I have restarted RtK for the third time in as many years, and I am at the point where I always stop. This time, I have taken it pretty slow to avoid the burnout that I normally face (Yay, I'm not burned out!!). So I have set aside up to three hours a day to study a maximum of twenty-five cards. Within sixty to ninety minutes have completed all of my review cards, and made up stories to go along with the twenty-five new cards. What I would like to know is if there is something productive that I can be doing in that remaining sixty to ninety minutes in addition to my RtK reviews. If I attempt any more than twenty-five new cards, it'll likely lead to burnout for me, so I'd like to avoid "just doing more cards," if possible. I learned the kana before I found RtK, and right now I am 225 frames into book one. I have looked into Tae Kim's Grammar Guide and think that may be a good step to take, but is it a good idea to learn grammar and 3007 characters concurrently? I've also gone to erin.ne.jp a few times, and like the idea of it. I'd appreciate any input the community has regarding this, thanks for your time!

Watch Code Geass. Will you learn much? Probably not, but it's ***** awesome and will motivate you.

I've already started on that step lardycake! Just a few weeks ago, I started watching it. I really enjoy it, and it actually did motivate me to start learning again. Good advice which I would also recommend to anyone.

axlmccracken Wrote:I have looked into Tae Kim's Grammar Guide and think that may be a good step to take, but is it a good idea to learn grammar and 3007 characters concurrently?

If you ask me, it makes a heck of a lot more sense than learning 3007 characters before you learn any grammar.

I guess that does make a lot of sense, Fillanzea. In that case, I'll start on Tae Kim's Grammar Guide today. Learning speaking and writing at the same time sounds like a pretty good idea anyway.

Sounds like a good plan, focus on RTK and if you feel like you have extra time/motivation, spend that on grammar. Tae Kim is a good source.
Also, I think you shouldn't bother with RTK3, it's not worth the time especially if you're burning out with RTK1. Just do it later when you're fairly good at the language, or pick up kanjis when you happen to encounter them.

I might get flamed for this, but I would say you don't even need to to RTK at all. Just do what ever is fun and interesting to you. I was able to learn enough Japanese to pass JLPT N1 without knowing how to write *ANY* kanji, so it surely isn't necessary. If you keep burning out from RTK, then just don't do it. Find something fun and do that instead. (Although for a beginner I would probably recommend learning grammar and/or mining sentences from beginners text books).

Isn't there a text book that teaches Japanese from manga? Maybe try doing that. It might be more motivating to you.

I agree that nobody needs to do RTK, and if you try it three times and burn out every time then you definitely don't need to be doing RTK.

It's just, especially in this forum, if I say "don't do RTK" then I feel like the jerk who feels the need to say "GET A MAC" whenever someone wants help with a computer problem.

partner55083777 Wrote:I was able to learn enough Japanese to pass JLPT N1 without knowing how to write *ANY* kanji, so it surely isn't necessary. If you keep burning out from RTK, then just don't do it. Find something fun and do that instead.

Hmm, I'll agree that maybe Rtk isn't the best way for me to learn if I keep burning out. I guess I'm just being stubborn, but I really don't want to give up completely on RtK. The first two times I tried to do this, my method was basically "Do all the frames!" and I would spend most of my free time adding new cards so I could finish as fast as possible, but reviews piled up really quickly and I would have days where I would spend all of my time on reviews, then try and add more new cards which would cut into my other obligations, (read: sleep). My method this time is very different. I've set aside a maximum amount of time per day that I'll spend learning Japanese (usually 1-3 hours, it changes daily based on what else I've got to do that day), and I spend as much of that time as I need to do reviews, and if that means no new cards that day, it's fine. Afterwards I'll add up to 25 new cards if I have any time left. (Then, as of yesterday, if I've got time after that I read at most 2 pages from Tae Kim.) At this point I normally do have quite a bit of time left, and have added 25 new cards every day. So far everything seems to be good and I'm not experiencing any burnout just yet. I had 44 reviews today which I finished in just about 15 minutes, and I retained 98% of the cards. I also switched to actually writing out the kanji as the card came up, where in my previous attempts I would just try to imagine the character in my head. This has helped a lot with my retention which means less reviews.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this massive wall of text is that I'll stay with RtK using this new method that I've cobbled together from the wreckage of my previous attempts and see what happens. ^_^

Your new attempt sounds like a good plan. One thing I would warn about is your reviews. Doing 1-3 hours of reviews in Anki is not fun. Especially if it is all kanji. I would recommend trying to keep your kanji reviews down to 20-30 minutes a day (and not adding new cards that day if you go above 20 minutes for reviews).

Spend your remaining time doing something fun or working on grammar. Look into other Anki decks that can help you like Tae Kim's cloze-deleted grammar guide deck, core 2k, etc. Maybe try getting a text book and working through it.



On the other hand, as long as you are not burning out, then it doesn't really matter what you're doing, as long as you're doing something. It's just that you already have burned out twice. You need to be really careful this time.

Most people who start to learn a language give up. You tried RTK and gave up. You tried again and gave up. Now you're trying a third time.

First, congratulations on being so persistent because very few people would still be at it.

Second, do something else. RTK ain't working for you. I don't know you, but you do -- what do you like? what kind of person are you? what motivates you? If you aren't motivated by learning tons of words from flashcards with zero opportunity to use them, it's not because something's wrong with you -- it's because it's the wrong activity for you.

Take this opportunity to think seriously about what kind of fun and motivating activity you could be doing, and make sure you have no desire to give up this time because you may not try a 4th time.