Hi, I'm a new poster here and thought I would ask some of the veterans to help design a plan for me.

First off, I'm in my fifth year of high school and I am heading to the University of Toronto in August for a BSc in psychology. I plan on taking Japanese throughout my four year stay.

I have been completing RtK at a steady pace of at least 10 per day while reviewing at least 100 per day. I started in August and will be done around 1200 by Christmas and the entire (first) book by April. I discovered this site after I had made over 2000 flashcards over at flashcardmachine so I do all of my work over there.

I am also studying grammar at Tim Sensei's corner and will have completed all of his lessons by the end of February. Here are my other Japanese resources that I will have after Christmas:

-Kenkyusha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary
-Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary
-Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary
-A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino
-A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns by Naoko Chino

-Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication by Taeko Kamiya
-Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar + Structure
-Japanese Demystified: A self-teaching guide
-Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya
-Japanese Grammar by Carol Akiyama

As you can see, I am well prepared for my studies after I complete RtK. My questions are pretty simple. When should I start RtK2/3? What resources should I use out of the list above and why? What are your thoughts on the books above? Should I look outside those resources to read newspapers/video games/web sites?

If you could help me design a plan using all of the information I've given you, I will be eternally grateful. Thanks so much!

EDIT: Also, I've heard a lot about "Anki". What is it and is it the most effective way to learn kanji? I will probably stick with flashcardmachine seeing as I've put hundreds of hours into it but I'm interested in other methods of learning.

Anki is a flexible spaced repetition software program - which is basically a flashcard program with efficient timing characteristics.
http://ankisrs.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRS

If your flashcardmachine is not SRS, you should consider choosing a different system rather than wasting time over-reviewing material.

Also, I think that you will very swiftly outgrow the furigana dictionaries - they just don't have enough words for real native material. If you're going to drop that much cash (or have that much cash dropped on your behalf) on learning books, I'd cut back on the paper volumes significantly and get a decent electronic dictionary from the start.

The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is pretty much a must-have, and you should familiarize yourself with it early on but it's best used in conjuction with reading native material, not in place of a text.
I'm not familiar with all the other books on your list, but it looks like you may be getting a lot of redundant material. I've heard a lot of people have started their learning with Japanese the Manga Way so that's probably a good one to hit first.

Quote:-Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary
-Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary

I had these but never really used them. I ended up trading them in.
jisho.org for AEDict and alc.co.jp for their online dictionary has been everything I've really needed.

Quote:-A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino

A good resource that I highly recommend, but I'm not sure it's good to learn out of. You often get way too many details and you can get bogged down in them. I think it's great to have for a reference when you're reading out of something.

Is there any reason you want to read the newspaper?

The biggest obstacle I've had is not grammar but vocabulary, and in my opinion textbooks are short on vocabulary.
The way I've learned vocabulary is through acquiring KO2001 and adding all the example sentences in Anki, going through JLPT N2 and N1 vocab books and putting them in Anki, and adding random words from reading, TV shows, songs, etc. Don't know if that's the best/most efficient but it's what I did and it works out somewhat.

Anki is a flash card program that uses timed intervals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

I don't know if flashcardmachine has timed intervals.

[Zgarbas]

Cut the handbook of Japanese verbs and opt for the handbook of Japanese particles.
Also, before buying grammar books perhaps have a look at Tae Kim's guide?

Don't waste money on paper dictionaries.

And looking outside textbooks is always recommended =). News, videogames, shows, whatever you like. You probably won't understand 95% of it at first but it slowly gets you acquainted with the language. Rikai-chan is a great tool for reading online (I personally have a love-hate relationship with rikai-chan, though).


Completely unrelated but man, I haven't seen a SxE in years.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I will look into an electronic dictionary for sure.

So, I was using flashcardmachine today and it was horrendously slow so I thought I'd check out Anki. I am moderately intimidated by all of the options. I downloaded the 3007 card RTK deck but don't know how to proceed.

I am 99.9% accurate with cards 1 - 500, 99% accurate with 501-700 and could probably stand to review the others above 700.

I am at 1010 and would like to do at least 10 new cards a day and review 100 (not sure if that's the right way to do it with Anki).

How do I start at this point... halfway through RtK1 with a very, very strong base for the first few hundred?

EDIT: I guess I'm wondering if there's anyway I can just select a big group of cards and mark them mature and then another group... very good.

Open the deck, go into 'Edit->Browse Items'. In the browse window, select the cards you already have practice with and then select 'Actions->Reschedule' and space them out over however much time.

I'm not sure exactly which deck you have, but my deck links the keywords to the stories on this site, and I later added a snippet of code that I got from someone on this site so I could get a link to yamasa's animated stroke order on the flip side of the card.

The code for the strokes looks like this,

<a class="rel" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SortedByKanji2THEnglish/{{text:Kanji}}">strokes</a>

The code for the links to this site uses the HeisigNumber field, but something similar could probably be done with the keyword itself (as long as you don't change the keyword, which I have done to a couple of them... not without checking the index for collisions, of course!)

<a href="http://kanji.koohii.com/study/?framenum={{text:Heisig number}}">

I'm also a supporter of free options available. Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar is easy to understand and comprehensive. After rtk1 is over you can look into vocabulary decks like core2k/6k or KO2001 (a bit harder material).

I haven't quite started yet so I am pretty free to choose any deck. Although when I selected "browse items", the cards seem to be in almost random order: one, ten, likeness, adhere....

Which one are you using? It sounds like the most helpful one.

How exactly do I add the code so I can get the stroke order?
Thanks a lot.


Edit: There appears to be a step by step guide on the link you posted. Haha.
I'll be fine with the stroke order fonts.

SxECanadianFanSxE Wrote:Although when I selected "browse items", the cards seem to be in almost random order: one, ten, likeness, adhere....

I'm using "Heisigs Remember the Kanji (RTK) 13", which may be the same one you already have, it has 3007 cards... but IIRC, there's several with very similar names and naturally the same number of Kanji.

Near the upper-right is what you're sorting by... since my deck has a Heisig Number field, I can sort by that (or any other field). You might be looking at them sorted by when you last saw them or something.

Oh, and if you edit the 'card layout' you can change the format in which a card is presented, including adding HTML links. Beware though, tinkering with the code that presents the cards can lead to wasting more time optimizing your card layout than is saved in actual learning!

I changed my deck to the one you're using and did some intervals on the first 900 or so kanji to minimize the growing pains. I also switched the font to the stroke order one (thanks!)

I am confused on how you linked the keywords/stories to the kanji.
I am a noob when it comes to this and pasted that "code" into the "Heisig Number Field" but it didn't do anything.


Also, I like the stroke order appearing when I'm asked to write the kanji (that is, when the keywords appear) but would dislike it when having to read the kanji. Is there any way to get around that?

Go into the browser, and you'll see a button that says 'card layout'.

Click the 'card layout' and a window shows up showing you the currently selected card on the right side, and the code for the layout of the card on the left side.

Anything you write into the 'Question' and 'Answer' sections on that card layout will appear on every card. The HTML link I provided above should be put in there if you want to use it (maybe not necessary if you're happy with the stroke-order font.)

By pasting the link into the Heisig Number field you changed that field on one particular card from, say, '10' to '10<a bunch of html>' :o
That won't affect much except sorting, although you should now have the front side of your cards all be links to this site if you click on the keywords - that link will be broken for any card you edited the Heisig Number on. :o

Somewhere on the front page of ankisrs.net there were links to some youtube instruction videos that cover getting around the (somewhat complex) layout of anki. They might be worth watching. Then again, he's rewriting it from the ground up and the new version should, I believe, be simpler to navigate, and should be released early next year.

Perhaps a related question:

How much grammar does Tae Kim really cover? Is there a lot left to learn after one finishes Tae Kim? Is one able to fully understand native material with just Tae Kim?

apirx Wrote:Perhaps a related question:

How much grammar does Tae Kim really cover? Is there a lot left to learn after one finishes Tae Kim? Is one able to fully understand native material with just Tae Kim?

Depends what you mean by native material. Tae Kim gives you the absolute basics, and not really much more to be honest. It might be enough for some of the simpler native material for children (such as Doraemon etc), but there is a LOT more to learn before you can confidently pick up and and read whatever you want. That said, most of the stuff that Tae Kim goes into is very 'high frequency' and is stuff you are definately going to see in native material. Tae Kim's guide is a start, but depending on your goals, you may want to go a lot deeper than that.

@SxeCanadianfanSxe

This may sound unrelated but do you watch the Philip Defranco Show???

By the way about the Plan thing

It seems like RTK 1 the perfect place to start because without it you can't really do anything. While you do that you should get a feel for what you like and what you'll do next, personally I think I'll do Core2k sentences because I just want to start reading already but that's just me.