I'll be finishing RTK 1 within the week. I've been concurrently studying from the Genki textbooks (currently on volume 2) for grammar and some basic vocabulary. I was just browsing RTK 2 and thinking that studying the pure groups and maybe the semi-pure groups might be a good idea. This wouldn't be my primary study since that would be completing Genki 2. I would do it on the side. I was wondering if there exists any mnemonic technique for memorizing something like a pure group. I would think it would relate the signal primitive to its sound. If this exists, could someone show me a few examples? Or is just plain memorization and relation to to the corresponding compounds the best way to proceed?

One possible way, especially for the pure groups, is just to find one compound word that you already know -- preferably from the base kanji but even from one of the others as long as you know which part is the signal primitive. Then since it's usually easy to remember the kanji for a word you already know (particularly if you did RTK 1) you can use that knowledge to help you remember the rest.

But I haven't used RTK 2 so this is just a guess.

Hmm, I started off doing RTK 2 with the Movie Method, well I used anime/manga/books but it's pretty much the same. I tied each reading with an anime (etc) series, most specifically a character, or memorable scene from that series, and made memonics with the anime + Heisig keyword, and I kept a spreadsheet of my kanji/anime pairings to see how many kanji had the same reading.

Bokusenou Wrote:Hmm, I started off doing RTK 2 with the Movie Method, well I used anime/manga/books but it's pretty much the same. I tied each reading with an anime (etc) series, most specifically a character, or memorable scene from that series, and made memonics with the anime + Heisig keyword, and I kept a spreadsheet of my kanji/anime pairings to see how many kanji had the same reading.

I watch anime and read some manga so this may be good. Could you give me a few examples? Though it may be asking too much, could I have the spreadsheet also :> ? If not, a few examples would be fine.

yudantaiteki Wrote:One possible way, especially for the pure groups, is just to find one compound word that you already know -- preferably from the base kanji but even from one of the others as long as you know which part is the signal primitive. Then since it's usually easy to remember the kanji for a word you already know (particularly if you did RTK 1) you can use that knowledge to help you remember the rest.

But I haven't used RTK 2 so this is just a guess.

That may work well for pure groups. I took a look at the blog for the movie method. The problem with it is that I don't remember movies well to be able to recreate many scenes in my mind. I also watch too few movies to make it effective.

Am I correct in thinking that I should give RTK 2 a shot, at least with the pure groups? I find that when I'm studying the vocabulary in the Genki texbooks, I'm studying each word twice. Once for the kanji representation and an additional time for the reading. If I happen to know one of the components then of course it becomes faster (but I don't recognize many components at this point). Would RTK 2 be a good stepping stone before I start a hard core vocabulary program like core 2000/6000 or ko2001? I wanted to complete the Genki series before I started one of those programs.