I finished RTK1 with the 6 supplement lessons a couple of weeks ago, and so far I did 3 full reviews. I average about 150 mistakes in each review session. Mostly my mistakes are either confusing keywords like drowning/sink or graceful/gracious, or just me writing too fast and forgetting a line or drawing parade instead of march, or just being distracted and forgetting the little line above the two little thingies in "truth," etc. A full review takes me about 10 hours, and while I get most of them right I usually have to pause for a few seconds to think before writing it.

Anyway, my worry is that I might not have mastered RTK1 well enough yet to be able to move on to RTK2 and that if I do I'll just start forgetting everything and I'll have to waste time going back to RTK1 and re-learning everything.

Heisig writes in RTK1 that at some point you should get so good that just reading the keyword automatically brings up the image of the kanji in your head without you having to pause to think about it. I'm no where near there yet. I looked a bit at RTK2 and I find that most of the kanji in there I don't even recognize... if I get the keyword I can usually write the kanji easily, but if I see the kanji itself I rarerly remember what the keyword is or even what the general meaning is.

Anyway anyone has some experiences to share? Reviewing RTK1 is the most boring thing in history. Will I just get better at it by doing RTK2 and ditching RTK1 altogether? Besides, there are hundreds of kanji in RTK1 not in RTK2 (including the new ones in the supplements) and I don't want to forget them all because I moved to RTK2 and stopped RTK1 too quickly!

EDIT: Uh... this is my first post here, I don't know the forum well. Is it possible to move this to the RTK forum instead of the general japanese forum?

bobonga Wrote:A full review takes me about 10 hours, and while I get most of them right I usually have to pause for a few seconds to think before writing it.

Full review?! This is madness! Are you *shudder* not using an SRS?

bobonga Wrote:Anyway, my worry is that I might not have mastered RTK1 well enough yet to be able to move on to RTK2 and that if I do I'll just start forgetting everything and I'll have to waste time going back to RTK1 and re-learning everything.

Stop worrying and trust the SRS.

bobonga Wrote:Heisig writes in RTK1 that at some point you should get so good that just reading the keyword automatically brings up the image of the kanji in your head without you having to pause to think about it. I'm no where near there yet. I looked a bit at RTK2 and I find that most of the kanji in there I don't even recognize... if I get the keyword I can usually write the kanji easily, but if I see the kanji itself I rarerly remember what the keyword is or even what the general meaning is.

The ability to just visualize components and eventually entire kanji comes with time.

The ability to go kanji->keyword is useless, as once you finish RTK you can start learning kanji word->actual Japanese reading and meaning.

bobonga Wrote:Anyway anyone has some experiences to share? Reviewing RTK1 is the most boring thing in history. Will I just get better at it by doing RTK2 and ditching RTK1 altogether? Besides, there are hundreds of kanji in RTK1 not in RTK2 (including the new ones in the supplements) and I don't want to forget them all because I moved to RTK2 and stopped RTK1 too quickly!

1) After finishing RTK1 you'll quickly only need to review like 30 per day, and it will only go lower (on average). It's hard to get bored once it only takes like <5 minutes of effort.

2) No reason to ditch RTK1 when reviewing is so cheap time-wise, especially since the review intervals get huge fast.

3) Consider not doing RTK2 and just diving into vocab? I find that recalling which reading to use for a kanji in a particular word is the hard part, as opposed to just recalling which readings it can have.

I agree with all points made by overture (especially the SRS part -- not using one is truly unthinkable )...

You've already spent enough time learning some abstract thing that you will once be able to use to learn Japanese. Stop preparing and start doing! It's time to dive into the actual language.

If (a big IF), in a few months (years) time you start feeling like confusing the on readings is a major hindrance to your reading ability, you can consider returning to RTK2. You will know it when/if the time comes.

bobonga Wrote:Anyway, my worry is that I might not have mastered RTK1 well enough yet to be able to move on to RTK2 and that if I do I'll just start forgetting everything and I'll have to waste time going back to RTK1 and re-learning everything.

Heisig writes in RTK1 that at some point you should get so good that just reading the keyword automatically brings up the image of the kanji in your head without you having to pause to think about it.

Heisig was learning in a world before SRS. If you don't have SRS and are planning to stop reviewing... then you better have it pretty ingrained or you're going to forget.

The invention of SRS means that you can pretty much ignore all his advice about how to review, as it's more or less obsolete these days. You can move on before everything is perfect and the SRS will enforce regular reviews.

As for RTK2... there have been a few discussions on this forum as to whether or not it's worth it. I looked at the pure groups at one point, which helped me notice the phonetic correlations between kanji, but i never did RTK2 properly. You'll find that people who have are rather rare around here.

It's less about trying to learn things too fast and forgetting and more about spending quality time learning it originally. The 1 button will be your key in telling you if something's wrong (no pun intended). If you're wearing it out, thing's gotta change.

I've been studying Japanese since the mid 90s but I essentially stopped and started over a thousand times so I'm still not that good, I guess I'm sort of late beginner early intermediate still. I've been looking at some JPLT 3 grammar books and I find it easy (except for nightmarish verb forms like iu -> iwaserareru...), but when I check out JPLT 2 grammar books most of the stuff I don't know

Anyway I'm going to look up SRS now because I've never even heard about it. The way I review is that I have an excel spreadsheet with Heisig kanji numbers, the keyword and the kanji, and a column that randomly generates numbers. So I sort the whole thing (2199 kanji) by the random column then I copy the keyword and kanji on Microsoft Word and I hide the kanji with a piece of paper and write them in a notebook from the keyword. Then when I write the kanji I lower the piece of paper to see if I got it right, if not use a highliter on the keyword, then at the end of the review I do a new review with only the kanji that I missed, then I start the whole thing over a couple of days later

I find that learning the kanji for words is kind of frustrating, cause I'm re-reading my old Japanese books and you have a word like ryôri for example and I'm killing myself trying to memorize that it's fee-logic or kôsokudôro is tall-quick-road-path and kôkubin is navigate-empty-convenient... I feel I need something more. That's why I think RTK 2 might help me out

Anyway I'll look up SRS whatever it is, hope it can help me... lol thanks guys

if i would know where the smileys are, i would post the laughing one now, i am that easily amused. anyway.
just google for anki. within anki, you can download various shared decks. it will open a whole new world to you. seriously.
or, as for rtk1,you can just use this site! its got this fancy flashcard system aswell, just on the internet!
srs is just a broad term for all this. "something repetition someting" i think it means.

as for the original question, i started learning the readings just a few days after learning kanji nr. 2042 (well, and the supplements, but i saved 2042 so its the last one). learning the readings will automatically help you with the kanji, since you now "use" them.

Quote:srs is just a broad term for all this. "something repetition someting" i think it means.

Spaced Repetition System

at least i got the R part right!

I've been trying Anki out, and yeah it's pretty interesting. I'm saving a whole bunch of paper (I swear I must have filled dozens of recycle bags with pages and pages filled with heisig keywords... wonder what the dudes at the recycle plant were thinking)

Anyway I don't know about you guys but I think RTK2 is just way too hard now, it's just rote memorization. I tried someone's advice of replacing all heisig keywords with japanese words and I think it works better. Maybe RTK2 will be easier once I get through with that thing for a few months

bobonga Wrote:I've been trying Anki out, and yeah it's pretty interesting. I'm saving a whole bunch of paper (I swear I must have filled dozens of recycle bags with pages and pages filled with heisig keywords... wonder what the dudes at the recycle plant were thinking)

Anyway I don't know about you guys but I think RTK2 is just way too hard now, it's just rote memorization. I tried someone's advice of replacing all heisig keywords with japanese words and I think it works better. Maybe RTK2 will be easier once I get through with that thing for a few months

Most people here don't do RTK 2, I never did it and I'm doing quite fine without ever using it. Most people just learn it using an srs(anki) and putting in example sentences and learning the readings through context. It helps break down the tasks. RTK 1 is for associating kanji with an English keyword and learning how to write kanji. Then people jump into basic context/grammar and learn how to read through context. You'll learn how to read well this way.