I've got two questions regarding K02001 and learning the material.

1. How long do you think it will take to get through the first 1110, or two books worth of kanji, by reading the material, and testing the example sentences with Anki?

2. When reviewing the sentences, should you ONLY focus on the particular kanji in quesiton, or should you learn other unfamiliar vocab? If, as I expect, you SHOULD focus on the unfamiliar vocab, do you learn the kanji too? Do you add another sentence to Anki?

These may seem like simple or silly questions, but thanks for taking the time to answer them!

The first 1000 kanjis go very fast. It gets slower after that, when the kanjis start to get rarer and rarer.

So I guess you should seek balance.
Kanji to take the load off RTK and vocabulary for learning something more urgent.

It depends on you. I have the complete KO2001 deck in anki, and unsuspend in sets of 10 kanji (aprox 30 sentences) whenever I feel comfortable. Before unsuspending , I cram (anki function) the 30 sentences until I learn ALL the vocab.
For words high frequency (google.co.jp > 3000000) that I don't know, I add additional yahoo example sentences.
Important: Do not do production until you finish all the deck with recognition.

Why postpone production?

I do production with recognition right off the bat with no problems with KO. That's the one of the major points of RTK, anyway, to make production easier. Why put it off?

On a tangent that has always driven me nuts: Folks, if you're going to say "Don't do this," then please, say WHY. Don't just say, "Whatever you do, don't touch the red button," and then walk out of the room. Say WHY he shouldn't touch the red button.

And please offer some sort of proof. Either explain your personal experience (for example, "I tried to do production, and I found it was a frustrating waste of time,"), or from sort of scientific research. ("Trying to do production early will make you go bald, according to a recent scientific study you can find here.") Point to something.

From my personal experience, I can tell you that you can do production and recognition with KO sentences. Yes, it will slow you down a bit, but it IS possible, and no, your brain won't melt. How well you do it is going to be based on how much Japanese you already know. If you already have a decent background in Japanese, it's much easier. If you don't, then it will be harder, and slower, but the same will go for recognition, then.

The way I do it: I have 2 sets of cards, one set for recognition, one for production.

On the recognition cards, I simply see the sentence in Japanese and try to read and understand it.

For production, I put the full sentence in kana, and highlight 1 word (ONLY 1 word per card), and I have to write out that word with kanji.

I find that this works pretty well.

rich_f Wrote:Why postpone production?

First of all, when I say someone should do something, it is only as an answer to a request for advice. Each one has to find what's best for each one.
Second, production takes more time than recognition (I don't know if 2 or 3 times more). There are many things to learn to master Japanese, and any task you do , is at expense of the rest, as the time of the day is limited. So, if we do production, we will finish the deck in the double (approx.) of time than if we do only recognition.
In my opinion, learning first recognition and then production, we are reinforcing what we learn in a better way (assuming we are also reading some stuff). Learning for me is like adding layers, one over the other , reinforcing what is already learned, rather than learning, for instance all the readings of a kanji, and only then proceeding to the next one.

In reference to the first question I'm attempting to "complete" the first volume of KO2001 in under 60 days. I'm currently on frame 285 after approximately 28 days. I'm not sure how I'll hold up on the last half but I'll let you know. Currently only doing recognition.

I plan on completing both volumes and once I do I think I'll go back and do production to really "master" them.......that and I want to be able to actually hand write compounds like any literate native.

I'm almost done with book 2. I'm on frame 1000 today. Anyway, I started in September and it's April now. I'm doing recognition only, but if you do production I think it will take longer. I don't think doing production is that important, but that's just my opinion. My goal is to be able to read Japanese ASAP, so for right now I'm not that concerned about writing. As for your 2nd question, yes I do the whole sentence. If I fail one thing I fail it all. At first this is hard, but take the advice of people above. If a card is really hard then just suspend it. Don't kill yourself over 1 card. If you want to know how effective it is I'll tell you about my personal experience. When I started I knew about 200 kanji, but even then I didn't know every reading. I found it really hard to read almost anything and my vocab wasn't very big. Now, my reading skill has improved about 1000%. I went from a low elementary school level to middle school level. I've been about read forms about bank transfers and applying for credit cards. At my school they had a pamphlet that introduced you to all the new teachers at school(hobbies, class, etc) and I could understand about 90% of it. According to ANKI here is my JLPT level.


Level 1
189 / 922 20.5%

Level 2
628 / 739 84.98%

Level 3
180 / 181 99.45%

Level 4
102 / 103 99.03%

Total
1099 / 1945 56.5%

Thanks for all your replies!

Zarxraz and rich_f, where are you in the KO2001 books, and how long has it taken you to get there?

I can see the pros and cons of both production AND recognition. However as my (next) goal is JLPT2, I think I'll start out with recognition only. I realise and have read all the arguments against JLPT related goals when your eventual goal is total proficiency, but there you have it- I need a test-type goal to keep me motivated.

I'm wondering therefore in that context if I have enough time to do KO2001, AND prepare the grammar and UNICOM 2kyuu specific vocab in time for the test. I'll finish Heisig by the end of May- given my specific situation, what would you recommend I do?

If I were you I'd consider doing it next year. I'm sure if you wanted to you could go faster than I went, but if you go faster and add more things(like grammar listening exercises) your chances of burning out increase greatly. I don't know how often they have the JLPT test, but if they have them in winter and summer, you should be able to get a perfect score if you try next summer. You could try it in winter and I think you might be able to pass, but your chances are lower and I don't think you'd be able to learn all the material for it well. Since it costs money, I'm not taking it unless I think I'll pass.

I'm right around frame 550. I started around July, I think? I don't add cards every single day because it's just not feasible given my schedule, so I go at a slower pace. I also don't just add KO cards, I also add cards from other sources as well, so if I see some grammar stuff that interests me, I add that as well. My deck is around 7500 cards, so that is also including most of Genki I and II, most of UBJG, other random stuff, KO, a lot of stuff from the Yahoo dictionary, etc.

At first, production was really slow, because I messed around with pencils and paper, but now I don't bother with that. I just use the "finger in the air" method and I just make sure I can produce the main kanji from the kana given. I find it helps push vocab up from the depths of passive closer to the surface, simply because I'm exposed to it more often, and I "play" with it more often. I find that recognition and production are two distinct skills. It depends on what you need to do with the language. I need to be able to write.

I don't bother with the cram mode. I enter the sentences in, wait 5-6 hours, then review. If I don't remember, I fail until I remember. No biggie. My long-term rate is around 97%, so it works for me. I do the bare minimum and let Anki worry about it.

One thing I do do, however, is make sure to add extra examples if I keep failing a word, because then it's obvious that I'm not "seeing" it enough. I don't believe that Anki's algorithm is perfect, but it's Good Enough to keep shoving words you want to remember under your nose. But in order to make it do that, you need to make sure it has enough variation to give your brain enough different examples to work off of.

All the SRS really does is give you stuff to read that you should know how to read already. Sort of an instant quiz you can carry around with you. But if you just have only one kind of question all the time, it's kind of like only doing one kind of exercise, you know?

Here's an idea of what's in my deck:
993 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 984 of 1945 (50.6%).
Jinmeiyou: 4 of 287 (1.4%).
5 non-jouyou kanji.

So while I've done up to frame 550, I've encountered far more than 550 kanji. As for how many readings I know... *shrug*.

I concur with Zarzax that if you do recognition and dictation (my term for production), highlight the kana and kanji sentence portion of the sentences that deal with the vocabulary words. When I dictate, I just write out the bolded word, though I still want to know what the sentence is talking about.

I put emphasis on those words, meaning a mistake, even a minor one, makes the card wrong. Mistakes on other parts of the sentence I tend to just mark the sentence as hard.

As for time, although I'm using smart.fm shorter sentences, it seems I'm getting about 120 dictation and recognition sentences done an hour. If you don't do dictation, it should be much faster than this.

Like Rich, I don't cram either. The first time a sentence comes up, I just write out the entire sentence, the vocabulary word(s) and the kana for the vocabulary. It's showing good results so far. That's adding about 60 dictation and recognition sentences an hour.

So, as far as time goes. I calculated about 6 minutes of effort per sentence over it's review life doing both dictation and recognition, so 100 hours per 1000 sentences. KO2001 should take you 300 hours which is like 6 credit hours in a serious college class.

I'm only at around frame 400 on KO right now. I had started on it a long time ago but the way I initially approached it was not very good (I was trying to write out all kanji and understand the full sentence, instead of breaking it up). I ended up giving up at that time since it was too difficult, and then later started back with my new method I described above. I'm not really working my way through it very fast because I'm studying from a large amount of assorted materials rather than JUST kanji odyssey.

Yeah, in hindsight, you don't really *have* to use the KO sentences. They're pretty long, and sometimes add some, well, "uncommon" vocab　原子力発電所 (nuclear power plant), 排気ガス (vehicle exhaust), etc... but then again, sticking to them this far has served me pretty well. And for some reason I can still recall them.

What I recommend more than anything is the order in which KO presents kanji, and the vocab it chooses to use.

I would say let your needs dictate your style. You can see we all have different approaches based on what we think works best for us. (I'm a masochist who's worried about having to leave a handwritten note warning about vehicle exhaust fumes at a nuclear power plant somewhere in Japan, but at least I know I'll be able to leave one...)

Just keep in mind that Japanese isn't just about kanji, it's also about listening and speaking as well, and keep in mind that just acquiring a huge number of kanji readings won't help you solve grammar problems if you don't grok what certain phrases mean.

Kanji is just one important part of a much bigger puzzle.

Oh, and it should be fun, too. Good luck with it.

Zarxrax Wrote:For production, I put the full sentence in kana, and highlight 1 word (ONLY 1 word per card), and I have to write out that word with kanji.

Do you create a new card for each vocabulary word introduced in the recognition card, ie. if there is more than one new word, do you create multiple cards or do you choose one and go with it?

Nukemarine Wrote:I concur with Zarzax that if you do recognition and dictation (my term for production), highlight the kana and kanji sentence portion of the sentences that deal with the vocabulary words. When I dictate, I just write out the bolded word, though I still want to know what the sentence is talking about.

Do you turn the whole sentence into kana and bold the vocabulary word or do you leave the words that aren't bolded in kanji?

From what I've read in other threads, you're using TTS for a lot for your cards (correct me if I'm wrong). Do you write down the whole sentence when you do dictation with a TTS? And what TTS programme do you use?

Aw, lots of questions. (:

Thanks all, and especially rich_f your words are encouraging.

Really can't wait to finish RtK and get stuck into something new. I've already seen the benefits of RtK in linking together kanji with vocab I previously knew, and I know its going to help in the next stage.

Cheers guys!

Hinode Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:I concur with Zarzax that if you do recognition and dictation (my term for production), highlight the kana and kanji sentence portion of the sentences that deal with the vocabulary words. When I dictate, I just write out the bolded word, though I still want to know what the sentence is talking about.

Do you turn the whole sentence into kana and bold the vocabulary word or do you leave the words that aren't bolded in kanji?

From what I've read in other threads, you're using TTS for a lot for your cards (correct me if I'm wrong). Do you write down the whole sentence when you do dictation with a TTS? And what TTS programme do you use?

Aw, lots of questions. (:

I set up my anki deck to have many items per fact. In my iKnow deck, I have item for: Vocabulary Kanji, Vocabulary Kana, Vocabulary English, Sentence Kanji, Sentence Kana, Sentence English, Audio, Image, Note (for sorting purposes), Definitions (for words in sentences that are not clear). These came already prepared from Smart.fm so no need to type or make changes for the most part. However, it's not difficult to do the same with KO2001 as I did just that last year.

So I don't really "bold" the word. I have anki display the vocabulary word in kana and the sentence in addition to the audio and the image. It's just a matter of writing down the vocabulary word in Kanji then look at the answer to see if I'm correct.

I use TTS for my "grammar" cards that I made using Tae Kim sentences. Last year, I did write out the whole sentence, then I changed to reading the whole sentence, then I changed to writing out just the grammar portion of the sentence in question. None were satisfactory.

Now, since Anki added a type in the answer feature, I do this: Anki displays sentence in Kanji with the vocabulary portion in bold, I read it out loud and type in the entire sentence. Anki shows the answer as kana, the audio (TTS), and in VERY small print it has the English translation in addition to the grammar point (which is just the section title from Tae Kim's site). Takes me about 1 minute to review a sentence.

To be honest, I'm with Tobberoth a bit on the use of a TTS. It's unnatural so I don't like dictating with it. However, as a reference aid for pronunciation, it's good for what it does so I'm still using it with my grammar sentences. Smart.fm just has such a valuable resource in it's professionally read sentences that I'm not switching from that. But it is possible to dictate from TTS, as I did that last year. However, I really do recommend the "write out only the bolded term" approach of dictation.

Hinode Wrote:Do you create a new card for each vocabulary word introduced in the recognition card, ie. if there is more than one new word, do you create multiple cards or do you choose one and go with it?

I make separate cards for each word, but only for words which use the current kanji, not any other random words that might happen to be in the sentence.

Hinode Wrote:Do you turn the whole sentence into kana and bold the vocabulary word or do you leave the words that aren't bolded in kanji?

I decided to turn the whole sentence into kana for practical reasons mainly. From the spreadsheet, I have the full kanji sentence, and the full kana sentence. If I wanted to make a sentence with just the word I'm studying converted to kana, then that would require some copying and pasting, which adds up to quite a bit of time over thousands of cards. Also many sentences use the same kanji repeatedly, so I would have to change all of them. Much easier to just show the kana sentence.

I was worried about having multiple kanji in sentences at first, but really, you get used to it over time. I decided not to highlight or otherwise draw attention to kana relating to kanji in I'm testing in particular because I knew my brain would use it as a crutch. I might have a slightly higher failure rate because of it, but I think it's better that way.

So this sentence:
この通りは年中渋滞している。

Will come from this somewhat confusing kana, and it forces me to speak it out.
このとおりはねんじゅうじゅうたいしている。

年中 is ねんじゅう
and
渋滞 is じゅうたい

(translation: This street is congested [crowded]　year-round.)

You'll see the じゅうじゅう in the middle, and maybe you'll think it's something else if you try to read it quickly, but that's only if you're lazy and not paying attention to the whole sentence. If I just used a bolded or colored text for the kana I was testing, I would just look at only the bolded kana and not pay attention to the context. This forces me to pay attention to the context.

No, it's NOT easier this way. It's harder. But I find it makes me pay attention to the context.

But that's just me.

And yeah, I avoid the dictation stuff mostly because I use the Anki keitai mode a lot, and it supports neither pictures nor audio. On the upside, it keeps my deck really simple. One field for the sentence in Japanese, one field for the reading, one field for "translation," which is really just for notes. I'll put translations in there, but I try not to read them unless I can't remember what the sentence means.

I've been meaning to try the Cloze deletion mode in Anki, but I haven't had the chance yet. I've got a couple of good grammar drill books I've been itching to do, just no time to do them.

Zarxrax Wrote:I make separate cards for each word, but only for words which use the current kanji, not any other random words that might happen to be in the sentence.

You have to create a new fact card for each vocabulary word not just a template, right? Since, as far as I know, all card models are adjusted if you change a fact, for example if highlight a word it is highlighted in both, production and recognition. Do you simply import the whole spreadsheet a couple of times and then bold the words you want to test or do you have a more elegant way of doing it?

EDIT: I should read more carefully, Nukemarine already pointed out how he does it with iKnow.

Nukemarine Wrote:I set up my anki deck to have many items per fact. In my iKnow deck, I have item for: Vocabulary Kanji, Vocabulary Kana, Vocabulary English, Sentence Kanji, Sentence Kana, Sentence English, Audio, Image, Note (for sorting purposes), Definitions (for words in sentences that are not clear). These came already prepared from Smart.fm so no need to type or make changes for the most part. However, it's not difficult to do the same with KO2001 as I did just that last year.

So I don't really "bold" the word. I have anki display the vocabulary word in kana and the sentence in addition to the audio and the image. It's just a matter of writing down the vocabulary word in Kanji then look at the answer to see if I'm correct.

It shouldn't be too difficult to do the same for KO sentences, even though the spreadsheet I have (I own both books, so I guess it's alright to use it) doesn't have a separate column for vocabulary as it's the case with the iKnow one.

In my experience, it takes about 2 months for each book. Of course, it all depends on how much time & effort you put in.

The way I learned was I focused on the whole sentence, not just on the current compound. If I couldn't read & understand any part of it, I failed the card. This worked well for me.

In the beginning you encounter more new kanji & vocab per sentence, but as you progress there are less and less, so it gets easier and faster to go through each one.