Hey everyone,
I'm on 3rd year Japanese in college right now and I've always had a tough time with kanji. I picked up RTK probably a year ago, but I ended up not justifying spending the time on it since it seemed like extra work piled on to my already daunting task of memorizing kanji for class (and getting graded on it). Needless to say, I kind of regret it now.

Because I'm taking 3rd level Japanese as a summer intensive course, I have to memorize (and am tested on) ~100 pretty advanced kanji a week 健康診断 is an example of one for this week.

I have a tough time memorizing all the kanji, as we're only given 1-2 days to do it in. Most people in my class spend 3-4 hours a day studying ONLY kanji, and we all end up forgetting most of them, or at least the ones we dont use extensively, within a couple of days. This probably has a lot to do with the nature of the class (it's so fast paced), there's no real time to review anything.

I've decided that RTK would really help me learn the kanji and transition into filling out readings, meanings afterwards. Being exposed to lots of hard kanji combinations, a lot of the time the different but similar characters get all jumbled up in my head.

I'm currently on frame ~275 of my 3rd day of doing RTK and I seem to have a pretty high rate of retention. Because of class I doubt I can keep this pace up, but doing RTK really does seem fun. I'm having fun studying Japanese, something I unfortunately thought I lost a while ago.

So here's my question. When learning a Kanji like "釣" #277 Angling, how far back should I trace all the stories? I can recall the Angling story and write the Kanji, but should I recall the story of each individual component as well?

ie: this thought process:

Angling is fishing for sport, compared to the earlier character for fishing which is a profession. Imagine angling using a golden ladel to catch the goldfish in a pond.

-- write the kanji --

recall the story of gold
recall the story of ladel

-- move on --

Basically, I anticipate the more complex kanji's having multiple components which themselves have multiple components, so eventually a review might be a very long, involved process if I have to recall the story for each component everytime I write the kanji.

Anyways, excited to be here thanks !
よろしくお願いします

The story is only a mnemonic. Only recall it if you need it. I finished RTK a while ago, and for some kanji (especially common ones), i don't really have a story at all anymore, or just the briefest hint of one (just a couple of primitive names that i mix up). For other kanji, i not only still have a story, but i still use the story for the component primitives. If i fail a kanji, i'll make a point of going back over my story (or finding another one if it was crap). Don't try to make a point of moving away from stories before you're ready, but if the kanji (or primitive) comes to mind easier than the story does, it's probably time to not worry so much about the story. If you start failing that kanji again, take that as a sign you weren't ready to ditch the story, lol.

Btw, once you're finished RTK, I recommend something like Skritter to start reviewing kanji in the context of words.

http://www.skritter.com/

thanks for the info and website link

Intensive Japanese courses over summer. Sure is nostalgic. Ridiculous kanji quizzes every 1 or 2 days? Fun times. Especially the more useful words such as 日付変更線.

While it's hard to keep up, I would suggest getting through RtK really quickly. It would have been ideal to finish before the course started, but what are you gonna do, right?

On to your question. Recall the story for the kanji you are trying to recall (ie. angling). If you can remember all the parts that are in the story, excellent. If you can remember them, but forget how to write them (ie. you remember that there's "gold" and "ladel" but you don't remember how to write "gold") that's when you recall the story for the primitives as well.

Something you're probably doing already, but add everything to Anki. Don't delete your decks. It might be annoying to do the reviews when you have class to study for, but you'll be glad later on when you still remember all the stupid words that you had to learn （健康診断）

Yea I've been adding everything into Anki as I go along, and I find it really helpful . Speaking of quizzes, I have a huge one tomorrow but I've been having so much fun with RTK I haven't wanted to study for it at all... groan...

edit: a quick question because you've also taken an intensive . did you find the time you spent doing RTK 1 really helpful for your studies in an actual class setting? I feel like a lot of the people using RTK are either taking sporadic classes or doing mostly self-study. Having experience being in a standardized class, do you feel like RTK gives you any sort of advantage when it comes to kanji over people taking the class who didn't go through a similar type of training? thanks!

I actually didn't start RtK until after my summer course. I was still under the impression that the classes would somehow impart me with the knowledge, and studying on my own outside of class would be unnecessary.

I took 1 year of Japanese, then year 2 over the summer, and year 3 after that. I started RtK in the middle of year 3, and finished right before I came over here to Japan for a year long study.

That being said, yes, I really do believe that RtK has helped me in my classes. I came here with 2 other students who went through the same course as me. I tested into the 2nd highest kanji class, 上級漢字２, whereas the others were in 中級漢字２ or 3. Now, it didn't have to do with the keywords or anything in RtK, but it was more the familiarity with the individual kanji which helped me make connections between words, meanings, readings -- the kanji were IN my head at some level.

One thing I found ironic, however...One of my classmate's facebook statuses one day was: "Have you ever noticed how a ton of people with really subpar Japanese skills are trying to push the Heisig method on you?"
I went through it and I'm still taking the same classes as him. I just that you've got to know how to use it, and a lot of people don't.

As someone else said, just remember as much as you need to. If the kanji comes to mind easier and faster than recalling stories or primitives, that's great. That's really the ultimate goal of RtK after you finish and start learning words, etc. If you can recall the kanji with your story that's also good. The "most basic" way of remembering is to go through each primitive one by one because the you don't recall the whole primitive without a story right away.

I finished RtK 8 months ago, and I still have plenty of kanji that I have to think about stories to recall. Going further, there are some, not many, pure primitives that I have trouble remembering without the story. However, for your example of "angling" I simply just know that "gold/metal" and ladle" are in the story, and can write it immediately based on those 2 primitives alone. No recall of stories takes place. I'm so familiar with "gold" and "ladle" primitives that I don't even need a story anymore to remember them. You may have started noticing this already.

I'm just getting to the point in my studies where I'm starting to see Japanese words and am able to recall the word and kanji purely off the Japanese reading, no stories or primitives of any kind at all. I think this point is the ultimate purpose of RtK in the long run.

Long story short: Just remember what you need to. You're still in the early stages of RtK. As Heisig says, the stories and primitives are there for you during your beginner and intermediate days. They act as a scaffolding for recalling the kanji, but somewhere down the road, with enough exposure and constant repetition, that scaffolding slowly falls away and is replaced by Japanese readings for the kanji.

Thank you for the replies! So to sum it up accurately, RTK is helpful because it exposes you to most of the kanji you're going to be seeing in a day to day basis. The stories are there to help you remember and distinguish the form of the kanji. In order to actually see results from RTK that you can apply to actual Japanese knowledge, you have to expose yourself to Japanese reading and material after finishing RTK. Once the kanji are in your head, you'll have an easier time recognizing them and connecting them to their Japanese meanings and readings, then say someone who has to recall the kanji from scratch (a random jumble of scribbles) and associate it with the same things.

Your giving form, albeit in English, to something that previously didn't have a form in your head, right?

It sounds like a good idea, I just wish I had more time!

Asriel Wrote:One thing I found ironic, however...One of my classmate's facebook statuses one day was: "Have you ever noticed how a ton of people with really subpar Japanese skills are trying to push the Heisig method on you?"

On the other hand, I'll bet the "people with really subpar Japanese skills" are way out in front with their kanji recognition skills.

I'm on frame 1300 (doing RTKLite) and went to a Japanese website looking for manga (a link from another thread here) and was actually able to navigate it pretty well just from the kanji I recognized plus contextual clues. I was really surprised. I know I couldn't have done that pre-RTK because I've tried.

@givemeplain: If I were doing RTK while taking other classes, especially Japanese, I'd do the RTK very slowly. As many people here can attest, if you add new kanji quickly the number of kanji in your reviews later on will be huge, impossible huge if you have to take any time off from it for finals, travel, down time, etc.

Anna B Wrote:@givemeplain: If I were doing RTK while taking other classes, especially Japanese, I'd do the RTK very slowly. As many people here can attest, if you add new kanji quickly the number of kanji in your reviews later on will be huge, impossible huge if you have to take any time off from it for finals, travel, down time, etc.

Lemme add this. If you know your going to be busy in a week or two, slow down a lot on adding new facts. This way it will be easier to just maintain your reviews during finals or whatever. I always do this when I have an Anime/Game convention coming up, since I'd rather be having fun then studying.

Anna B Wrote:On the other hand, I'll bet the "people with really subpar Japanese skills" are way out in front with their kanji recognition skills.

Take it for what you will, but he was at (or above?) my level, including "kanji recognition skills." Even if you can recognize kanji, it doesn't mean a whole lot unless you can actually read and comprehend what it's actually saying.

I went through Heisig, and I liked it...and while it does help, recognition skills "way out in front" won't mean anything if your Japanese is still subpar.

I'm not sure if I'm supporting or opposing Heisig in this post...I guess I just kind of agree with him when it comes to the large amount of beginner students misunderstanding what exactly Heisig is.