kanjis a lot in order to have the failed stack as closest to zero as I can.

Best,
Jorge

I'm not sure what the benefit is of comparing yourself to others. Just move at a pace you can handle. This is not a race guys...

Concering the failed stack: ever tried cycle elimination? I think it's best. But that's just me. My failed pile is *always* empty at the end of a review session. Always!

stoked Wrote:I'm not sure what the benefit is of comparing yourself to others. Just move at a pace you can handle. This is not a race guys...

Concerning the failed stack: ever tried cycle elimination? I think it's best. But that's just me. My failed pile is *always* empty at the end of a review session. Always!

It is a race. I don't care if a lose or whatever, but I like to think of many things as a race, as a competition, that is extremely motivating for me. Don't get me wrong, is not like I will neglect things in the way or I will skim through Kanjis or rush things to my bad or boycott myself. Thinking of this as a race (thinking of anything as a race) helps me stay focus and motivated.

Also, comparing is good. I don't know where people got the idea that comparing was bad or there is something wrong with it. Again, for me is motivating and I am sure it is like that for other people.

By the way, @stoked, can you define cycle elimination? Unless you mean frantically clicking the [Learned] button for all the failed Kanji I am not sure

Example for cycle elimination:

\start of review session

first round: 100 reviews. 80 correct. 20 failed.

second round: 20 in the failed pile. 16 correct. 4 failed.

third round: 4 in the failed pile. 3 correct. 1 failed.

fourth round: 1 in the failed pile. 1 correct. empty failed pile.

end of review session/

I think most people advise against this but for me it works.

"Failed stack always empty" policy ftw!

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally I really don't see why one should rush into RtK3 right away. I've studied Japanese for more than 2 years now and I finished RtK1 quite a while ago and I've focused on sentence mining and exposure since and it's VERY rare to run into kanji not covered in RtK1.

Knowing the extra 1000 kanji in RtK3 is a good thing, but it's not all that important. The kanji are rare at my level, I don't see how someone who is just starting out with tae kim, genki and similar running into RtK3 kanji any time soon. Hell, at least 400 kanji or so from RtK1 almost never pop up either...

There's diminishing returns for all forms of learning and at RtK3, it's quite diminished. For someone who wants to get on with their studies of the actual language, I see no problem in skipping RtK3 and taking the new kanji as they come... or at least wait with RtK3 until you know the basics and want to get into more advanced stuff.

Regarding Kanji from Rtk3 coming out there is probably a small subset of those that really come out often just like those 400 from Rtk1 that don't (if someone knows please post it). For example the Rtk3 Kanji for song 唄 (うた) which is pronounced just like 歌 the song we know from Rtk1 but is probably used for Pop/Rock songs.

KanjiMood Wrote:I'm on frame 450 now. I'm beginning to wonder if its worth starting sentences after RtK1, after frame 1500 or after RtK3 even (which I'll do after RtK1). It seems some people start doing sentences around frame 1500, anyone have ideas about this? Or should I only do RtK1 even though I have time for supplemental learning?

Whatever keeps your motivation high and keeps you adding new frames regularly and keeping on top of your daily reviews. People differ: some like variety, some do better with single focus and single-minded pursuit.

I pretty much focused on RTK as my main Japanese study activity for 7 months, but I was also watching anime several times a week and I also meet with a tutor once a week for conversation. We usually also talk about various kanji and their meaning in context, as I can now retrieve kanji easier than the Japanese words (my spoken vocabulary is pretty limited), so I will be trying to say something to her and end up writing a few kanji down to convey my meaning. So that was my supplement.

Oh, I also follow a bunch of people on Twitter who post in Japanese, so that was my sentence or sentence fragment practice

stoked Wrote:Example for cycle elimination:

\start of review session

first round: 100 reviews. 80 correct. 20 failed.

second round: 20 in the failed pile. 16 correct. 4 failed.

third round: 4 in the failed pile. 3 correct. 1 failed.

fourth round: 1 in the failed pile. 1 correct. empty failed pile.

end of review session/

I think most people advise against this but for me it works.

"Failed stack always empty" policy ftw!

In one word. Systematized. I do something similar but it takes more time and is not as structured as this. I buy it, let's see how it goes.

I'm not even sure if this is possible on RevTK to be honest. It is, however, in Anki. I also don't know if the term "cycle elimination" really exits in SRS speak. Someone else on here used that term as well though as far as I remember.

Some people seem to dislike this method, arguing that there should be more time between reviews for failed cards. Well, maybe. Who knows. It works fine for me. And it's a damn good feeling to have an empty failed stack after *every* review session!

I will do your cycle elimination for the Kanji whose story I remembered after I failed it. However for those Kanji where I didn't even remember the story I will re study them and learn it the next day before I do my new reviews.

I restudy a kanji right after failing it. Instead of just moving on I look at it closely and rethink my story if needed. That way, when using cycle elimination, round three is hardly ever needed. You should remember (virtually) all failed kanjis in the second round.

I'm prolly the only one on here doing it that way. So, erm, not sure it's good advice.

stoked Wrote:I restudy a kanji right after failing it. Instead of just moving on I look at it closely and rethink my story if needed. That way, when using cycle elimination, round three is hardly ever needed. You should remember (virtually) all failed kanjis in the second round.

I'm prolly the only one on here doing it that way. So, erm, not sure it's good advice.

If you restudy the Kanji after you failed it then you will obviously not forget it so yes, round 3 is ridiculous. I think we agree here, round 1 will wash out those Kanji we remembered after failing them, however for me, round 2 will be restudying the Kanji but learning it will happen the next day in something similar to a round.