I have little use for handwriting in my daily life, therefore I am wondering if going through the entire rtk method could be the wrong approach for me. It appears that some people i've come across have learnt to read novels and thousands of kanji or hanzi without actually doing any writing methods at all. They cant write but instead use computer input only.

I am not sure if I would continue the reviews for years after with this method and I won't be doing much handwriting to compensate to keep up my writing. Also I want to learn how to read ASAP

Given my position, does any body have a good method for learning how to read without actually learning how to produce kanji? I assume it's just massive reading and recognition of meaning and sounds that you remember with constant exposure?

How would individual meanings be learnt and how can you best go about recognizing each kanji and readings without going through any writing or story methods?

Thanks
Aqua

Have you tried just making a vocab deck and learning to recognise compounds?

It might not be necessary to study them in isolation if you don't want to write, but it can't hurt. It shouldn't take too long compared to the overall task of learning the language. There's no need to keep reviewing forever, and I certainly wouldn't consider stories necessary either.

I have little use at the moment for handwritting as well but I still found going through RTK very usefull. Before RTK I tried learning japanese kanji initially by going character by character and learning the readings in conjunction with each character. By 400 characters however (and at the time no SRS program) It became clear that this was not easy and not efficient. I found it particularly difficult to tell the differences between several similar characters. A problem I think RTK, by the use of learning characters in parts and ordering similiar characters together, alleviates. So even if you dont have an interest in writing I think RTK certainly has its uses.
You could of course just try what dizmox suggests and see how far that gets you. I'm not sure which would be most efficient and I'm curious what kind of problems you may or may not encounter by not doing RTK.

I don't think you are likely to find a faster way to learn the Kanji than RTK+SRS, and I think that if you try RTK+SRS you will find that knowing the correct writing makes remembering and recognizing easier.

Even if you are not interested in writing them yourself, understanding them as written strokes helps to read others' handwriting (which appears sometimes even in published works), calligraphic brushstrokes, etc., and most importantly helps distinguish clearly very tiny differences in appearance.

Nonetheless, some people have done pure SRS learning so it's certainly possible, perhaps even in the same time as RTK+SRS, it's just more a roll of the dice... you might finish faster, you might finish slower.

It really depends on your and how well you'd learn that way.

I found that RTK wasn't really for me, and moved to just reading a lot and studying vocab discretely. It's been great for me.

It may or may not work well for you

dmatsui Wrote:I have little use at the moment for handwritting as well but I still found going through RTK very usefull. Before RTK I tried learning japanese kanji initially by going character by character and learning the readings in conjunction with each character. By 400 characters however (and at the time no SRS program) It became clear that this was not easy and not efficient. I found it particularly difficult to tell the differences between several similar characters. A problem I think RTK, by the use of learning characters in parts and ordering similiar characters together, alleviates. So even if you dont have an interest in writing I think RTK certainly has its uses.
You could of course just try what dizmox suggests and see how far that gets you. I'm not sure which would be most efficient and I'm curious what kind of problems you may or may not encounter by not doing RTK.

Kanji are categorized by their radicals. There are many resources that are designed to learn Kanji and the how they are categorized.

Aquablue Wrote:Given my position, does any body have a good method for learning how to read without actually learning how to produce kanji? I assume it's just massive reading and recognition of meaning and sounds that you remember with constant exposure?

How would individual meanings be learnt and how can you best go about recognizing each kanji and readings without going through any writing or story methods?

Thanks
Aqua

There is no quick way of learning how to read Kanji. From testimonial I have seen many people seem satisfied with RTK. You have to learn the meaning of words and not individual Kanji. However, assigning meanings to individual Kanji does aid in learning new words quicker. Try RTK and see if it is for you, that is the only way to go.

Rewriting a certain kanji once or twice won't do any harm.
It increases recall of the vocabulary.

Also, I agree with Omoishinji.


The shared anki deck "Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (RTK) 1+3", (which is the most downloaded deck in the Anki repository), has a link to every story on every flashcard. It's a very straightforward deck that makes it easy to try out.

If you don't like RTK, I assume you would have to learn words through context for the most part.

Simultaneously, you would learn words through media and you would look up whatever grammar you need to.

That's pretty much what I do now..

Though RTK is beneficial I it's not 100% necessary if you just want to learn how to read. The thing to do is just start out with core2000 or something like that... a sentence pack that has a few thousand sentences covering the basic words. You'll just have to slog it out in the beginning remember how to read each kanji (that's the case whether or not you do RTK) but it's possible to do for sure. RTK makes recognition easier which helps when you tie things back to their meaning but you can pick up what a kanji means by learning a few words that it's in.

Anyways, I did RTK1 but not RTK3... yet I managed to learn to read up to 3000 kanji just fine. So, you don't NEED rtk but it is very helpful. That being said it also does take a lot of time and effort and you don't need handwriting an awful lot... the choice is yours.

Sounds like you may want something along the lines of Katzu Lazy Kanji method.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ard-format

Never done it but it's something like that.

Handwriting isn't just for learning to produce/handwrite the kanji, it's also for recognition/recall in part through the incorporation of muscle memory.

I've posted a tonne of papers about this in the past, but here's a nice primer that I was able to find in a few seconds via typing “handwriting” in my URL bar in Firefox, since it's bookmarked: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...22518.html

I did a fairly traditional course of Japanese study through college, with all the kanji production that entailed, but since then I've focused almost 100% on reading comprehension more than writing comprehension.

* This will kill you on the JLPT if they still do the questions where you have to differentiate between 検、験、鹸, etc. (I passed level 1 the year before they changed the test, so I'm not sure if they've changed that part.)

* The occasional times when I do have to handwrite something, it's extremely embarrassing to have to pull out my dictionary to figure out how to write it.

* Despite those two caveats, I think it was the right way to go for me. Have you ever read those articles about how you recognize words even if the individual letters are scrambled? http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/s...equestions
If you read enough in Japanese, it starts to be the same way -- I can glance at 試験 and recognize what the word means, without thinking of the individual kanji in it, and even if I might spell it 試検 if you asked me to write it.

(I don't live in Japan or use Japanese in a professional context -- I just read for my own research and pleasure -- so I'm rarely embarrassed by the need to write a kanji I don't know. I would like to improve my kanji writing abilities one day, but I'd rather get better at reading.)

I'm not fond of creating stories either, and it too isn't fit for me. I mainly use RTK for Heisig's order of kanji. He actually puts kanji in an order that makes sense when talking about kanji parts. He puts lookalikes right next to each other so you're not too surprised when you think you see a kanji you already covered. I started RTK when I already finished the Core 6000 list and know many general use kanji. Heisig's order is interesting because it introduces quite some new kanji for even intermediate students, though I'm not too fond of kanji like　朋 or 昌 （note: not 冒！） being one of the first to learn, I haven't seen it being used even once in 1,5 years. Those might be better saved for later.

I find that using rtk actually helps recognition now even without writing. It helps you break the character down in your head when you see them and tie it to a general meaning. I also find reviewing by recognizing rather than producing from a keyword more valuable for my interest in learning how to read faster.

Aquablue Wrote:I also find reviewing by recognizing rather than producing from a keyword more valuable for my interest in learning how to read faster.

Learn to produce the kanji from the keyword. Then learn learn to produce the keyword by recognition. Doing these together will make it the kanji harder to forget.

People have made some good suggestions. I doubt you'll find very much variation, though. You're gonna be studying for a year minimum if you want to learn to read Japanese. Personally, I would do whatever it takes to ease the load rather than focus on the fact I'm not going to be writing much in my daily life. If you study it, you should write it.

tokyostyle Wrote:but moving on to real Japanese helps a whole lot too!

No need to move on. Once you've gotten the most common kanji down, you can do RTK and learn Japanese vocab simultaneously.