I have two friends who are half Japanese, and have lived in the US their entire lives (although they're both still in high school). They both speak near-native Japanese, can read kana, but don't know any kanji at all. One of them has attempted to go through RTK with me, but finds it frustrating that she most likely already knows the readings of the kanji she's learning, but she's not learning them. Both these people are extremely busy, and would not have time to continue on after RTK in doing the sentence method, nor would they really want to throw themselves into a language that they can already speak. Both of them, as well as myself, are rather lost on what they could do to learn kanji, any suggestions?

Although it's nowhere near replacing an SRS, they could find Japanese magazines/newspapers (from relatives or maybe from a nearby Japan town), tear out pages with large kanji on them (maybe add furigana), and surround themselves with these pages by taping them to walls. Might seem far fetched and perhaps tacky for some, but it's better than no kanji exposure, I think~ My computer area and my bedroom door is covered with them and I find myself looking over at them often.

If they are serious about learning kanji though, I think it'd be good to do some other kind of, more solid learning in addition to this. I see it mainly as a good reinforcement.

Edit: Parallel texts would be that good "addition" I vaguely mentioned about above.
Here are the five I know of:
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...gy_b_img_c
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...gy_b_img_b
http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Japanese...pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-into-Japa...gy_b_img_b
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Japanese-S...pd_sim_b_1

Japanese keywords:
http://wrightak.googlepages.com/

I think that if you already have a native-level spoken ability, going with something like Kanji in Context might work better -- especially for someone who is resisting RTK.

Yeah, if you have near native Japanese, use Japanese keywords. The idea is use picturesque memory. The language used is irrelevant (though how the words are chosen is very important).

The beauty of Japanese keywords is it's cool to go Kanji to Keyword without page long discussions of if it's useful or not on here.

I think the most important thing for these people is to find something they enjoy doing in Japanese literature. I myself am struggling to keep my Korean fluency since I'm not interested in most of the popular stuff coming out of Korea (dramas & kpop), but since I'm into reading mystery novels, short stories, current events, and ceramics, through those fields I'm able to maintain (and expand) my Korean ability.

Surely something similar can be done with your verbally competent comrades.

And maybe on a slightly related note, maybe it's just my Korean background, but I couldn't stand rtk either lol. I was very arrogant about it because I knew every other kanji, but I could see how it could benefit my (only) English-speaking friends since they have no preset method of handling kanji. but for me I had a way of handling kanji built in from second or third grade, so...

it's like asking someone who's used to driving stick to drive an automatic car. They can do it, but you'll never get them to drop the habit of caressing the gear stick while they drive from when they used to drive manual.

I would think just getting some audio books and trying to read along with them would work really well. I mean if the understand the story and are just reading along they will learn the readings in context and hopefully enjoy a book at the same time, as far as writing, I would just back Nukemarines japanese keywords method just for simplicity's sake, I would think this should work ok.

ocircle Wrote:I think the most important thing for these people is to find something they enjoy doing in Japanese literature. I myself am struggling to keep my Korean fluency since I'm not interested in most of the popular stuff coming out of Korea (dramas & kpop), but since I'm into reading mystery novels, short stories, current events, and ceramics, through those fields I'm able to maintain (and expand) my Korean ability.

How could you not like 자우림//김윤아!?

I discussed this with a friend, and we thought that the main thing that Heisig does is put the kanji in an order, and shows you the primitives. The second thing Heisig does is offer a memory technique that allows easier memorization of the symbols. Thus a japanese speaker could follow the order and the primitives and the memory technique, and use their own japanese keywords instead. The downside is Heisig's book teaches the memory technique, japanese person would have to learn it alone or be taught by a friend.

liosama Wrote:

ocircle Wrote:I think the most important thing for these people is to find something they enjoy doing in Japanese literature. I myself am struggling to keep my Korean fluency since I'm not interested in most of the popular stuff coming out of Korea (dramas & kpop), but since I'm into reading mystery novels, short stories, current events, and ceramics, through those fields I'm able to maintain (and expand) my Korean ability.

How could you not like 자우림//김윤아!?

I agree kpop sucks & i hate kdrama as well. i love k-indie. i don't know about jaurim though... i know i love one of their songs and i haven't gotten a full listen on all 7 or so albums yet...

fyi i don't like that youtube video. one it's scary lolz and two the song is boring. well it's not my taste...

this indie band called broccoli youtoo is pretty awesome.

if all they care about is reading the kanji.. just go karaoking a lot and then expand to some other field of interest