I did RTK all the way to 3007. It is effective as a lot of the meanings you'll be able to recognize instantly and for the long-term. But I'm actually deleting non-common ones that I haven't seen or only seen once.It basically helps you break down Japanese when you don't know any Japanese. Although everyone does learn differently and can come to the same progress of someone who has done it. Its merely is a tool for acquiring kanji if one doesn't know it

pm215 Wrote:I didn't use RTK either; I used a fairly traditional approach not dissimilar to yudantaiteki. (I tried RTK later on when I already was fairly well able to read, in the hope it might improve my writing, but I found it was if not wasted time at least not very good use of it. I don't really do mental images, more tending to word-association, but I did manage to do the full 2000-odd with a decent recall rate at the time. It's just that it was completely not linked to anything else I was doing with the language.)

If you're not getting on with RTK then I think it's perfectly reasonable to do something else instead.

I'm working towards Nukemarine's guide and going to brute-force memorize the kanji, since a lot of them I already know (I've been studying for a while) in some context or another. I'm thinking I might just pass them all and just try and get familiar with them - it's not as effective as RTK (I think the lazy kanji method?) but I wouldn't mind mostly getting familiar with them.

Hrm. I have discovered I do okay/well kind of guessing the readings after seeing a bunch of the same kanji - I don't plan to study the readings and kanji in isolation, tbh. I'd like to learn it through vocabulary. Bah! Now I'm not sure what to do!

Go figure.

A good flash card app is all you need. I don't use an srs to review kanji once per day.

tokyostyle Wrote:All good flash card apps are SRS's.

I used to think so too, but I think SRS's (at least how they are set up by default and used by most people) actually force more review than is necessary even though they are designed to do the opposite. I think anyone who reaches a high level in a language and starts to become aware of just how much they can learn incidentally outside of an SRS has to understand this at some level at least.

What I'm saying, is that maybe just maybe it's not necessary to review each item 5 times in one month, after 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or whatever the default spacing is. And that's if you're not failing any cards, add card failures and the amount of excess review climbs higher. Those little chunks of time add up, especially if you're doing more complex cards such as sentences. The longterm retention of any item is dependant on re-exposure over the long term. The short-term reviews are unnecessary. And no I don't keep reviewing things forever, I stop reviewing an item after the first long term review. I don't have to space it into infinity (more unnecessary reviews). If the word is important it'll pop up again. At any rate, all my data will keep existing even I've stopped reviewing it so I can always go back to it if I ever feel the need.

tokyostyle Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:

tokyostyle Wrote:All good flash card apps are SRS's.

I used to think so too, but I think SRS's (at least how they are set up by default and used by most people) actually force more review than is necessary even though they are designed to do the opposite. I think anyone who reaches a high level in a language and starts to become aware of just how much they can learn incidentally outside of an SRS has to understand this at some level at least.

So you think a flashcard app which forces you to review 100% of your flashcards no matter how many times you've seen them and no matter how well you know that card is superior to one that doesn't?

nest0r I have a winner!

Its divided among JLPT level and grades 1-9 with vocabulary lists for each level. I say that is superior to this sites space repetition feature.

Ginmanm Wrote:Its divided among JLPT level and grades 1-9 with vocabulary lists for each level. I say that is superior to this sites space repetition feature.

Sorry, but what divides (presumably the kanji) up between JLPT levels and grades?
The posts you quoted are about SRS programs, the default timing features, and whether or not it's necessary.

tokyostyle Wrote:

nohika Wrote:Is the "lazy kanji" version the one where you read the story every time? I think it might help if I stopped writing the kanji, but then I feel like I'm cheating...bah.

You cannot possibly cheat. In the end you can either read Japanese or you can't.

Either modify how you are doing RTK in a way that will allow you to complete it or use a brute force method.

If you are already reading novels then just keep reading them. You're kanji level will definitely improve this way. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to read like a native speaker then stop looking. There are no magical shortcuts.

Ginmanm Wrote:A good flash card app is all you need. I don't use an srs to review kanji once per day.

All good flash card apps are SRS's.

So I quoted this post because I wanted to comment @Ginmanm - there are definitely kanji I don't review every day. My typical intervals are one day, then 1-3 days, then 3-5 days, and it increases from there. However, when you fail a kanji, it re-starts them. So there are some I end up seeing daily for a while if they just don't stick.

Annddd I think you're right - I'm hoping RTK is this magical gimmick that gives me superior reading ability. I've been studying on and off for quite some time, and am limited mostly by vocab on the simpler stuff (I'm good at piecing grammar together). IceCream mentioned something I liked - going through vocab in order from the kanji I learned.

Allright, gonna try and brute-force my way through 550 kanji in the next couple days. Shouldn't be too bad. I'm not working much.

What is happening to this forum? I don't understand it. We were making good progress... Is it just a glitch? Yes, that must be it... a temporary setback...

LazyNomad Wrote:While doing RTK I was also learning real etymologies as given in Henshall`s Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. This helped me to enrich my understanding of kanji, and to understand the logic behind RTK system better. I prefer to remember real logical explanation for characters, but in many cases where certain origins of a kanji are not known RTK methodology was really helpful.

I agree. I too have Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters and I think it makes a great companion to RTK. Originally, I tried to stick to the stories that were so outrageous and didn't make sense because I felt that such wild stories would "shock" my brain into remembering them. But all I ended up doing was confusing myself and forgetting the stories. When I switched to the "common sense" stories, as Heisig puts it, I began to remember more of my kanji as I studied. Personally, it helps me to remember each kanji when I can truly understand why it may have been constructed the way it was in the first place.

nest0r Wrote:What is happening to this forum? I don't understand it. We were making good progress... Is it just a glitch? Yes, that must be it... a temporary setback...

Sometimes this place looks suspiciously like the crayzee farm I just left...aka work.

nohika Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:What is happening to this forum? I don't understand it. We were making good progress... Is it just a glitch? Yes, that must be it... a temporary setback...

Sometimes this place looks suspiciously like the crayzee farm I just left...aka work.

I think it's just me. As I absorb and apply things, every few months it gets harder and harder to understand people who are just beginning or are using outdated ideas and methods (as I see them). I think it's nearing time for me to retire cranky old nest0r except for the occasional comments on cb4960, et al.'s tools/updates.

nest0r Wrote:

nohika Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:What is happening to this forum? I don't understand it. We were making good progress... Is it just a glitch? Yes, that must be it... a temporary setback...

Sometimes this place looks suspiciously like the crayzee farm I just left...aka work.

I think it's just me. As I absorb and apply things, every few months it gets harder and harder to understand people who are just beginning or are using outdated ideas and methods (as I see them). I think it's nearing time for me to retire cranky old nest0r except for the occasional comments on cb4960, et al.'s tools/updates.

I think part of it is that different things work for different people, and if they're really determined to take the longer/harder route to get to things, more power to them. I used to respond to posts that annoyed me (dumb ways to do things, not-very-smart-methods, whatever) but now I ignore them. Not really worth my time.

Not when I have crayzee people at work, anyways. I know the general consensus is to force your way through RTK, but I do also agree that any of it is better than none of it - even if I only make it through like 1110 kanji or something.

I don't know about that consensus. I think it's best to do RTK and learn Japanese at the same time, broken into complementary components. Optimally I think even beyond grammar and phonology, vocabulary (kanji and readings and all) can be picked up at the same time with minimal overhead, integrated into the learning process of a beginner (it just requires knowing when a batch of kanji, i.e. Lesson 1, are mature, so you can apply them elsewhere). I think nest0r can die happy once a card maturity reminder plugin is written and shared. That's the missing piece of the puzzle.

With RTK, the spaced retrieval structure, the mnemonic element, the bottom-up process, the assembly line nature of its implementation in an overall program of study (the type I noted above being I think the most optimal), my understanding of it has been revolutionized over the past few years after I finished it, explained it, advised on it, rethought it, studied the core scientific principles behind it, continually updating. I've tried to keep the forum updated on these developments as I've found them, the notion of weak cues, of the counterintuitive superiority of spaced retrieval, of overlearning and optimal intersession intervals, etc.

Also, other ways of looking at RTK, such as captions, not mental images but conceptual scaffolds, for the kanji-as-photographs—not transformed into images, but icons in themselves, the strokes and radicals as they are. Even if one doesn't prefer this way to develop a bottom-up gestalt perspective of kanji as complete wholes, it should be a clue that mental imagery is not a prerequisite or even intrinsically preferable. It's more incidental to conceptualization.

Not all methods are equal on a perennially subjective and level playing field. Some, most when it's the good ones, are best for all humans, period, and only minor variations based on those core principles are required for individual variation.

Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

I think part of the reason it's considered a consensus is telling a complete beginning how to do that or even /to/ do that is overwhelming and I don't even know if they would know how to start. How would you break it down into complementary components? Kind of like how Nukemarine did it, or..? I could see learning the break-down components as you learned vocabulary, and setting it up that way...it's just a lot of work for people that aren't really sure what they're doing. :/

Even if I do go back to doing traditional RTK, I'll be studying grammar the whole time. It just feels weird not studying vocabulary, I guess.

Edit: Braindead from work, so. Yeah. Tbh, I think the whole "don't study grammar" is the dumbest thing in the world. But I /like/ grammar. So...but yes, I get what you're saying.

nest0r Wrote:Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

I need to check my glasses and make sure I don't have a fever, because I completely agree with this.

It's hard, but the good kind of hard because it takes short-term difficulty and makes it long-term superiority.

The trick of complementary components is finding the areas of the language that you can divide and systematize to reduce overhead and increase efficiency of your use of time at any given moment, without disconnecting them completely but instead keeping them pertinent to one another, knowing you'll be reintegrating them as you progress into new areas according to your goals.

I wrote on this in the Japanese Keywords thread somewhere, but:

Example: Once you decide on a target block of the language you want, i.e. a basic foundation for a beginner, then you think about what body of resources you want for it. Japanese the Manga Way, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Tae Kim, for grammar, which covers what you need for, say, Core 2000 sentences or KO2001 sentences, which also have native audio you can listen to and repeat, and a rich corpus of common words. Setting aside all the other customizations and choices you could make should you desire, for argument's sake.

So you could do these things one at a time, but it would be more efficient and easier to treat it as an assembly line, to pick up the fundamental aspect of the medium for the sentences, the text, the writing system, the kanji and kana, using SRS and mnemonics and focusing on the build-up of radicals into wholes, all of which are empirically shown to be superior, and hence you have RTK with the SRS. But here, knowing you'll be using audio with the text, that you want to be able to subvocalize and speak and listen and understand it, you can start working on your listening to Japanese.

It doesn't have to contain the same content, it can just be basic stuff to get you a leg up on the phonology so you're not a mewling babe when you start trying to parse native audio in those target sentences. But hey, those sentences are using that foundational grammar, so why not start familiarizing yourself with those structures while you're at it? You'd be overlearning to try and learn kanji 24/7, that's not how spacing works (I'm talking about the same kanji, for argument assuming you're doing this rather than some 10000 kanji per day method we've discussed the merits of elsewhere), so throw in some grammar study. Then again, you don't have to make these complementary components big unbroken blocks, you can divide them into smaller pieces to tighten the integration and begin the next steps sooner. You can do something like RTK Lite which is designed for the kinds of compounds you'll see in Core 2000 or KO2001. Or you can (crossing fingers for the future plugin), do it in even smaller blocks per lesson as kanji batches become mature, and start doing those words/sentences even sooner.

As you break up the kanji into smaller parts or a smaller core and move up your timetable, you can further tweak and balance how you break up/integrate these complementary pieces of the language (broken into sets you can systematize). And with the tools we have now, all of these are subject to high levels of customization dependent on how much you want to organize and invest up front.

Then there's complementary components as they apply to how you integrate SRS/non-SRS stuff, the types of decks you use, how you arrange information, cues and targets on cards...

yudantaiteki Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

I need to check my glasses and make sure I don't have a fever, because I completely agree with this.

Too bad you quoted that bit in full. I would've edited it to say something else. ^_^

So please tell me if I'm wrong...I work at a crayzee farm and am exhausted and braindead.

But you're kind of talking like breaking things down like Nukemarine's guide is and doing them all at once, right? Listening/learning kanji/studying grammar with vocab as a side chaser?

Part of me was almost thinking taking the sentences (somewhat skipping RTK in its entirety) and breaking down the kanji in the sentences and doing RTK throughout the sentence cards for kanji I don't already know, drawing the sentences from KO2001 /and/ some Subs2SRS? (experimenting with dramas), and studying grammar on the side (JtMW) using Anki.

Probably is a bad idea. Probably is too much. But I don't really think anything in language-learning is a "failed endeavour" - because it's likely you learned at least one new fact. Even if you don't really learn many more than that...

yudantaiteki Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

I need to check my glasses and make sure I don't have a fever, because I completely agree with this.

haha. And I completely agreed with ydtt:

Last year Thora Wrote:"It's not all or nothing" (quoting ydtt) should be this forum's motto. Now that would save us all some time... :-)

nest0r Wrote:Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

But you're just as much of an either/or person as anyone else nest0r. Anytime someone suggests not doing sentences, or not using an SRS or not doing RTK you're sure to pop in and tell them they're crazy.

Having opposing opinions is fine. This forum is for discussing ideas, not reaching a consensus.

Thora Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Edit: I think it's the either/or people that drive me the craziest. Don't use grammar. It's grammar vs. no grammar. Don't use sentences. It's sentences vs. words. Don't use output. It's output vs. input. Don't use English. It's English vs. monolingual. Blah blah blah blah.

I need to check my glasses and make sure I don't have a fever, because I completely agree with this.

haha. And I completely agreed with ydtt:

Last year Thora Wrote:"It's not all or nothing" (quoting ydtt) should be this forum's motto. Now that would save us all some time... :-)

That, or a combination of either/or and all/nothing might be a better way to frame the binary opposition that gets created. It can be very difficult to point out the root problem in conceptualization that trips such people up.

nest0r Wrote:

nohika Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:What is happening to this forum? I don't understand it. We were making good progress... Is it just a glitch? Yes, that must be it... a temporary setback...

Sometimes this place looks suspiciously like the crayzee farm I just left...aka work.

I think it's just me. As I absorb and apply things, every few months it gets harder and harder to understand people who are just beginning or are using outdated ideas and methods (as I see them). I think it's nearing time for me to retire cranky old nest0r except for the occasional comments on cb4960, et al.'s tools/updates.

Meh, SRS is effective but it's not *that* effective. If you spend a reasonable chunk of time every day reading/listening or speaking japanese then you're going to make progress regardless of whether you use SRS or not. Yudantaiteki and the others are proof of that. 1 hour watching TV is more effective than 1 hour spent doing 18 cards because you hate doing it so much you just procrastinate.

Some people like reviewing stuff using flash cards. Others can't stand it. I seem to oscillate between the two. Haven't touched anki in a couple of weeks.

I don't see the SRS mentioned in that quote and it's not precisely what that comment addressed (more of a general trend), but the SRS really is *that* effective. It's many, many times more effective than any other method of memorization. Spaced retrieval (with relational strategies) is the most effective way to memorize information, period, short of jacking in, Matrix style.

Note how I phrased that and please carefully avoid a polarized interpretation. How you learn something consists of many routes. (See Paul Nation on The Four Strands for a comparison of meaning-focused and language-focused and how he attributes more to meaning-focused input because it's the ultimate focus, but also because language-focused learning is so much more effective than receptive exposure, it needs less time).

Parceling SRSing out as something separate and specific and static in the learning process and arranging it against non-SRS stuff, rather than it itself being a superior means of purposeful memorization of target elements, is in my mind foolish and it's what I wrote about earlier as driving me mental (ditto for everything else). The worst part is when you try to point it out, people thinking you're still arguing within that binary! ‘It's not either/or, you can do both... ’ becomes the pro-SRS end of an SRS vs. non-SRS opposition in their minds. If people want to decide to learn only through passive input or less efficient and effective methods of deliberate learning, that's one thing. But it doesn't even stop there. It also becomes an idea that everyone else is being pro-SRS in an all or nothing setup and they must be converted or battled (how many times have I had to point out that straw man, when someone pops in and projects the entire forum as being rabidly ‘for’ such-and-such-and-nothing-else but is unable to provide evidence), so you end up with proclamations against the SRS that have no logical backing. Such as stronger conclusions than yours above but with the same out-of-the-blue (il)logic: that you can learn without the SRS, that people have learned without it to good results in the end, thus it's reasonable to toss it out with the bathwater, or some people don't like it or want to use it for various reasons, and declare it ineffective or not that effective. Huh?

The same thing occurs for grammar. It's tied to negatives, generally. When you're declaring something must be banished. Sentences, deliberate learning of grammar, SRSing, the use of English. I always pop in to say it's not either/or, you can do both, pick the best of both, find ways to integrate them, how you integrate them, the amounts, is going to change over time, it's dynamic, etc. But to no avail. We're classified as the pro-grammar, pro-sentences, pro-English, pro-SRS, blah blah. It's utterly baffling that we can't get it across, it's right there, so obvious.

What's funniest is you'll get the best advice from those of us who are just as passionate about all the aspects, seen in their nuance and how they fit in a continuum of learning, and some of the better advice makes it to the all or nothing folks, but they don't even realize it and just bastardize it and dilute it.

Anyway.

zigmonty Wrote:Some people like reviewing stuff using flash cards. Others can't stand it. I seem to oscillate between the two. Haven't touched anki in a couple of weeks.

Could all come down to taking the occasional break from ones studies. From my impression we all have studied very hard in the past during our formal education years, and did take the occasional break from studying. What seems to be the difference here? Or is it different?