[Zgarbas]

I dunno, I'm kind of confused now.

She could interleave, but see, if she can't handle 20 kanji a day, or cannot allocate enough time for it, why do you go by the assumption that doing Heisig at the same time as minna would be less time-consuming and/or easier to do? Especially if she were to study the Minna Kanji at the same time, effectively doubling the amount of kanjis she would have to study whilst having to also learn the primitives for it?

I think Heisig first is not the best idea, since it's a lot of upfront effort with no applicable benefits until one starts learning vocab/grammar/everything else.

It's better (imo) to do Heisig once you're early intermediate (finished Genki2) since what you learn is immediately applicable. This increases motivation and aids memory. Just trickle learn kanji as the textbook introduces them until that point.

Zgarbas Wrote:I dunno, I'm kind of confused now.

She could interleave, but see, if she can't handle 20 kanji a day, or cannot allocate enough time for it, why do you go by the assumption that doing Heisig at the same time as minna would be less time-consuming and/or easier to do? Especially if she were to study the Minna Kanji at the same time, effectively doubling the amount of kanjis she would have to study whilst having to also learn the primitives for it?

Let's put some hard numbers then. As someone who is just stating with Japanese, answer yourself this question: "Can I finish Heisig within 3 months?"

If the answer is "Yes" - do Heisig first and then come back for the advice (sentences?, grammar?, textbook?)

If the answer is "No" - do textbook and as you encounter kanji in your textbook, go to Heisig, study the character there, break it down to primitives, SRS all those, learn complete words with their pronunciation and writing. With this approach you will slowly but surely acquire genuine language skills.

Inny Jan Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:I dunno, I'm kind of confused now.

She could interleave, but see, if she can't handle 20 kanji a day, or cannot allocate enough time for it, why do you go by the assumption that doing Heisig at the same time as minna would be less time-consuming and/or easier to do? Especially if she were to study the Minna Kanji at the same time, effectively doubling the amount of kanjis she would have to study whilst having to also learn the primitives for it?

Let's put some hard numbers then. As someone who is just stating with Japanese, answer yourself this question: "Can I finish Heisig within 3 months?"

If the answer is "Yes" - do Heisig first and then come back for the advice (sentences?, grammar?, textbook?)

If the answer is "No" - do textbook and as you encounter kanji in your textbook, go to Heisig, study the character there, break it down to primitives, SRS all those, learn complete words with their pronunciation and writing. With this approach you will slowly but surely acquire genuine language skills.

Actually, your "no" case is a perfectly fine way to study japanese even if you think you *can* do RTK in 3 months. The main thing, i think, is to avoid getting deep into the language with kanji skills massively trailing behind. Don't ignore the squiggles. Don't ignore real written japanese. Heisig isn't magic. The main advantage that it has going for it is that you learn the kanji in an order that makes them easier to learn. Doing them in order of encounter, so long as you still break them up and learn the primitives first, isn't stupid at all.

Actually, as i've hinted, i didn't do RTK first. I was half way to N5 before i even started and didn't get RTK Lite knocked over until i could probably pass N4. All this was in the middle of intensive japanese classes. So i can't directly comment on what a totally self-study approach with RTK first would be like. Having said that, knowing all the relavant kanji was flipping awesome when it came to learning the N2 vocab list. Kanji were a complete non-issue.

It really doesn't matter how soon you finish RTK because what you really need to be learning is words. If you learn 2000 common words and consequently pick up only 1000 different kanji that knowledge is ultimately more usable than nailing down 2000 kanji upfront but not knowing any words.