At the moment I use Anki and R(Reviewing)TK simultaneously. But I am not sure if it's the right approach. Usually I use RTK in the morning and Anki in the evening.

I do that so that I can review on my iPhone while I'm away with no internet connection.

How do you folks use the two? *Do* you use the two??

1. Do you first learn all the 2042 Kanji with the book and review them in RTK then move on to Anki when you learned all of them?

2. Do you use the book and RTK for stories / managing and only review in Anki

3. Do you use them side by side, and if yes, how.

In Anki I suspend the Kanji I haven't learned yet and add the new ones daily.

Any suggestions from experienced users are very appreciated. I am only at Kanji 276.

I finished RTK with this website. For a short time after I studied parallel with anki and the website until finally using the plugin to export the review data from the website to anki. So now I only occasionally use the website when looking for stories for specific kanji.

If I would do it all over again I would probably do some things differently but the procedure mentioned above would stay the same

Oh, that's possible? Sounds like an excellent option, I'll find out how this works. Danke, HerrPetersen!

I found, downloaded and synced the plugin.

Question: do I have to export from RTK and import into Anki every day after reviewing on RTK?

Don't review with both. It's that simple.

It doesn't seem bad now, but your still early in your RTK journey. You don't wanna be reviewing with both the whole time trust me. You need to pick one or the other and stick with it. Since it sounds like you want to use anki when your away from your computer I'd recommend you use anki on your computer for reviews as well, and just use this website for looking up stories and such, but not for reviews.

That's excellent advice, arch9443, thank you very much. I will do exactly as you say!

Glad you could sort it out for me.

I'm actually considering giving myself a moratorium on doing reviews. I know that sounds weird, but the increasing volume of material to review as I progress through the book makes the process... algorithmically inefficient.

And anyway, *getting through* the material is the most important thing, and whether or not I know the keywords well, in the end, I obviously won't be able to read effectively using the keywords anyway, and they need to be discarded, or at least superseded, by actual Japanese readings and "on-sight" recognition. Also, there's a lifetime to reinforce the kanji through further study, and further study will certainly be necessary.

Mushi Wrote:I'm actually considering giving myself a moratorium on doing reviews. I know that sounds weird, but the increasing volume of material to review as I progress through the book makes the process... algorithmically inefficient.

And anyway, *getting through* the material is the most important thing, and whether or not I know the keywords well, in the end, I obviously won't be able to read effectively using the keywords anyway, and they need to be discarded, or at least superseded, by actual Japanese readings and "on-sight" recognition. Also, there's a lifetime to reinforce the kanji through further study, and further study will certainly be necessary.

Don't you already know the Japanese keywords for the most part? Or am I mistaking you with someone else? If so would you not replace the English keyword with the Japanese one or at the least put it next to the English keyword?

I've been having a fairly similar feeling towards the keywords myself though. If I can't bring up the Kanji based on heisigs keyword I don't generally fail the Kanji anymore. Heisig to me is learning how to recognize the different pieces of the Kanji, and thus make it easy and simple to write the individual Kanji. The keyword is sort of a side-benefit that can sometimes help me with the meaning of a kanji or a compound, but they do need to be discarded, and they are the least important part of RTK IMO.

One thing I have noticed is if have seen a Kanji in RTK before, and then come across that Kanji in native material and manage to learn it's reading it sticks very well. What RTK does for me is make it extremely easy to attach Kanji to their Japanese readings. But I sometimes have difficulty attaching them to an english keyword. And I'm okay with that, because attaching them to an english keyword is certainly not the end goal of all this.

arch9443 Wrote:Don't you already know the Japanese keywords for the most part? Or am I mistaking you with someone else? If so would you not replace the English keyword with the Japanese one or at the least put it next to the English keyword?

Yes, that's probably me you're thinking of, but generally, and especially when I'm away from my computer, I'm working with the Heisig book, and the book is in English. I think it would improve the book *a lot* if it had some of the yomi along with each character. Sometimes when I find the volition to, I cross-check against another source and substitute an appropriate Japanese keyword, but that sometimes causes me to lose a good English story and scramble to think up a (usually poor) Japanese substitute story.

Yeah I can see it causing problems with the stories. That's kinda to bad. I do understand why there is no Yomi in the book though. Because for standard English speaking folk like me having a Yomi there with no context to back it up or anything will never get remembered. It's when I encounter the Kanji outside of RTK that I've already met in RTK and learn it's reading that it sticks almost instantly.

Your case is a very special one in regards to learning the language. =P

I think it may not be a bad idea to find the Japanese word you already know that matches the Kanji and put it next to the English keyword assuming you use Anki. I do this myself when I happen to know the reading for a Kanji based on seeing it in native materials like video games and whatnot, and it is those Kanji that I remember the best.

arch9443 Wrote:It's when I encounter the Kanji outside of RTK that I've already met in RTK and learn it's reading that it sticks almost instantly.

I believe you're right about that. I just can't help feeling that if the readings were simply *there*, and one could choose to use them or ignore them, that that would be a great feature, but thinking about it objectively, it doesn't fit with the general Heisig strategy, and it would just represent clutter to maybe 95% of the audience for the book.

arch9443 Wrote:Your case is a very special one in regards to learning the language. =P

It's somewhat of a sad thing to admit. I fondly remember my childhood, when my principal after school hobbies were calligraphy (in hiragana), and composing and submitting poetry and short stories for the school newsletter. My mom even told me that the principal said that he admired my sense of composition. Wha hoppen??

Still, one thing that we have in common is that we find some benefit in occasionally breaking out of "Heisig World", a world where you're supposed to be learning Japanese, yet Japanese doesn't exist.

Mushi Wrote:It's somewhat of a sad thing to admit. I fondly remember my childhood, when my principal after school hobbies were calligraphy (in hiragana), and composing and submitting poetry and short stories for the school newsletter. My mom even told me that the principal said that he admired my sense of composition. Wha hoppen??

Still, one thing that we have in common is that we find some benefit in occasionally breaking out of "Heisig World", a world where you're supposed to be learning Japanese, yet Japanese doesn't exist.

I don't think it's necessarily a sad thing. You can just think of it having a large leg up on the rest of the learning competition. It's certainly unusual, but that's not to say it's bad. You know English to native level fluency(You seem a fair bit more eloquent than I) and you have what you classified as passable Japanese speaking ability. That just means you have to grasp the writing system instead of the entire language like us English speakers who must start from scratch =P

I think that can only be looked at as a benefit honestly. Although it has the potential to make certain things (Heisig for instance) a bit more complicated.

On the second part I most definitely agree. I can't fathom going through Heisig without spending time in real Japanese. I simply wouldn't be able to take it. I am trying to push through the last bit of Heisig right now though. I'm on 1650, and if I do 50 a day I can be done quickly and get it behind me. Then I can spend time with real, native Japanese and not have that guilty "I really should do some more Kanji today..." feeling. I'm tired of Heisig nagging at me.