Hello everyone! This is my first post here.

I'm currently trying to do the sentence method without having done RTK 1 first. (I've tried RTK before, and I'll explain why I'm not using it right now further down.) What I'm doing is just (selectively) mining the example sentences and dialogues from the Genki textbooks. I have an Anki deck with two models, one for sentences and one for kanji. I mine the sentences, adding a card for each new kanji that I encounter. My kanji cards show the kanji and I have to be able to write it (with the correct stroke order), but that's it. I don't have to know what the kanji mean and I don't include keywords for them. I started studying this way about a month and a half ago, and I've just finished chapter 15 with 349 sentences and 253 kanji.

I've tried RTK a few times now. I've gotten discouraged each time, either because I've felt silly using Heisig's method, or because I just found that I wasn't progressing fast enough, or because I'd be frustrated that I was learning kanji without knowing any words or compounds that appeared in them but still couldn't write the words that I did know. I became pretty skeptical about it, but then when I found AJATT and this site last winter, I decided to give it another try. I got a couple hundred kanji in, using just this site and the book which I'd gotten out of the library, but then I lost my Internet for several months, so I stopped reviewing and didn't get any further. I ended up just studying using Genki's kanji list.

I had another bad experience over the summer in my Japanese study. My computer crashed, and I lost the Mnemosyne deck that I'd started. I didn't have a working computer for a month, but I realized that the way I'd been studying, mining using primarily kana and only kanji if I'd learned them from my textbook by then, was a really big cop-out. A little after I got a working computer again, about two months ago, I switched to Anki and started using the method I described above. I restarted from the beginning of the book. I ended up covering all the grammar that we're supposed to cover in my class this year in under a month, and found that my reading and writing ability was really improving. I find that I can read all the compounds and words I'm learning elsewhere, although I'm not always able to write them from memory. (But I can always write them if I see the kanji, which I still think is a big improvement.) I realize I still know very few kanji, but I feel like this method is working pretty well, so I think I'm going to continue this way, at least until I finish Genki (which I'm hoping to finish by the end of the month).

So, I'm wondering: do you guys think that this is a sustainable method? I'm not opposed to returning to RTK if I end up really struggling with kanji, but I'm just finding that by just not ignoring them, my reading and writing are really getting better.

Do your best! (lol that never sounds right in english)

Sounds like what you're doing is working for you. I'd recommend to avoid further study set backs due to computer problems by backing your decks up online via the sync feature in Anki.

I'm currently training my writing output by using KanKen DS3 (finished heisig a few months back now) and I've just finished KO2001 yesterday so I can read 1110 and write them all from memory but that doesn't mean I can remember how to write every word I read! So it's natural that it's hard to remember how to write words even if you can write the kanji that make them up.

I suppose each method has its pros and cons. From my experience RTK helps me majorly in numerous ways. Lately with my KanKen study I find myself recalling old mnemonics to help me remember how to write a kanji and I feel really proud that the method really worked to keep the ability to write locked in my head for when I need it.

Sometimes you really need to just test a method out for a month and see if it's working well and adapt it as you go

If it works for you by all means give it a try. Tae Kim's blog describes doing something vaguely similar to learn kanji.

I sincerely doubt that there is one single learning method that is optimal for all people in all cases nor should we waste time pretending there is. Whats important is to find something that works for you that you will stick with.

I did something very similar, actually almost exactly what you're doing right now. The only difference I had was that I quickly realized that I couldn't produce a the kanji form of a word given it's kana form. Well I could, but it took some thinking. I had to resort to production cards to really get kana->kanji down. Before, when writing for class, I always had to stop and think how I would write a word in kanji. Using production cards to really hammer writing in, I finished both Genki books. Your reading skills improve greatly, but that's a given you've just been reading Japanese a lot so it's bound to improve. But I think writing won't come as easily. Like you've said you can't always write them from memory unless you see them, which could be a problem. The way you're doing cards now you can write a kanji, by looking at it. But writing without that visual stimuli might prove to be more challenging. I'm sure regular writing in a classroom setting, without visual aid should help you out in that regard though.

The reason why I stopped with the method mentioned above was due to the amount of time it required to learn a Kanji. Making production cards for each kanji, (and in my case vocab cards) was not worth it. To speed the Kanji acquisition process up while still incorporating the writing aspect I opted for RTK.

In summary: Yeah, it's sustainable but most likely time consuming. Honestly I would have continued my initial method If I had more time this year. Forgive me for any silly errors, and the stream of thought like writing, typed this up quickly while taking a break from my calculus homework.

mezbup Wrote:Do your best! (lol that never sounds right in english)

Sounds like what you're doing is working for you. I'd recommend to avoid further study set backs due to computer problems by backing your decks up online via the sync feature in Anki.

Thanks! Advice taken.

phoneticbalance Wrote:If it works for you by all means give it a try. Tae Kim's blog describes doing something vaguely similar to learn kanji.

I sincerely doubt that there is one single learning method that is optimal for all people in all cases nor should we waste time pretending there is. Whats important is to find something that works for you that you will stick with.

Thanks a lot for the encouragement.

Oh yeah, that post and also Tae Kim's page on kanji in his guide were partly why I decided to approach Japanese this way. I think what I'm doing is pretty similar to what he did, in that, for example, when I think of 「当」, I just think of the words 「お弁当」 and 「本当」, even though I don't associate the character itself with any particular meaning. I'm hoping that meanings will come with time and learning more words and seeing the kanji in more compounds.

@CerpinTaxt

Yeah, my kanji production is definitely worse than my kanji recognition, but I don't think it's awful. At first, I'd been writing out all of my sentences in full when I reviewed, so my production was basically at the same level as my recognition. This took way too long, so I've stopped doing that. Now I only write down sentences/parts I fail, or parts that I want to practice. I'm thinking that making kana->kanji production cards will really help, though, and might start that once I finish Genki 2...

Another thing that I'm trying to do to help this is to just repeat the same vocab in several cards. For example, 「結婚」 first appeared in my deck 22 days ago, but only maybe for a couple of days, since I've added more cards with it, can I really write it from memory or go kana->kanji. Khatzumoto's recommendation of making pure kanji from kana production cards confuses me, though, about what you'd do for words that might be more commonly written with hiragana rather than kanji, though, so I was thinking of making cloze deletion kanji production cards, or colouring the kana->kanji test part a different colour.

About the time it takes, this is one of my main concerns. Switching models, adding the kanji cards, and then switching models again is also kind of annoying. Plus, there's basically no way for me to separate my sentence deck from my kanji deck, at least not at the level I'm at. Still, I'm more motivated to just learn the kanji for words I know or learn than learn 2000+ kanji when I have a tiny vocabulary and don't know a lot of grammar. I'm just hoping that this is something that regular reviewing with Anki will take care of...

IceCream Wrote:think its definately a sustainable method for learning to read, and to type. I've done the same thing and had no particular problems.

Wow, thanks, that's super encouraging to know that you've had success doing the same thing.

IceCream Wrote:But, RTK is definately the best for learning to write.

Hmm... when I was doing RTK, though, one of the things I found was that stroke order and/or placement of primitives was confusing sometimes if it didn't follow the order of my stories. I'm actually finding writing easier now, focusing just on stroke order...

IceCream Wrote:If you feel like putting off learning to write for a bit, it's no big deal, i dont think it harms reading ability, and i think its almost easier to learn to write once you know a ton of words using that kanji.

I don't really consider myself to be totally putting off writing... it's just not as much of a priority as reading. If I didn't care about writing at all, I don't think I'd bother learning stroke order, although I do find that learning to write the characters makes them easier to read/recognize, so then again, maybe not.

About it being easier to learn to write after knowing more words, I think you're right. I figure, if I decide to do RTK later on, it will be all the more worthwhile if I can see my kanji production go from say, crappy to stellar in maybe a couple of months' time.

IceCream Wrote:But, at least being able to know the radicals will help...

Can you elaborate on this please? I think I have a fuzzy understanding of some radicals, so that, for example, I don't confuse 「待つ」 and 「持つ」 because I think, oh, OK, the radical from 「待」 comes from the left-half of 「行」, so it's the one that means "wait," while the one from 「持」 comes from 「手」, so it's the one that means "hold." But I don't know the names of radicals or anything like that, and I really haven't been doing that for most characters, I just think, 「語」 has 「言」 on the left. I don't know if this is what you mean, though...

There exist about 200 official radicals. Doing RTK whilst doesn't give you the proper names for the radicals but rather heisig's version at least gives you a full awareness of all the different parts a Kanji can be made out of. IMO a study of these radicals could yield you very good results alongside your current method. It's extremely hard to remember very abstract things which is why people find kanji hard. Currently it's like you have to remember 2000 little pictures but a study of radicals can break that down to just 200 pieces that you just have to remember where they go Also helps big time distinguishing similiar kanji from one another.

http://nuthatch.com/kanji/demo/radicals.html

IceCream Wrote:yeah, that's what i mean by radicals. I don't mean that you need to learn them all off by heart, but it's good to be aware of them, since in a good number of cases, they relate to the meaning of the kanji,
e.g. 海 侮 悔 梅
海 water radical, meaning: sea
侮 person radical, meaning: (something) despised
悔 feeling radical, meaning: regret
梅 wood radical, meaning: plum
(those probably arent the real names of the radicals)

Actually, they're pretty close to the Japanese names of the radicals!
海 has the radical さんずい, which I always assumed to be 三水, i.e., an abbreviation of 水 that just has three dots.
侮　has にんべん, にん　being 人　and へん・べん　meaning it's a radical on the left hand side.
Same with 梅 ー　きへん　（木）
悔　has りっしんべん、りっしん　is 立心 - heart standing up.

This isn't really useful information unless you're writing the Kanji Kentei, but I thought it was kind of neat that the way we think of radicals as we're learning is in fact pretty close to how Japanese people think of radicals.

--

Back to the original poster's question, I think there are a lot of people who are going to be more motivated with kanji once they actually can do more with Japanese in terms of grammar and reading and conversation, so personally, I would agree with this course of action.

Fillanzea Wrote:This isn't really useful information unless you're writing the Kanji Kentei,

It's also useful for using electronic dictionaries; typing in component names is by far the fastest way to look up a kanji you don't know how to read on an electronic dictionary that supports the input.

As long as you stay motivated... doing something is better than nothing.

Thanks everyone for your feedback and the info about radicals. I'll definitely look into them, they seem really useful.

IceCream Wrote:Yeah, i haven't written off learning to write either, but i'm saving it for when i feel less lazy about the issue, and will probably do the japanese version of RTK if anything.
But if you're on a course where you do have to write, your priorities may be different, so... anyway, glgl

Mmhmm, yeah, kind of how I feel. Japanese RTK sounds interesting... do you make up your stories in Japanese?

And thanks for the well wishes. My course is really secondary to my Japanese study, though, and I'm not very worried about writing requirements... my class is a free "heritage languages" Saturday school program mainly for high school students, and doesn't really have high expectations in terms of kanji learning. (In the class I took last year, through the same program, we only had to know about 35 kanji by the end of the year.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's also useful for using electronic dictionaries; typing in component names is by far the fastest way to look up a kanji you don't know how to read on an electronic dictionary that supports the input.

Oh, that's really cool! I wish I had an electronic dictionary... XD

mafried Wrote:As long as you stay motivated... doing something is better than nothing.

That's basically how I feel. If I don't have to follow RTK, I'd rather just dive in and learn kanji as I go. But if it becomes really tedious or painful, I'm probably going to try RTK again. At the moment, though, I really look forward to sentences with new kanji, so I think it's working pretty well for now.