Hey folks,

presumably a lot of you have indeed finished the first kanji volume and went their way
onwards through the japanese jungle of particles, phrases, expressions - grammar generally needed to understand what's spoken and said (listening), writing sentences, formulating sentences and conversate with other people, knowing Japanese. Why I'm writing this you might ask yourself, well.. I finished the first heisig book in more than a year, 14 months or so, which took a lot of time, endurance and discipline.

The problem - Exposure
Afterwards i was recommended going on with a textbook, as I wished to do it ("Pen 'n Paper" Method in a way) instead of core2k/6k first. I chosed one (i.e. Genki, but that does not actually matter for the rest of this story). I use it. A month or so later i recognised my retention rate for the heisig kanjis dropped to 70% - which is poor
and sad at the same time, all the time and effords i've invested into it have been worthless? I guess many of you experienced this feeling - a shock sort of - and did not know what to do. Knowing all the kanjis gave me a boost; I was feeling like somebody who mastered something other people were thinking about it was impossible to master in a western society in my age of 17. The point was, the stories were not intense; the point still is that the input is/was too high (now combined with learning actually vocabularies and not only radicals and primitives, inclusive grammar). Shortly: I wanted to have my Kanjis back. Finally, forever.

Solution of the Problem
I was inspired by wrightaks idea replacing the keywords from RtK1 with their readings (on/kun). My idea was creating a German equivalent of his work, slightly different: readings and translations are given (see the screenshot below). Moreover there is a "Reading" (Lesen) and "Writing" (Schreiben) tag (Read/recognition).



Now i want you - unfortunately only the German users outta there - to support this, as every bit added is a bit less to add for me on my own, which is a lot of work. If everybody tries to contribute a bit this idea will grow and flourish and every - German; there is already such an alternative in english by wrightak, thanks a lot! - Japanese learner will profit from it!

Download
The current *.anki file can be downloaded here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CJ1P03P8
Edit: The key is 5ad3552c9914163a for Anki. I submitted the deck to Anki Online ("Title: JRTK - Japanese Keywords for Rtk1 (German)") and you can easily download it now! Have fun and start contributing! It's growing!

Contact
If anybody is interested in contributing (German RtK needed..) please email me at tori@hush.ai. Thanks for your attention, interest and support in advance! \o

Update

Structure is final as following:
1) Frame
2) Kanji
3) Kanjireading
4) Mnemonic Sentence for Reading (i.e. Kanjidamage equivalent?!)
5) Translation/Meaning of the Kanji
6) Compositum*
7) Compositumreading*
8) Compositummeaning*
9) Example Sentence

___
*sometimes omitted, like in case of 本.

Following fonts are needed for correct and flawless display:
*EPSON font (get it here: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Japanese.html The Kaisho one)

Get it while it's hot~

Tori-kun Wrote:Knowing all the kanjis gave me a boost; I was feeling like somebody who mastered something other people were thinking about it was impossible to master in a western society in my age of 17.

IMHO, this may be your problem. Fair enough you're proud of your achievements but if you get frustrated that your percentage correct has dropped, maybe you're looking at that number a little too much. 70% is fine. People obsess too much about their retention. How much time will the extra reviews resulting from an increase in your failure rate consume vs how much time will it take to change the way you study? Also, keeping in mind that the ability to write a kanji based on an english keyword is a nearly useless skill on its own.

Learning heisig is a very small fraction of the time it takes to gain functional skills in japanese. If you continue to obsess about heisig, you will detract from learning japanese itself. What's better, knowing kanji keyword to writing 100%, and no actual japanese or knowing kanji keyword to writing 70% but knowing thousands of actual japanese words and grammar patterns? Keep reviewing heisig, sure, but restudying it in an attempt to boost your stats seems a little pointless imho. It's likely served its purpose: you can tell kanji apart and have a vague notion of what most of them mean. Striving for perfection here is well into diminishing returns.

Btw, the RTK anki deck that's freely available already has the readings in it, and i tend to rely on those to disambiguate some of the very similar keywords. This is different to the japanese keywords idea as it's just the readings, not a purposefully selected keyword.

Thanks for your longer reply! I guess my problem is really that i am too obsessed right now by my achievement that i do not want to take any step further, not to forget anything. You are absolutely right saying, having a rough, or vague, overview which kanji does mean what. I have that "feeling" somehow after having finished with rtk1.
As you mentioned knowing the kanji for an english keyword heisig created by himself is not a "real skill" in order to reach fluency, f.e. in writing. Therefore my idea was connecting his keywords with the japanese equivalents (on or kun reading; see: compositum, if his keyword does only exist in combination with another kanji!), with translation if needed (German in this case) and an exmaple sentence.. (core like)
I recognised i am getting pretty fast through the first genki book and same will be the case for the second volume; what to do next? I must admit i quite like the reading section part of the second volume.. i do not understand everything, but my kanji and few grammar knowledge allows me to get at least the gist of the "stories" in there.

Thanks for any further advice!

Well, there's lots of different approaches advocated on this forum. I didn't use Genki (never looked at it, but i hear it's good). We used Minna no Nihongo in class (first 2 books). After that, i pretty much just grabbed the JLPT2 vocab list, crammed it, then bought a couple of N2 grammar books and worked through them. All the while listening to and reading native material and adding vocab/sentences in them to anki (mostly just vocab though).

Basically my philosophy throughout has been that it's better to know 70% of a large quantity than 100% of a small quantity. Sitting there, not progressing, because you want to know what you've learned 100% will slow you right down for not a lot of benefit. I've found that the 30% of step one that i didn't understand just sorta settled into place while i was learning steps two and three without me actively trying.

Tori-kun Wrote:I recognised i am getting pretty fast through the first genki book and same will be the case for the second volume; what to do next? I must admit i quite like the reading section part of the second volume.. i do not understand everything, but my kanji and few grammar knowledge allows me to get at least the gist of the "stories" in there.

Thanks for any further advice!

After げんき１and げんき２you could get An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (Revised Edition) with 2 CDs and the Workbook as well. I had to import these books from Japan ... Luckily i found a seller on Amazon.de that offered to order the set consisting of both the book and the workbook, for a reasonable price. Took two weeks via. air-mail, extra cost was not very high. Ship would have taken 5 weeks or so ... Anyways, this is the shop where i bought the set: *click me* Send them a mail and ask them for further details, if you decide to order there. info@kpress.de I can highly recommend this shop, it is very reliable.

On the following website you can take a look at some sample pages of both the book as well as the workbook. *click me*

These books might also solve your other "problem," in that you will have enough exposure to kanji in there, to last for at least a while. Don't expect to finish these books in a short amount of time, since this is a big step up the ladder. And i'm sure that you will get yourself some books, or manga, or whatever else, to study the kanji in their natural habitat, too. Since it wouldn't make any sense to just order these books, at the currency rates we have at the moment ... would be a waste of money. I hope you get what i mean.

Update

I slightly changed the structure due a recommendation of a good friend of mine, telling me to read the introduction from Heisig again. The Question/Answer System or Modell looks like that now (i hope you can comment on it; i add always a few readings, especially those to Japanese keywords like 怖　-> 怖い[こわ・い])

http://www.imagebanana.com/view/xmydmymc/Unbenannt2.PNG

Cards are structured like this now:
http://www.imagebanana.com/view/dm9j0d47/Unbenannt.PNG

Notes:
1) Q&A is done alphanumerical, starting from いち　and ending up with the reading/kanji (from rtk) for Fram 2042.
2) It's sometimes difficult to find fitting readings/examples, compound words, where the asked kanji(s) appear..
3) Format of the Card.. (how to do formatting in Anki? How much HTML is supported? The documentation is not giving any detailed answer on this question..)
4) I still need help editing and checking every card T_T