Hello, I just finished with the kanas and wants to start learning Kanji, I am going to start at a language school in Tokyo in juli 2010 but want to learn as much as possible before that.

After reading about RTK and the method of remembering the kanjis it seamed great BUT I won't know how to pronounce, so after I am done with RTK1 I will known about 2042 kanji or how many there are in the book but I can't pronounce one of them I can only write them and know them meaning of them which seams awful.

How good is this RTK method? First part seamed awesome but then I have to go through the second book so I will know how to pronounce those kanjis, My point is, is this really a good way to learn it?

It's the best! You can steam roll through the kanji in RTK. You wont know any readings, but learning them will be easier than constantly learning the kanji readings and writing at the same time. But there are hundreds of threads about this on the internet. Try using the seach bar on this forum.

RTK1 can be completed in less than a month and provides a foundation which will make learning those first few thousands words (the worst bit) ten times easier. It is not a method of learning Japanese - it is a method of preparing for learning Japanese. Always bear this in mind. And you don't have to go through the second book. In fact, hardly anyone goes through RTK2. Search the forums for 'smart.fm' and 'KO2001' for some incredibly detailed discussions of the two most commonly used post-RTK1 methods.

Aa thanks guys, yeah I should have used the search function but I guess I'm lazy, anyway I shall look those 2 up, thanks once again!

Well, you should be aware that people's opinions will be biased on a webforum devoted to RtK. I'll try to do something different and list the disadvantages of RtK.

Disadvantages of RtK:

* You'll get a big ego. Memorizing writing is really, really easy, even though pretty much everyone says it's hard. Do us all a favor and don't shoot your mouth off about how many characters you "know." Traditional methods also teach reading, which requires knowing vocabulary, so someone who "knows" 2000+ characters by traditional methods will far ahead of you.

* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning. I found it takes a while to kick that particular habit. I eventually gave up on finding the one true way to memorize 100% of vocabulary, and settled on just half-assing it through the Core 2000. As it turns out, "half-assing it" it has translated into suspending the only hardest 6% of sentences. Super-crazy mnemonics were a waste of time.

Some people don't want to give up systematic study. Search for "crusade" to revisit that particular argument.

* You might become addicted to kanji, unwilling to write in kana when it would be more appropriate.

Is it worth it though? Hell, yes! Go for it, set a steady pace, aim for 2 or 3 months if you're merely human with a lot of time, or 1 if you're crazy.

Ah, you won't really learn the meanings. You'll learn only one possible, sometimes even bad translation of each char.

But you will be able to write all the kanji from memory. This is priceless.

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wildweathel Wrote:Disadvantages of RtK:
* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning.

How is systematic learning a bad thing?

harhol Wrote:

wildweathel Wrote:Disadvantages of RtK:
* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning.

How is systematic learning a bad thing?

It's not, but it's way too easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that doesn't fit into said system.

hknamida Wrote:

harhol Wrote:

wildweathel Wrote:Disadvantages of RtK:
* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning.

How is systematic learning a bad thing?

It's not, but it's way too easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that doesn't fit into said system.

Just as easy as falling into the trap of rejecting anything that could lull you into falling into a trap!

I think it's also important to note that we on this board are all anti-sceptic to RTK.

I consider myself to be one of RTK's biggest skeptics! ;p Also one of the most systematic, and least static/most open. Yep, just thought I'd mention that.

harhol Wrote:

wildweathel Wrote:Disadvantages of RtK:
* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning.

How is systematic learning a bad thing?

Because then you might have trouble if you have to learn something that isn't systematic or logical(which is inevitable).

I started doing the Core 2000 from Smart.fm when I was only halfway done with RTK. It was much easier to remember the vocabulary for the words that had kanji that I recognized. Go figure

yukamina Wrote:

harhol Wrote:

wildweathel Wrote:Disadvantages of RtK:
* You'll probably be addicted to mnemonics and systematic learning.

How is systematic learning a bad thing?

Because then you might have trouble if you have to learn something that isn't systematic or logical(which is inevitable).

Attempting to learn something illogical or abstract will always be difficult, regardless of whether or not you're used to studying systematically. Mnemonics only stick around for as long as they're necessary, which is why they're such an efficient & effective learning aid. Do you still think of a mouth with legs inside when you see 四? Of course not.

In order to help memorize 飛行機, I imagined someone saying "he cocky" in an Engrish accent. 一生懸命? "It's shocking mate" in a Scottish accent. But in doing this I didn't suddenly lose the ability to think in abstract terms. I don't break out in a cold sweat when confronted with something like 規模, I just learn it rote like everyone else does.

As Heisig himself says, the mnemonic method may be childish and somewhat embarrassing to admit, but it works. It always amazes me how many people seem wary of the mnemonic method after completing RTK1, as though it's somehow illegitimate or dangerous when removed from the context of Kanji memorization.

@Harhol - yeah, but I was sick and tired of mnemonics after working through 2048 of them in a row over a period of several months. With something incredibly abstract like assigning meaning and writing to a little funky character, mnemonics are priceless. But when you get to reading actual sentences, it's a bit more concrete in my experience - you have more context, and it doesn't seem worth assigning a bunch of mnemonics to anything except the most problematic compounds.

Your 一生懸命 was great

Quote:It always amazes me how many people seem wary of the mnemonic method after completing RTK1

I think its just that many people discover that they don't really need mnemonics for vocab as they advance in their study. Using mnemonics is quite a mentally intensive thing to do. RTK is intense, I think. But at the early stage when you don't have critical mass with kanji; a point where you can just sustain and improve your reading without intensive study, doing that intensive work is a necessity. After that, you can get away with less intensive study, and you can just maintain and learn new things through broader but less intense activities. You can for example aim to understand 80% of everything in a book, as opposed to concentrating on memorizing every word in one chapter.

What RTK does is very simple. It makes you familiar with 2,000 Kanji in a very short period of time which allows you to learn everything else related to them much easier.

Think of it in terms of your upcoming language classes. For most other students every new Kanji the teacher puts up on the board is going to look like a foreign object. Just mindless and completely random strokes that they are then expected to not only write correctly, but to assign several other new pieces of information with (the readings).

Now let's pretend you have ONLY completed RTK1 and not done one lick of Japanese studying besides that. You sit down in your Japanese class and the teacher throws the first weeks Kanji up on the board and you recognize ALL of them instantly. Not only that you are so familiar with them that you can write them perfectly without a single second of additional study. To your brain those Kanji are now "known" objects so the only thing you have to do is attach the readings to them while the rest of your class struggles to cram all kinds of new information all at once. Since you know over 2,000 Kanji this scenario will repeat itself week after week, thus making your classes easier and giving you more time to focus on getting better at other aspects of the language.

vosmiura Wrote:

Quote:It always amazes me how many people seem wary of the mnemonic method after completing RTK1

I think its just that many people discover that they don't really need mnemonics for vocab as they advance in their study [...] You can for example aim to understand 80% of everything in a book, as opposed to concentrating on memorizing every word in one chapter.

Very true, but I'm thinking more about the period immediately after RTK1, when you likely know zero vocabulary and can't even read the most basic material. Almost every single word is just going to be a random collection of syllables unless you engage with mnemonics of some sort. Even if a particular mnemonic is embarrassingly terrible (e.g. I used Björk for 病気), I still think it's better than nothing. But this is just my way of doing things. I think the most important thing of all is to put in the hours. Methods & techniques will always be secondary to dedication & commitment.

I found that by the time I finished RTK, I was interested in a kind of 'lite' mnemonic system, making up stuff on the fly and not bothering to remember it past a given rep. After a while, especially after learning more words/readings and streamlining my overall study process, I found it to be less and less necessary and more and more 'implicit', rapidfire connections I barely noticed, if at all. After a while I think my brain just got used to creating this mental framework for sentences and quickly processing the information.

@harhol, I didn't really have that difficulty after RTK. The first thing I did after was going through the 2001KO books. There was a lot of repetition coming from the fact that each kanji is introduced in several compounds, and then I started seeing those compounds more & more in various sentences. At the very beginning it was more effort because there were lots of new compounds in each sentence, but by the time I did 500 sentences that difficulty subsided considerably.

harhol Wrote:

yukamina Wrote:

harhol Wrote:How is systematic learning a bad thing?

Because then you might have trouble if you have to learn something that isn't systematic or logical(which is inevitable).

Attempting to learn something illogical or abstract will always be difficult, regardless of whether or not you're used to studying systematically.

...

It always amazes me how many people seem wary of the mnemonic method after completing RTK1, as though it's somehow illegitimate or dangerous when removed from the context of Kanji memorization.

I was referring to systematic learning more than mnemonics. You can make up a mnemonic from scratch anytime you need one, at you're own discretion. But component based kanji lists in RTK, meaning/kanji themed word lists with sentences(KO), mining projects, SRS etc that systematize learning to make it easier can be a crutch if you rely on them too much. If you suddenly run out of good materials, or otherwise can't access them... Well, hopefully this theoretical person could manage anyway.

activeaero Wrote:Now let's pretend you have ONLY completed RTK1 and not done one lick of Japanese studying besides that. You sit down in your Japanese class and the teacher throws the first weeks Kanji up on the board and you recognize ALL of them instantly.

This would be a more convincing argument if RTK was teaching you kanji->keyword recognition as well as keyword->kanji :-)

Knowing how to pronounce the kanji isn't important. Knowing words is. If you already know the kanji when you start learning words, you can completely skip the "learn the readings" part. This is one of the reasons why traditional methods are slower and boring.

Er, 'learn the readings' isn't really part of the 'traditional' approach [as I understand it] either; you still learn words, you're just trying also to remember how to read and write the characters as you go along.

Thanks guys for all information you've given me, I was at a state of confusion and was thinking about the most effective way and all that, then It came to me "wtf am I whining about? I already suck at japanese all I can do is to suck less, I will need to learn the writings anyway so I should just get started with RTK, and when I am done with it THEN I can look for other ways"

I was thinking about after I am done with RTK to find something to add to anki, like 2000 words or something so I start to learn knew words and how to pronounce then, then compliment it with some good grammar book, then lather start to read basic manga in kana, so I can finally start to know what it is that I am reading about, so If you have something to recommend about what I just said please drop a reply =) anyway enough thinking about the future now, time to get started with RTK


Thanks again guys =)