I finished RTK1 a few months ago but the reviews were just stacking up so I made a really stupid choice. I went for real Japanese instead of keeping up with the RTK1 reviews. This went fine until now. The kanji in the sentences are becoming difficult. I dont seem to remember the readings well. I think its because i didn't keep reviewing RTK1.


The deck I'm using is cangy's sorted core 6000 deck using the default order. At the moment I'm past halfway with cangy's deck. So what is the best thing to do at the moment? Stop adding new cards and finish up RTK 1? Or keep adding new cards slowly and doing RTK1? Please post your suggestions!

I have this too, but I don't mind.

You can go back to RTK1 at any time, possibly even at the same time (I'm considering reviewing it at the same time as my sentences/vocab, but we'll see about that). Until you do, just make sure you have a grasp of the primitives so you can recognise Kanji when you see them again in your sentence reviews. I am doing that, it's not ideal and I couldn't write a lot of the Kanji I have in my sentence deck, but I do learn to read them and I do recognise them when i see them in other things.

At any time, you can make another pass over the RTK and learn them better. That's a positive, that you can learn it twice, not a negative that you didn't do it right the first time

If I really don't know a Kanji I just remember one part of it for the next time it comes up, like a 山 or a 石 in the corner of the character, for example. Then I get more familiar with it each time. When I am remembering the readings well enough then I will probably move on to trying to know the Kanji better and writing them out as my answer to the card when it comes up in my reviewing.

For remembering the readings, if I don't have a mnemonic to remember it with, I normally can't remember it. So I try to be tougher about that. And sometimes I take part of the Kanji and say "that bit looks like it says けん" for whatever reason I can think of. For the first week that's how I'll remember it but later it gets better. As long as it's vivid you will remember it. Also the test of a good personal mnemonic is it will often sound embarrassing if you describe it to someone.

The best way is to do everything perfectly, but if that's not the way it has gone, we can still make progress for certain. I'm sure more experienced people have better advice, but that's my advice about "I didn't do it right" - neither did I, but we haven't finished yet I think

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So it's a good idea to use mnemonics for readings? I have been doing so only haphazardly, because I'm honestly not sure whether it's a sensible technique. I recall reading someone here say "don't use mnemonics" for readings, but mnemonics do seem to help me.

You dont need to have learned a kanji through RTK to be able to read it. I did the same thing as the OP, just got bored of RTK reviews and stopped them after awhile. There's hundreds of vocab items in my deck that contain kanji i've never done through RTK and it's no easier or harder to remember how to read those words or remember what they mean than everything else.

Don't let it freak you out. Treat them as totally separate animals.

Groot Wrote:I recall reading someone here say "don't use mnemonics" for readings, but mnemonics do seem to help me.

Well I think the test is: does it work?

If you find it's helping you, you should definitely continue. Although after the first few reviews, you probably don't rely on the mnemonics so much.

Memory can be: visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, muscular....if you can sense it, you can remember it/imagine it. Something vivid is more easily remembered, even in lots of detail.



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PS after this discussion, i have started RTK1 *again* and it's a good feeling. It seems there are quick ways and good ways, and the quick ways are ok but not always so good.