I wasn't sure where to put this, so I'm sorry if it's in the wrong spot. Also I'm sorry if this has been covered at all somewhere else.

The last week I've felt really overwhelmed with Japanese and how much I don't know. I've also felt really lost on what I should be doing. I keep reading about all different study tools and have no idea what to use. I have Japanese in Mangaland volumes 1 and 2 (done with 1 and a few chapters into 2) and All About Particles. Then I've seen discussed here and elsewhere Understanding Basic Japanese Grammer, A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Japanese the Manga Way, Genki, and KO2001. Plus some others I'm sure. I'm so lost! I have no idea what to do next or anything! I've done some Tae Kim and it was okay, sometimes it was hard to understand. I have almost 1,000 sentences, but my vocab is limited. But I HATE vocab cards. I do so much better with sentences.
What would you guys suggest I do?

I guess I'm just feeling really lost on where to go next. I feel like such a crappy beginner and it's still sooooo hard to read things. I LIKE classes because I like having structure. But so far for me, my self study hasn't had any of that. And I CAN'T take another class because I seriously live in the middle of no where. There are no classes at our colleges or high schools for Japanese. I DO however know a Japanese lady at church. Should I get together with her like once a week or something? And if I do, what should I do with her?
Thoughts? Opinions? Sarcastic comments?
Thanks all for your help.

Oh also I was wondering if you do vocab kanji to kana or kana to kanji and which works best for you?
Thanks again.

Angeldust

Been there, man. The first one or two years of Japanese for me were very confusing. Some people catch on quick, but not me.

I would recommend not looking too far ahead and just focus on working through a textbook or two. Go slow. If some chapter is especially hard, go through it again or look at other resources for maybe a better explanation. If you still don't get it, move on to the next chapter and try again later, it might make more sense.

Also, try not to worry about other people posting about how they're fluent after one year, etc. It's not a race and they're probably exaggerating anyways. If you stick with this, you'll get to where you want to go someday.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean with the vocab question. Do you mean how do you format a flash card? I have the kanji, furigana, and an example sentence for each word.

All I can say is keep at it I know how you feel. Someday's I wonder if I will be able to understand Japanese fully. For me Japanese is a really intimidating language. I have not finished RTK and it gets me down from time to time. I wonder if doing this is even worth it. BUT i keep at in I read katz blog all Japanese all the time and it keeps me going. If you finished RTK I would like at the book "Understanding Basic Japanese grammar" it really breaks it down and makes learning grammar manageable and it gives you a lot of examples. I also would met up with the Japanese lady once a week if you can. You could also try Lang-8 its a good site where you can make a lot of japanese native speakers and other people learning japanese. Just hang tough and fight the good fight =D Lastly maybe you should increase the amount of Japanese that your are listening to that can help. It has helped me pick out works and phases.

Angeldust Wrote:Thoughts? Opinions? Sarcastic comments?

Angeldust

Lay off the angel dust?

Learning a language is a life-long hobby that can never be mastered fully.
I still study English, and I was born in America.

I know how you feel. I get all excited when I get new Japanese materials, but it's overwhelming at the same time. I spent a very long time (hours and hours) figuring out the best possible plan for myself. I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot about how to learn a language, but I didn't learn much Japanese. I think I went a bit too far.

Try not to think so much about finding the "perfect" method to learning Japanese. Sure, do some research, make a plan, and then alter your plan as you learn new things, but if you get so caught up on "should I do this...or this...or this?" you are spending more time being frustrated than you are actually studying Japanese. I think you should have one grammar resource (I use Japanese for Everyone), and then if you have other resources, use them as a supplement or to review. Just focus on using one main resource for each area and study it diligently. If it's rated highly by other people and it's working well for you, just stick with it and you'll progress.

Do you like Japanese in Mangaland? If so, continue to use it and finish the series. The important thing is how you feel about it. Who cares if someone else doesn't think it is an "official" textbook series? If you like it, use it. If you don't, try something else. No resource is ever perfect, and everyone has a different opinion because we all learn differently, too. What matters is whether you are learning Japanese and enjoying it. If you dislike doing vocab cards, do sentences instead. Maybe try to blast through basic grammar and then start reading some super simple books or articles (free materials here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=8005) and get vocab that way.

Just keep going, and don't think too much about it . Or rather, think about that grammar point you just learned, not about which book you should use. I know it's tough not to do that, but set aside a goal for yourself each day. I'm going to read 1 grammar point in Japanese in Mangaland each day and do the relevant exercises. Or I'm going to do 20 kanji from RTK each day. Focus on those small goals.

If you're a beginner I absolutely recommend you work through a structured textbook instead of going with the learning methods suggested here. They are for people who are at least on a lower-intermediate level. Once you have a good foundation you can come back here and you'll be able to understand what people are talking about!

My personal recommendation for an introductory textbook is Elementary Japanese: http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Japanes...0804835047

There's also a 2nd Volume:
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Japanes...pd_sim_b_1

The first book probably puts you on a JLPT N5 level, the 2nd one on N4.

It's designed for classroom use but you can also go through it by yourself. That might be one thing you can discuss with your Japanese friend. If you don't understand something in the textbook you can ask her.

After you finished going through the book and have a solid foundation I recommend you start doing RTK and use some of the methods suggested here while working through other books on the side. That's at least what I would do if I would have to start all over again.

I didn't go through a beginner's textbook, but I'm sure that would be a great start. Also, textbooks are usually very organized and structured

I use a premade plan.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110
Many of the decks used in Nukemarine's guide are shared decks on anki.
Subs2Srs is quite simple; look up documentation and/or tutorials.
Also, learn how to edit the 'Card Layout' in Anki so that your Subs2Srs decks are usable.

Here's an alternate method that I'll eventually do.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid133971
seems fun and easy


All it takes is some research--read through posts and comments.
More study methods...
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4943&page=1
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4602&page=1

I have the links bookmarked ;]

Since you want your studies organized, I recommend writing or typing up a study plan of your own.

- Most people on here have gone through what you're going through. I don't think anyone just started learning using sentence method and started learning straight away - a majority have tried books and classes before finding AJATT and this forum.

- Learning a language is extremely difficult at first, but gets easier and easier the more vocab and grammar you learn. You're still in the hard stage, dont sweat!

- There is no perfect study plan or method that works for everyone. You've got to find the best thing for YOU! You do this by trying lots of stuff.

- Once you find an ok method, stick with it as long as possible! not matter bad the method, as long as you keep chipping away everyday you will eventually make progress. The perfect study plan is not out there, so dont delay studying looking for it, and dont continuously switch methods - or you'll be stuck as a beginner forever!

- Even a small amount each day will give you progress if you stick at it over time. Think about it - learning just 2 new words a day for a year will give you a vocabulary of 730 words - enough to get by on a trip to Japan. Learning 5 new words a day gives you 1825 words after a year - easily enough to pass JLPT N5 and nearly JLPT N4. When you break it down like that, it's not so hard right?

- Vocab cards are boring but they're good cos they're sooo quick to review. Plus it fixes the dictionary form of the word in your head.

- My story studied; I RtK and then Tai Kim, but I failed at KO2001. It's just too hard for a total beginner; too much complex business orientated compounds and N4 grammar. I switched to Kore2000 which is much easier, but even then I couldn't understand 90% of the sentences until I had about 500 vocab cards learned. From 600 or 700 vocab cards onwards, it was easily as alot of words sounded like ones i already knew, and I kept seeing the same kanji pop up. But in the beginner it was hell learning all these new sounds..your brain just cant remember them.

- Believe me I share your frustration, as I'm going through the same thing again with Mandarin, starting from the beginning - it's soo hard

I find the most important thing is to practice, daily. This includes days that you just don't want to, or find yourself wondering if it is worth the effort. Don't get to hung up on grammar points at the beginner level, but try to remember how sentences are formed. Japanese is a much more free form language that English, especially when spoken.

The key to learning any language is learning words, and how they are used. Grammar comes later. Even when I write in English I concentrate about the words first, then correct the grammar so it expresses my ideas the best.

Work on learning words, without worry to much about Kanji.
When learning new Kanji try to understand as much about the Kanji as possible.
Practice speaking or reading aloud.
Memorize and understand short sentences.

The most important would be try to understand Kana.

I to get frustrated, but that is mostly because of other factors that distract me from focusing on my studies. This could be anything, such as forgetting a Kanji in a word.

@Angeldust Just don't let yourself down, like my previous writers already said. Language learning is a life-time hobby, like bodhi said. There will be always something you will not know even in your native language of course. I would suggest you just make a schedule for yourself how to work with your material. Personally, I experienced only the best with All about Particles (see my deck in the public repository available). It really helps and boosts your skills. When you read books/texts in Japanese you won't be to often messed up by sentence structure and your brain will get used to parsing sentences in a very different way.

Concerning your "hatred" for vocab cards - fight it, seriously. (I had the same feeling before but forced myself with SRS) Anki cards with plain-stupid vocabulary did wonders not only to me, but a lot of people! If you are working with Genki 1 and 2, why not downloading core6k and working with the attached Genki tags (for both, first and second book) and then preceeding with core2k? Good luck! Keep up and always search for someone/thing motivating you!

I think its important to know that everyone has this exact experience. You get to that point where you are deciding ur own path through ur learning and it's a very tricky point. There are so many resources both good and bad and it's hard to know what's going to be the most effective. I definitely went through this.

The important thing is to just keep going.

Go down one path for a bit, try it out and if you don't like it throw it out and switch! There is one thing that is for sure and that is... if you just keep learning things day by day you will get there in the end.

i can understand why you hate vocab cards.

Here's what i do to speed things up without making pure vocab cards nowadays... maybe this'll help...

i use cb4960's rikaichan mod. You can use this on websites, books, anything that isn't too far above your level.

i add both the vocab word, and the sentence as fields. Both are transported into anki on the front side of my card. When i review the cards for the first time, if the vocab looks like an unfinished collocation, i add that to the vocabularly part. (luckily JDIC deals with many collocations, so i don't have to do it that often.) The same with grammar: if the sentence contained grammar i didn't understand, i just transfer the sentence (actually, just as small a part of the sentence as still makes sense) into the expression field.

Now, you have a question field with the vocab on top, and underneath is the sentence, for the most part. If i can read just the vocab and have a feel for it's meaning based on either remembering the context, or remembering the definition, i mark it 3 or 4. If i look at it and can't remember, i read the sentence, and often that jogs my memory. I then mark it 2. If i read the sentence and still can't remember, i fail it.

What tends to happen is that i end up reading the sentences the first couple times i review, and after that i find i can answer based on just the vocab alone. This way, you get the benefits of speed in reviewing, without losing the context and ending up with a large failure rate.

It really is amazing how much material is available in terms of resources on the internet, as well as offline, that can help you to learn the language. I, too, had the experience of not knowing what the best thing to do was, but I found my way. So it's no wonder that you feel a bit lost right now.

From my experience up to now i can only tell you, that you should use as many resources that best go together, to learn from. There is no best way, nor is there a best method, to learn the language. This is true not only for Japanese, but for almost every language, that is not your native one.

Let me tell you this. Just work with the material that feels right to you, and start asking as many questions as you possibly can. This way you can be sure to make progress. Just don't give up, and don't get overwhelmed, and most important don't waste your time looking for any best method. Your own method, which you will surely be able to develop over time, will be as good as any.

It will take time before you are able to start seeing some progress. No doubt about it. So you just have to give yourself the necessary time to learn. All i can tell you is, that you should do vocabulary cards, and possibly write the words out, if you feel like it. That way you can let go of your RTK deck. And write as often with pen and paper as you can. This has proofed to be most beneficial to me so far. And it's not as time consuming as it might look at the beginning.

Suggestion
Start with a good old textbook.
Create vocabulary and sentence cards.
Ask questions.
Never give up.
Listen to the advice offered to you.
Use different resources to get a different look on the things you learn:
Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Intermediate and Advanced ...

Sarcastic comments?
Quit whining, start working! Or else, the Japanese language learning fairy will come, and drag you away at night!

IceCream
Do you have everything on the front of your card? Or is there something on the back of them, too?

yeah, i have the dictionary definition of the vocabulary word on the back, but i don't grade on that severely, as long as i have a decent idea what the word meant or could remember from context.

I also have the reading, and i do fail the card if i get the reading wrong, even if i knew the meaning. In those cases, i find adding audio to the back as well also helps...

Oh wow thank you all soooo much for your advice and encouragement! I really appreciate it. I don't post a lot, because as a beginner I don't think I have much to say, but I lurk a lot (lol) and I just love this community. I love how everyone helps each other and encourages it each. It really is neat!
It's really nice to know I'm not alone, and that others have gone through this. Good to know I won't be stuck in this mode forever. lol

I wasn't very clear about how "beginner" I am, so I'll clear that up. I took 2 Japanese classes when they were available at our "alternative" learning center (aka for kids who drop out of school. They do a lot of adult night classes. Like the college but cheaper). There was no kana or kanji, only romanji. I wanted to continue but the minimum was 4 people and there were only two of us. I found RTK through AJATT and I finished it in March and have been doing sentences, Tae Kim and Japanese in Mangaland on and off since then.
If I decide to meet with the Japanese lady from my church, what do you guys think I should do? Should I go through a textbook with her or just have conversations?

julianjalapeno
what I meant was how are everyone's flash cards formatted. Like, is the kana reading on the front and kanji on the back or vice versa. And which is easier. I had trouble with kanji to kana when I tried it 2 months ago, but maybe now it would be easier.

jordan3311
Yeah I read certain posts on AJATT because it keeps me motivated. Thanks I will definitely get Understand Basic Japanese Grammar, it sounds good.

bodhisamaya Wrote:

Angeldust Wrote:Thoughts? Opinions? Sarcastic comments?

Angeldust

Lay off the angel dust?

LOL!! I actually didn't know it was a drug when I picked the name out. I seriously thought it was just like fairy dust, but angels. You know, fictional. lol Yes I was (am?) a bit sheltered I guess. lol

bodhisamaya Wrote:Learning a language is a life-long hobby that can never be mastered fully.
I still study English, and I was born in America.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that though. So, thank you for reminding me!

jishera Wrote:Try not to think so much about finding the "perfect" method to learning Japanese. Sure, do some research, make a plan, and then alter your plan as you learn new things, but if you get so caught up on "should I do this...or this...or this?" you are spending more time being frustrated than you are actually studying Japanese.

Yeah, that's what I was doing. *sheepish look* But I wasn't making a plan. Now I will do that and then quit worrying!

jishera Wrote:I know it's tough not to do that, but set aside a goal for yourself each day. I'm going to read 1 grammar point in Japanese in Mangaland each day and do the relevant exercises. Or I'm going to do 20 kanji from RTK each day. Focus on those small goals.

I will do that now. Thank you.

ThomasB
Have you used Elementary Japanese? It looks good. This is where I was getting lost, there are so many different materials to use! I guess I will just have to pick one and go with it!

aphasiac
Thank you so much for the advice and encouragement! I will stick with it and start vocab cards. lol
And I say the same thing to you with Mandarin! Keep at it! You can do it!

Omoishinji Wrote:I to get frustrated, but that is mostly because of other factors that distract me from focusing on my studies. This could be anything, such as forgetting a Kanji in a word.

This. Freaking life keeps happening and I get distracted or too busy. I'm gonna recognize that and try not to be bothered by it anymore.

Thanks Tori-kun. Yeah I like AAP as well. And I will definitely start vocab cards.

IceCream
Thank you so much for sharing how you do vocab! I might try that. It sounds great! Thank you!

Nagareboshi Wrote:Just don't give up, and don't get overwhelmed, and most important don't waste your time looking for any best method.

I'm thinking that I was probably doing this and that's why I got frustrated. So I'm gonna stop that and just try stuff.

Nagareboshi Wrote:So you just have to give yourself the necessary time to learn. All i can tell you is, that you should do vocabulary cards, and possibly write the words out, if you feel like it. That way you can let go of your RTK deck. And write as often with pen and paper as you can. This has proofed to be most beneficial to me so far. And it's not as time consuming as it might look at the beginning.

Oh thank you. I wasn't sure how to let go of my RTK deck, but yeah, vocab would be great for that... And yes I definitely want to write them down. I like doing that. Plus one of my long term goals is to be able to journal in Japanese.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Quit whining, start working! Or else, the Japanese language learning fairy will come, and drag you away at night!

LOL XD Yes, yes I will get to work!

Again, THANK YOU all for your wonderful advice! I will take all of it to heart and get cracking! Thank you!

Quote:If I decide to meet with the Japanese lady from my church, what do you guys think I should do? Should I go through a textbook with her or just have conversations?

From my personal experience it is very difficult to "just have conversations" as long as you're not at least on an upper-intermediate level. I have tried this before with language exchange partners but after a while you run out of things to say, or your inability to express yourself will keep you from talking about deeper topics. The textbook I mentioned above is designed for classroom use, so it may actually contain a lot of exercises you could do with the woman. As far as I remember it contains prompts that ask you to talk with your partner about certain topics and use certain grammatical constructs you have learned in a particular lessons.

I went through the book but that was a while ago so I don't remember exactly. I just remember that I tried a lot of books (including Genki), but Elementary Japanese was by far the best and most comprehensive.

Just to make sure I understand you correctly. You already went through RTK? This will be really useful for your further studies! Do you know how to use Anki or did you use the tools on this site?

If you need to make a study plan I'd be happy to help you out based on my personal experience! How much time are you willing to spend per day/week to study Japanese?

ThomasB Wrote:

Quote:If I decide to meet with the Japanese lady from my church, what do you guys think I should do? Should I go through a textbook with her or just have conversations?

From my personal experience it is very difficult to "just have conversations" as long as you're not at least on an upper-intermediate level. I have tried this before with language exchange partners but after a while you run out of things to say, or your inability to express yourself will keep you from talking about deeper topics. The textbook I mentioned above is designed for classroom use, so it may actually contain a lot of exercises you could do with the woman. As far as I remember it contains prompts that ask you to talk with your partner about certain topics and use certain grammatical constructs you have learned in a particular lessons.

That would be really useful! Maybe I will do that. Even if the textbook doesn't work with her I can use it on my own.

Quote:Just to make sure I understand you correctly. You already went through RTK? This will be really useful for your further studies! Do you know how to use Anki or did you use the tools on this site?

Yes I have finished RTK 1. I was starting RTK 3 but after RTK 1 I was kind of burned out with kanji. So I stopped. I didn't use this site except for stories. Yes I did/do use Anki.

Quote:If you need to make a study plan I'd be happy to help you out based on my personal experience! How much time are you willing to spend per day/week to study Japanese?

Oh wow, yeah I would love the help! Thank you! Well I have probably an hour and a half to 2 hours, 6 days a week. I try to keep a day to not do work or "school"-ish related things. That's just for study. I read and listen to things at random times during the day. I also have been doing the Japanesepod 101 lessons while at work. I clean motel rooms, so while I clean I listen to between 3-5 lessons a day. It's great because then I can repeat the Japanese out loud.
Wow, again thank you so much!

It seems like you're doing a lot of different stuff That makes it really hard to estimate what level you are on. Maybe "Elementary Japanese" is way below your level and won't be useful for you after all. Or maybe you could actually use a good textbook foundation to consolidate all the knowledge you've gotten from various sources.

If you would estimate what level you are at right now? Take a look at http://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html
Try to do the practice questions there. Do you think you could pass N5? N4? N3? What kind of questions seems to be the most difficult? Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading?
Based on that I could help you much better with a study plan

I really don't recommend doing RTK3 right now, it won't be useful and just take away time you could use for other things.

ThomasB Wrote:It seems like you're doing a lot of different stuff That makes it really hard to estimate what level you are on. Maybe "Elementary Japanese" is way below your level and won't be useful for you after all. Or maybe you could actually use a good textbook foundation to consolidate all the knowledge you've gotten from various sources.

I've used a lot of stuff, but it's been sooo haphazard that I don't think I'm more than a beginner. The classes really were only basics.

Quote:If you would estimate what level you are at right now? Take a look at http://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html
Try to do the practice questions there. Do you think you could pass N5? N4? N3? What kind of questions seems to be the most difficult? Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading?
Based on that I could help you much better with a study plan

I probably couldn't even pass the N5. I had trouble getting through the directions. XD lol I got the gist of it though. From reading all that, it seems my biggest problem was vocab. Which is funny because I did pretty well on the vocab questions, but I didn't do well on the grammar. But I couldn't understand a lot of the words in the grammar questions. I understood the grammar. And I bombed the listening. I suck at listening. lol So I think vocab is my weakness right now.
So yeah I am a beginner. Not a n00b, lol, just beginner.

Quote:I really don't recommend doing RTK3 right now, it won't be useful and just take away time you could use for other things.

Yeah I figured that out right away.
Thanks again.

I see, that makes sense. It's funny that you finished RTK1 already though, most people do this at a later stage I'm pretty sure it will help you a lot in the future!

My personal recommendation is getting a good textbook (Elementary Japanese) and self-studying while using Anki. I'd also continue using Jpod101 since it fits your job very well and you can get some listening practice.

Are you still doing your RTK reviews or did you stop that completely?

If I was you I would do the following:

- 1 Lesson of "Elementary Japanese 1" per week. That should be doable with ~1 hour per day. It's about the same pace a good university class progresses. If you don't have enough time you can skip some of the exercises that you think are not useful. While you are going through the book put the new vocabulary into Anki and review it. Don't forget to go back and review Grammar occasionally. It comes with a CD so you can listen to that on-the-go as well. If you have any questions you could ask the Japanese woman or just post your questions here.
- Continue Listening to Jpod101 whenever you have time. No need to make any kind of plan here, it's just good to get some listening practice. Japanese music or something similar would work as well.
- Continue doing RTK reviews. Daily would be best, but every few days would be okay as well. This should be *really* low priority, don't spend more than 10-20 Minutes a day on it. RTK won't be of much help for you now but once you are reaching higher levels (N3/N2) it'll be extremely useful. So the goal here is to "master" RTK within a span of around 6 months to 1 year, a little bit every day will go a long way.

Elementary Japanese 1 has 14 Lessons, so in 3-4 months you'll be finished with that and you'll be at a level somewhere between N5 and N4 with a good foundation in grammar and vocabulary.

@ThomasB

I believe some people do RTK late in the game, but most do it at the onset of their studies. It's one of the strengths of the method, breaking things up in an assembly line process to reduce overhead at each stage.

nest0r Wrote:@ThomasB

I believe some people do RTK late in the game, but most do it at the onset of their studies. It's one of the strengths of the method, breaking things up in an assembly line process to reduce overhead at each stage.

That may be true but I don't believe it's the best way. It's fine if you do RTK with low priority on the side but it shouldn't be your "main study tool" from the get go. For several reasons:

You'll be burned out fast. Even absolutely mastering RTK doesn't give you any kind of usable language ability. Even after spending months learning 2000 characters you won't be able to understand the simplest Japanese sentences. I don't think this is very motivating to the beginning student.

Missing connections. There are 2 possibilites for each Kanji character. Either you'll learn it first in RTK and then encounter it "in the wild" or you will see it being used somewhere and then come across it in RTK. In my experience the second case is *far* superior because you will actually understand the meaning of the Kanji. RTK tries to capture the complex meaning of Kanji with a simple keyword, very often that's not possible. Some keywords are so abstract (or similar to / duplicates of others) that you'll have a hard time imaging or remembering them. If you learn the RTK keyword first and then encounter the character later, it'll often be like "Ohhh, that's what the keyword was meant to represent. That's totally different from what I thought it was." or "Wait, the keyword I learned for this doesn't make sense at all here so the character must have other meanings as well". If you encounter the Kanji first in the wild and then in RTK you won't have any of these problems. On top of that you'll have a much easier time reviewing because your brain already made more connections for the same item.

I'm a fan of RTK and I think it has it's place but certainly not as a main study tool for the beginning student, except if done at a very low priority so that you're developing a routine and can use the knowledge once you're at an appropriate level.

I think it's definitely the best way to do it first, as long as you combine it with other forms of study that don't require kanji at the same time, i.e. grammar and listening, et cetera. But if you only do one thing at the onset, I'd recommend RTK. You can also do it in the form of RTK Lite with its variations, and break up and incorporate the kanji you learn in batches (this would be best with a card maturity reminder plugin so you'd know when kanji from a lesson were mature and ready to be implemented).

Also, you don't simply come across them in the wild, as part of the assembly line process you then begin learning words containing those kanji. Even if you don't do this in a systematic fashion, it's easier to learn the words when you already know the kanji or are versed in the process of RTK.

The keywords are not for learning meanings, they're merely cues. They fade to the background. They are quite useful as mnemonic hooks as well, should you choose to bring them to the fore when learning a new word. You want to reduce overhead when you're learning Japanese and not have to learn a new kanji each time. You get a deeper, more robust encounter when you've already internalized the complex orthography and merely slot in the readings as you acquire the vocabulary.

Quote:I think it's definitely the best way to do it first, as long as you combine it with other forms of study that don't require kanji at the same time, i.e. grammar and listening, et cetera.

I don't agree with you here. If you do this you'll be learning different parts of a language separately but nothing will "fit together". I think that's exactly the problem Angeldust had. He has done RTK. He has learned Tae Kim. He was doing sentence and vocab reviews. Listening to Jpod101. Yet he cannot pass N5 and has very little usable language ability.

In the beginning language learning should be an integrated process including Vocab, Grammar, Reading, Listening, Speaking at the same level. Most textbooks follow such an integrated approach. If you somehow try to learn these things separately your progress will be much slower because your brain is making fewer connections and you won't get the big picture. This only applies to the beginning level though. Once you're a more advanced learner it's fine to go about learning these element separately because you already have a good grasp of how these elements "fit together".

Personally I think the best time to start RTK is when you have good basic knowledge of the Japanese language, such as N4 and finish it when you reach N3.

Quote:Also, you don't simply come across them in the wild, as part of the assembly line process you then begin learning words containing those kanji. Even if you don't do this in a systematic fashion, it's easier to learn the words when you already know the kanji or are versed in the process of RTK.

True that it is easier to learn words when you already know the Kanji. But this is irrelevant here because a good textbook will take care of this for you. The necessary Kanji will be introduced together with the words containing them. For a beginner this is much more efficient because Kanji are introduced based on frequency, not based on radicals. Of course you are losing the benefit of radical mnemonics here but the benefit of learning the most frequent Kanji by far outweighs this. How often will you see 事? All the time. Where in RTK is it? Frame one thousand something. Even worse, if you only do RTK you will have no idea that is a very important Kanji, while 凹 may not be. Once you are reaching a higher level of proficiency the difference in Kanji frequency will begin to decline and the benefit of learning by radicals will outweigh the benefits of learning by frequency. That's not true for a beginner though. Sure, RTKLite makes it a bit better but not much.

Quote:The keywords are not for learning meanings, they're merely cues. They fade to the background. They are quite useful as mnemonic hooks as well, should you choose to bring them to the fore when learning a new word. You want to reduce overhead when you're learning Japanese and not have to learn a new kanji each time. You get a deeper, more robust encounter when you've already internalized the complex orthography and merely slot in the readings as you acquire the vocabulary.

Sure, I agree with you, that's the exact purpose of RTK. However, I simply don't think that this applies to beginning learners. One reason is that in the beginning stage of learning Japanese Kanji are not as important as grammar, basic vocab or sentence structure. It's all about getting a feel for and understand the basic structure of the lanuage. You won't get the full benefit of RTK until you reach at least the intermediate level where most of your study will involve learning new words and readings. This usually happens around N3-N2. That's where I first started to realize how helpful doing RTK was.

nest0r Wrote:I think it's definitely the best way to do it first, as long as you combine it with other forms of study that don't require kanji at the same time, i.e. grammar and listening, et cetera. ... .

I combine everything, but only focus on one aspect. "傷口を消毒して包帯を巻く。"　I might focus on the grammar points in one situation. The Kanji in another. Is that what you mean?