Quoted from someone:

"Can anyone give me advice on what to do? I am fluent in speaking Japanese, but my reading is only elementary.

I understand grammer thoroughly, I can read most manga but I cannot read light novels, novels or visual novels because they have so much kanji! T.T

What might be the best solution for me?
Thank you"

Anyone have advice applicable to him/her? I didn't think RTK would be the best solution.

Aaeru Wrote:Anyone have advice applicable to him/her? I didn't think RTK would be the best solution.

Why not RTK? If kanji is all that's keeping him/her back, I think RTK would actually be the best solution.

What does "fluent in speaking Japanese" mean? Does this person have Japanese parent(s) or something like that?

nohika Wrote:

Aaeru Wrote:Anyone have advice applicable to him/her? I didn't think RTK would be the best solution.

Why not RTK? If kanji is all that's keeping him/her back, I think RTK would actually be the best solution.

I second RTK. Or maybe RTK > Core 2k > Core 6k.

If they can speak fluently, maybe they could jump into doing extensive reading. They could start off with some easier manga, or read some online stories, or news articles. Then they could make a list of any words with kanji that they can't read, and throw it into anki.
Or why not try reading with parallel texts? There are a some good textbooks out there that introduce students to reading Japanese literature. They give furigana for new words the first time, and they break down the sentences to help with understanding.
Or there is always Kanji Odyssey 2001 or Kanji in Context. I've been using KO2001 and it's been a huge help, and I've heard good things about KiC as well.
I just think the best way to improve one's reading is to read, read, and read some more.

I've known plenty of half-Japanese people that could speak a million times better than me but at the same time can't read a thing. They are definitely out there.

Kanji in Context (and perhaps KO2001, which I've never looked at) is a good suggestion.

It also depends what is meant by fluent. If you mean a near-native or native level of fluency then RTK, at least with English keywords, is probably a waste of time. RTK with Japanese keywords might be good if the person also wanted to be able to write the characters well. It also depends on if the person speaks English well enough to do RTK.

Yep I've known a ton of people who are conversationally fluent but can't read worth a nickel. In fact, I've lived with a roommate who lived in Japan for 10 years, learned to speak, got married, but didn't know more then a handful of hiragana.

After a bunch of experimentation I would say that in this situation the listening-reading method could work rather well. Any long texts with parallel audio would be ideal.

Yeah, not so sure about RTK. To be honest, I'd just go through the radicals and/or RTK primitives, start reading stuff, and dump unknown vocab into an anki deck, then add sentence for context if desired. Premade decks aren't bad either, if that's your kind of thing.

If you want to be fancy, you could try going for mass readings a la the movie method, kanji town or something comparable. It might be pretty efficient in this case. Haven't tried it personally though.

Why not just start reading things with furigana? You'll know the words because you know how to say them. You'll learn the kanji just by association. After you've seen a word a dozen times, it'll start to stick automatically.

wccrawford Wrote:Why not just start reading things with furigana? You'll know the words because you know how to say them. You'll learn the kanji just by association. After you've seen a word a dozen times, it'll start to stick automatically.

This may only be my gut feeling, and I can't support this by any evidence, but I feel like that won't work.

I tried something similar, watching shows with Japanese subtitles to learn kanji readings, but after a week or so I gave up. Too many kanji, not enough repetition. It felt similar to doing only new cards in Anki without reviewing properly (I've done that, too : D).

Maybe if one did that for a longer peroid of time, say a year or more, it would work.

But if you have close to no kanji knowledge, I feel like it's close to impossible to remember kanji + reading just by seeing them next to each other.

Anyway, just my gut feeling.

I'm with the others: obvious answer: learn kanji.

As for the method to do that, well all of them involve sustained effort. I can see RTK being frustrating if you already know the language due to its lack of actual Japanese meanings. Maybe something like Kanjidamange combined with readings?

If they are already fluent, just go through Core10k. They shouldn't need to worry about the meaning of the words, they just need to remember the readings. It should go really fast. If they finish Core6k, they should be able to read 90%+(?) of the things they see. If they finish Core10k, I imagine that amount would go up to 99%+.

RTK would probably be a waste of time unless they wanted to learn how to write the kanji.

It's not the most exciting method but using flashcards/anki would probably be the most effective. I don't see the need to do RTK if you already have a good Japanese vocab, in fact it might even be harder that way than just sticking to the readings and Japanese meanings.

If you could learn kanji easily just by reading lots then there would be no need for Japanese people to study kanji at school, they would just pick them up naturally over the 100s of books they read. This clearly isn't the case.
Reading is more useful for reinforcing kanji you already know. I think it's only really useful for learning new ones if you already understand 90%+ of the kanji in the book, so the ones you don't know really stand out.

apirx Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Why not just start reading things with furigana? You'll know the words because you know how to say them. You'll learn the kanji just by association. After you've seen a word a dozen times, it'll start to stick automatically.

This may only be my gut feeling, and I can't support this by any evidence, but I feel like that won't work.

I tried something similar, watching shows with Japanese subtitles to learn kanji readings, but after a week or so I gave up. Too many kanji, not enough repetition. It felt similar to doing only new cards in Anki without reviewing properly (I've done that, too : D).

Maybe if one did that for a longer peroid of time, say a year or more, it would work.

But if you have close to no kanji knowledge, I feel like it's close to impossible to remember kanji + reading just by seeing them next to each other.

Anyway, just my gut feeling.

Let me just tell you that it works. At least that's what I did because I find really fun/entertaining talk/variety shows. what show were you watching? well we all have different tastes but you know... I started watching shouwa x heisei and I remember not being able to read kakutoku and i didn't even know what uwaki (this was like 3 years ago) was but the show was cute and fun so i kept watching and i got into other shows and other celebrities and now I know what japanese tv can offer me and what I like out of that and just watch those. So like 3 yrs ago I started watching that... not every week basis just whatever youtube didn't delete yet and then a year after that I really got into the talk/variety shows bcacase people uploaded lots of 'em on YT and there were some really interesting ones. Now I feel like I don't gain much from watching talk/variety because I usually can read/understand everything they say or if i don't it's only like 1 phrase that somebody said that i didn't catch.

I wish I could do this with korean but I just hate korean talk/variety shows with their sound effects and their incessant need to sing/dance which does not involve telling interesting stories...

hmmm now that I think about it... the only way I could understand the show more was to READ the text on the screen especially when they wrote out what the person said so that's why I had to up my reading skills (loooking up stuff on screen) to up my understanding skills. So i guess if you already know what they're saying then you're not as driven to read what it says... yeah you could just ignore everything lol.

Honma dekka is pretty interesting and they have a lot of kanji... sometimes they have mad scienetic words since they delve into that kind of stuff but for the most part, common, every day kanji etc.

and read the internet with rikai-chan!

apirx Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Why not just start reading things with furigana? You'll know the words because you know how to say them. You'll learn the kanji just by association. After you've seen a word a dozen times, it'll start to stick automatically.

This may only be my gut feeling, and I can't support this by any evidence, but I feel like that won't work.

I tried something similar, watching shows with Japanese subtitles to learn kanji readings, but after a week or so I gave up. Too many kanji, not enough repetition. It felt similar to doing only new cards in Anki without reviewing properly (I've done that, too : D).

Maybe if one did that for a longer peroid of time, say a year or more, it would work.

But if you have close to no kanji knowledge, I feel like it's close to impossible to remember kanji + reading just by seeing them next to each other.

Anyway, just my gut feeling.

The furigana method might work if they combine it with Anki or flashcards though. If they do a read through once for fun, and then go through the text again, but this time write down any kanji or compounds that they haven't seen before, and add them to Anki, it will give that extra bit of re-enforcement.
I'm taking a break from KO2001 right now, and I'm instead focusing on reading through my　とびら textbook, and a Read Real Japanese book. I'm adding all the new words I see to Anki, and when I get to the end of a chapter, or story, I'll go back and re-read to see how much I remember. I'm only about a week into doing this, so we'll see how it works, but in my mind, this method sounds like a good idea.

Hello, I am the one being quoted in the first post. My reading isn't that bad, but I cannot read any Visual Novel or Light Novel without inferring or listening. The problem with manga, is that unless it's a seinen or hard sci fi, theirs usually only 1-4 kanji's I can't read. I end up inferring the kanji, instead of actually remembering what it's supposed to me.

I have kanji knowledge, up to 4th grade, but I have forgotten most, if not all of it.

Anime hasn't really helped me, but manga has helped me retain basic reading skill. Visual novels actually helped me learn on the other hand, I may try that.

I'm gonna assume you are familiar with RTK and Anki.

If I were in your position, I would do RTK1 and then use Anki to learn vocab and therefore kanji readings. I imagine that you could do that at a very fast pace, since you already know all the words.

Anyway, I'm just a beginner at Japanese, so my advice may be worthless.

edit: Changed the wording.

I've always kind of thought that stuff like RtK is for non-Japanese and that it wouldn't be as effective as a native.

I mean, I'm not saying that Japanese education system is perfected but I figured that it works better for them than for us.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to learn kanji the way the japanese do.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I mean, I'm not saying that Japanese education system is perfected but I figured that it works better for them than for us.

It's designed for school children that don't understand the complex meanings of some characters that are really quite simple to draw. As an adult it makes sense to learn the radicals and build up using mnemonics, using the Heisig method or whatever.

Writing Kanji correctly is quite difficult even for adults, and requires a lot of practice to master.

Kanji comes in 6 forms. Three of them are visual mnemonics.

Children in Japan learn the radicals with their names, and the history of Kanji.

The Heisig and similar methods are designed to reduce the obstacles in learning Kanji. However, they should be considered a beginning in mastering Kanji.

If a person can speak in full sentences in Japanese, then an immersion method would be more beneficial.

Omoishinji Wrote:The Heisig and similar methods are designed to reduce the obstacles in learning Kanji. However, they should be considered a beginning in mastering Kanji.

What else should a student of Japanese need to study if he wants to "master" the kanji? Learning readings is the most obvious one, I guess.

Omoishinji Wrote:If a person can speak in full sentences in Japanese, then an immersion method would be more beneficial.

But what the person said who commented, is that so far immersion isn't working for him. He glosses over the kanji and doesn't remember them. I think RTK will help give him/her the "hook" to keep those kanji in their mind, even if they just do RTK Lite or whatever. That's why I stopped "normal" study and came over to RTK - because without furigana, I was confusing kanji that looked similar because it was hard to tell the difference.

RTK with Japanese keywords.