From the Review Tools thread.

A disgusting nested quote...but the content is good stuff. Just to think, a few months ago, me and JimmySeal couldn't agree on anything!

JimmySeal Wrote:

synewave Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:Last October I scored 97% on Kanken Level 6, which requires being able to write 825 characters from memory and know their readings, compounds, and radicals. I also scored 70% on a sample test for level 5 (1006 characters) at the same time. Last December I passed JLPT level 1.

I'm taking the KanKen 6 tomorrow and am scoring 70-80% on past tests. So I'd like to hear how JimmySeal goes about things!

Well, 8 years of studying on and off gave me a good head start, but for the test, I used the ステップ books meticulously. For each step, I would:

(1) Use the practice writing booklet.
(2) Look up all the example compounds I didn't know (this was before I stopped using dictionaries). For each compound, I would look up the word in my J->E dictionary, spend about 3 seconds looking at the entry, and then go on to the next one. I didn't write anything down.
(3) When I'd done that for all 6 or 7 characters, I'd do the exercises and grade myself, then look up the words I didn't know from the exercises.

I'd shoot for doing one step a day (finish in a month), and try to do parts (1) and (2) from above in three small bursts to keep from wearing out.

When I finished the ステップ book, I went through the 過去問題集 for level 6. I think this helped my score by 8-10 points. There are a lot of questions that pop up again and again. There's also a bit of luck involved. I was just lucky to get a test with only two questions I didn't know (one was 河原, a word that now mocks me every time I see it).
The one other thing I did was re-do all the 書き取り questions in the ステップ book, using that cute piece of cardboard they provide to cover up my old answers.


The only things I do now to study are:
Reading books and
studying 読み方. When I repeatedly come across a word I can't pronounce (and I'm near a table), I write it down on a slip of paper that I use as a bookmark. When I've gathered a bunch, I look up their readings and plug them into my flashcard program with Q: kanji and A: kana. I'm doing the same thing with Chinese now, but most of my Chinese flashcards are individual kanji, not compounds.

Your how-to is, in my opinion, the way it should be done.

That's what I've been doing but I just got bored/lazy once I realized I knew enough to pass the test, as opposed to ace it! There are still about 10 steps that I've not done properly.

Yeah, for level 6 anyway, 移／写 or 努／務 always seem to pop up. There are a couple of others that are pretty frequent too but can't remember off the top of my head.

They really liked asking the 送り仮名 for 快い. I guess they thought that one was tricky, but once you've seen the question 5 times, it's not tricky anymore.

JimmySeal Wrote:They really liked asking the 送り仮名 for 快い. I guess they thought that one was tricky, but once you've seen the question 5 times, it's not tricky anymore.

Yeah, it came up! 2 marks in the bag. I'm sure other people use the same kind of mnemonic to remember the reading, but 心＋cheerful = こころよい。

In the test I completely blanked on the kanji in the sentence 兄弟はケーキを（きんとう）分けた。(give or take some grammar) But it's in the bag now!

As I try to suggest to kiddies taking Eiken tests, "it's not so much passing the test that's important, more the process of learning that should get you to the stage where you can pass, as well as be able to retain what you're learning. I digress...

One technique that I used during the test was, working to the end of the test not spending too long on questions that I couldn't figure out the kanji for. Then, after finishing, I went back to the blank answers, discounted all the kanji I had used in other questions and started filling things in.

No way will I be up with JimmySeal's 97% but I'm not worried about failing.

Another question that I got wrong was the reading for 武者。




















I wrote ぶしゃ but...



















It's むしゃ

synewave Wrote:Another question that I got wrong was the reading for 武者。
I wrote ぶしゃ but...
It's むしゃ

Ah man that's like frame 22 of RTK2

Good job though, you are giving me the itch to try one now.

synewave Wrote:Another question that I got wrong was the reading for 武者。

That's a tough one. I'm glad I didn't get it on my test. I doubt I would have got it right.

Can I ask you guys, do you think doing RTK I is productive or counter-productive for studying for KanKen? My level in Japanese is between JLPT 2 + 1 but my kanji writing is abysmal which is why Ive started RTK. I saw the ステップ books though so when you mentioned them, something clicked

RTK 1 will help with any kind of kanji study, as long as you finish the whole thing before moving on to anything else.

And real kanji proficiency is more important than any kanken so make sure you do first things first.

I found that, even having only completed about half of RTK1, stroke order questions and the questions where they make you fill in the blank for a kanji with a given radical, were incredibly incredibly easy for me. I started from the lowest level of KanKen (10) and in about 5 months had worked through the 10/9/8 level step books and previous exam books.

10 was a cakewalk, of course, and Japanese people don't seem to consider anything less than Level 4 anything to gawk at, but I still feel much more confident in my reading and writing now than before I started studying with the step books.

After studying for the kanken earlier this month, and seeing how much easier the kanji that I knew from RTK1 were for me, I've redoubled my efforts to finish RTK1 in the next couple months. After that, I'll be hitting the Step books hard. They're exceptionally thorough, and a really good way to improve your vocabulary and be able to have a guage on your kanji level that means something to Japanese people. It also gives you a clearer answer to the "How many kanji do you know?" question, which always used to baffle me. "Umm, do you mean to read aloud? To know the meaning? To write? Ummm... I have no idea... more than a few, but less than a lot???"

When I study from the kanken books, I take notes from it as if it were a proper textbook, because writing out kanji compounds helps solidify them in my mind. I also play a couple of kentei-based games on my DS from time to time, which helps reinforce what I've been studying, and reminds me that my studying is actually useful, which is easy to forget when you bury your head in textbooks for hours on end.

A Japanese person that I know who passed KanKen 1級 a few years ago (the highest, craziest level) told me that he's tried all sorts of different publishers' kanken practice books, and that the only ones that have ever been useful for the tests have been the official ones. He said that the ones from other companies tend to have ridiculous kanji compounds that never ever appear on the actual exams, and are overall a lot more difficult than the exams for that particular level actually are. So, if you're looking to pass the test soon, stick with the official books, but otherwise ones from other companies sound like a decent way to become even more acquainted with a particular set of kanji.

Good luck with your study!

ok thanks for your input guys. I've decided to start the ステップ books and bought 10級 today. The kanji in it are easy but there is plenty of vocab I don't know (page 1 alone had 3 words. オタマジャクシ for example)
I guess it will be good in the long run for vocab as well as kanji but it's disheartening to know i dont know simple words that those tiny 1年生 I see every day do lol

Is this the step book you guys are using?

suffah Wrote:Is this the step book you guys are using?

That's the series. Yes.

littleblue Wrote:The kanji in it are easy but there is plenty of vocab I don't know (page 1 alone had 3 words. オタマジャクシ for example)

That's exactly what I found with the books. I skimmed through the kanji summary of 10級 in a bookstore and thought, "Well, this will be easy!", bought it, and took it home to start studying. Then I realized that I didn't know loads of simple words that children know, especially for animals. Now, while I don't think I'll have occasion to shout "Oh, look! A tadpole!" in Japanese any time soon, if I'm aiming to be properly fluent, I should know words that kidlets know.

littleblue Wrote:I guess it will be good in the long run for vocab as well as kanji but it's disheartening to know i dont know simple words that those tiny 1年生 I see every day do lol

That's one thing I found with the Step books, though... It seems that kids don't generally take the level that is aimed for their grade (at least, in my rural, redneck area of Japan's most rural prefecture). So, if you're studying a book aimed at, say, 3rd grade elementary school students, there will be loads of words in the example section that kids likely won't use very often until Junior High, and even then they still have trouble with the kanji (though they do, of course, understand the meaning when it is said). This is what one of the Japanese teachers at my school told me, so I have no idea how true it is, but she tends to be a reasonable source of info from what I've seen in the past. *shrug*

Either way, learning new words is rarely a bad thing, and I find that even having seen a word once in a textbook makes it much more likely for me to remember it later than if I just look it up in my dictionary when I need it and then promptly forget thereafter.

If you treat the kanken exam like what it likely is for most RTK folks - a vocabulary builder, rather than a kanji radical or stroke order tutorial as it is for Japanese folks - then it will likely become a valuable peice of your study arsenal.

Hello everyone! I'm wondering if the 漢字学習ステップ series could be used to learn the reading of Kanji when finishing the RTK1. Any suggestions?

Every 漢字検定 book I've seen has just been a collection of questions, with a list of the kanji, their readings, and some sample 熟語 (w/o definitions). There is nothing in any of them to actually teach you or help you learn in a structured manner. It's very much do-it-yourself.

It makes sense since the test and the materials are meant for Japanese people who would not be learning from the books since they already know much of the material for the 級 appropriate for them. They'd just be brushing up and upgrading.