I'm thinking of combining resources but I'm not sure how.

I'm coming up to 400 Kanji now but whilst its true that its very fulfilling to see my Kanji number increase, I can't help but feel I could do more in the day. I never try to cover more than 1 lesson a day and I'm about to hit that first really long lesson (80 kanji).

I have a book called ultimate japanese and I'm planning on doing 1 chapter of ultimate japanese a day alongside 1 RTK lesson. I was thinking that I could write the vocab lists into anki as I work through it but I wasn't sure how would be best.

The book itself is presented in romanji.
Im wondering if it would be worth the extra effort of checking if the words in the vocab lists use any kanji I've already learnt or if this whole idea might somehow detriment my progress

gegenki Wrote:I have a book called ultimate japanese and I'm planning on doing 1 chapter of ultimate japanese a day alongside 1 RTK lesson. I was thinking that I could write the vocab lists into anki as I work through it but I wasn't sure how would be best.

My advice is to focus on RTK and only RTK. I think that is Heisig's advice too. The faster you are able to go in RTK the more efficient you become; most new kanji reinforce older kanji. This will reduce your overall study time.

You don't have to completely follow all of Heisig's advice. They're called advice for a reason. For some people, they feel better following the book to the letter. For some others, it is makes more sense to study grammar or vocab while doing RTK. Do whichever works for you.

What I did to figure out whether I can do the former or the latter was to try it out. I have a book called Japanese the Manga Way and I did some grammar every day while doing RTK in about the 700s or so. In fact, I don't think studying kanji while doing grammar has made me any less efficient. If any, learning new kanji has been easier for me because I've seen it so many times in JMW and my other supplements.

Good luck with your studies!

P.S. Steer clear of romaji books. :/

When I started RTK1, I had similar thoughts. What I did was at the same time start with Kore (frequency sorted core 6000) and using Swanki (reupped, could not find it anymore??) to unsuspend only those cards in the kore deck for which I had seen the kanji already. You'll have to edit swanki's .py file with notepad to change the

Code:

config=[
    {"deck":

lines and the following lines (lines 9-24) as well for the right drive letters et cetera.
This means you still start off really SRS focused (which wasn't all the fun for me), but you can start doing vocabulary alongside your kanji studies. However, I don't think there's any harm in starting a normal textbook already. In the beginning you'll pick up any new kanji quickly enough and you don't have to write them that often yet.

I, too, would suggest you do RTK, enjoy the time you are doing it, and start to work on real Japanese afterwards. As for Ultimate Japanese Beginner to Advance, well, you can try to do it on the side. But honestly, it contains Romaji for everything, which is no problem in and on itself. But you will have to learn those words again, being written in Kana / Kanji, so this is double work.

What you could do, if you still wish to do something, is to start reading Tae Kim's Grammar Guide. Or if you are preferring books, go and start working on Ultimate Japanese, and write the words in Romaji in Kana and Kanji. You can use http://www.jisho.org to check if words are written in Kanji, or Kana alone, but it's a waste of time.

That is why I'm with Boy.pockets on this is, that you should just do Heisig, and move on afterwards. You have to keep in mind that the number of reviews will start to grow, and in the beginning you aren't so fast. And when there is a number of 100 Kanji in your pile, you will be busy enough reviewing, let alone adding and learning new one's.

But this doesn't rule out that you learn vocab, but in 漢字 and かな and that you get yourself a decent textbook, if you don't like decks for Anki. A good choice would be Genki or Japanese for Everyone. You could also learn the Kana on the side, do you know them already?

Whatever you do, keep doing it, and you will get there.

On a side-note. Ultimate Japanese, this would be an interesting project to do, because it contains lots and lots of vocabulary, and some descent reading section, but all are in romaji ... So a conversion to Kana and Kanji would be nice.

I'd say concentrate on Heisig for now. You really do not have to limit yourself with just 1 lesson a day. Do more when you can and do less when you can't. It's better to set some minimal amount you want to do a day (25-35 worked well for me in the long run) and do more than that when you feel it's going easy. This way your pace will be much more even, you'll be going through it faster and avoid burnout when tough chapters come.

This doesn't mean you can't read anything on the side though. Read through TaeKim, Japanese The Manga way, Genki or any other textbook. Just don't put much effort there. Read it for fun and don't try to remember everything. And do it after you feel you are sick of kanji for the day, I'd say.

You can always just focus on the grammar points/deconstructing sentences.

Edit: I see, that's what you were already going to do? If you were doing RTK Lite or something like that I'd probably recommend something like this (though I'd probably update it now): http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...6#pid81476

There's another example of why a maturity reminder plugin would be useful, in this case for those using Anki with RTK.

Thanks guys

Sorry I disappeared for a bit, had no internet (If only for a RevTK for Android app).
Based on what you guys have said I'm going to continue concentrating on learning Kanji but if I'm ever really bored I'll be reading TaeKim.

I'll do Ultimate Japanese later because I really want to be able to rewrite all the vocab.

Thanks for the reup of Swanki btw, but I really had no idea how to set it up, or what its meant to do exactly. All the original pages for it are down so I couldn't find any instructions or descriptions.