How many of you finished RTK while outside of Japan?

How many of you already had a decent listening and speaking comprehension in Japanese before you ever studied any kanji?


Thanks for any answers

I finished RTK about a month or 2 before I came to Japan.

I was mostly trained in listening/speaking at my classes in University, and I felt like those skills were probably comparatively higher some people after 2 years of study.
Although, we did study reading as well, it was more like "remember this word for the test, and then forget it afterwards." I didn't study kanji for kanji's sake until I had a pretty good grasp of listening/speaking.
I'm better than a majority (not vast, but like 70%) of the exchange students along with me -- who range from various backgrounds, countries, study levels, etc.

So, those are my answers. I finished RTK before I came to Japan, and my speaking/listening were "decent" before I started actually studying kanji.

InTransition Wrote:How many of you finished RTK while outside of Japan?

Me. Studied it here in the UK, have never been to Japan.

InTransition Wrote:How many of you already had a decent listening and speaking comprehension in Japanese before you ever studied any kanji?

I had no speaking/listening skills before i began studying (and still don't really).

Are you wondering if its possible to complete RtK if you're already semi-fluent in conversation Japanese, and have been exposed to kanji on a daily basis? if so you should probably ask that specifically (yes it probably is, though might be better to use Japanese keywords).

I didn't do RtK until after I had a very high level of Japanese (around where JLPT2 seems easy). I was already able to read over 2000 kanji, and write about 1000 pretty easily when I started. I basically just made my own Japanese keywords RtK deck in anki using words I already knew, and skipping the kanji I didn't know. I ended up adding about 1700 cards in a month, and now I'm up to about 2100.

There's a lot of kanji that's frequently used that's not in the RtK book 1, and also lots of kanji that isn't used in RtK book 1. So if your Japanese is already at a high level, I think it's best to just ignore the kanji you've never seen before, then just add them when/if you see them in the future.

1. I started RTK before I came to Japan, but I finished about 6 months after I got here. I blame my son (he was just born), the moves I had to make in America and Japan, and starting a new job and getting used to my new life.

2. My Japanese is probably around beginner to low-level intermediate. I can say that RTK has increased my vocabulary andability to get around Japan though, so it's been worth it.

edit: I studied "Japanese the Spoken langauge" which is a textbook all about speaking and listening, so even though I'm a beginner, i can speak and understand better than some people who have bigger vocabularies and know more grammar than me.

I finished RTK1&3 outside Japan. I visited Japan once before, and that was the trigger for me to start learning the language. I was very much (and to some degree still am) into anime, before that so I had various useful vocab like "daijoubu" and "zettai ni yurusenai", but not much beyond that.

I did a fair amount of research about how I should approach learning, and decided to start with kanji, for the simple reason that it was the single most intimidating thing for me about the language and I wasn't sure I could do it. Basically I thought that if I couldn't master the kanji, I might as well not waste time on anything else.

I was fortunate to start directly with RTK1 (avoiding traditional methods), and have been progressing since then (took me about 5 months to finish RTK1, RTK3 was about 2 months or so).

I did - Still haven't been to 日本

And my level of speak/listen was SUCK - now it's just suck (but not at kanji so much - Yay RTK!)

I started, and finished, without having ever been to Japan.

I had no prior Japanese skill, outside of a JP101 class I took my first year of college almost 5 years ago, which I dropped halfway through because I was an idiot back then.

My Japanese still sucks today, but in all reality, I don't study much nowadays. I just keep up with my reviews and immerse myself in Japanese stuff most of the day.

I would probably have a much higher appreciation of my skill if I was in your typical Japanese class at college, where I could compare my skill with that of other students.

I also finished RTK without having ever been to Japan (going this August though ).

My level of Japanese before was basically about three words. I did study hiragana and katakana before I started RTK, but that was about it.

Now, alongside RTK2, I am doing Pimsleur, which I find works great for me. I can't learn from reading sentences written down; it works much better for me to hear them and repeat them, I don't even need to see them written down.

One day, when I finish Pimsleur (want to finish before I go to Japan) and RTK2, I'm going to try and combine them. Also need to study grammar then. But my main goal right now is learning minor conversation skills before going to Japan and working my way through RTK2.