Hi,
I've been looking for more than two weeks now at the Heisig's method on this site, and Ajatt's one, and many others, and I have to say that I am pretty happy to see that it seems possible to achieve some kind of fluency in Japanese in less than two years if you work regularly and use the methods described on these sites.

I am pretty confident that I will be able to succeed in having a decent Japanese if I follow the methods as I am very motivated for various reasons, and so the first step is to learn the Kanji with RTK.

Now, I have trouble finding the decks corresponding to RTK for Anki, as it seems it's a pretty useful software to do SRS. I would use something from this website, but there doesn't to have an Android app around here that syncs with Koohii -am I wrong? So I would appreciate if somebody had a link to a deck for Anki that I could use to select which Kanji I need to review according to how far I am in RTK. Because my main tool for study is gonna be my phone that runs Android.

In the meantime, I dowloaded Obenkyo a week ago, and I learnt the Kanas doing SRS as I was still gathering information on RTK and the whole method. It's a pretty neat software because I saw that it has an SRS implemented in it and even with RTK order! (if I understood well what an SRS was) But it seems it's not as powerful as Anki's one for example because you can't chose for how long you don't want to be shown a specific kanji. So I would like to know what people who know both software think about that? Because I would totally change if Anki is definitely better!

To conclude on a positive note, I must say that SRS worked awesomely well to learn 96 Kanas in 5days! (only 6 times 10mins/day and without stories!) I know them even better than after the ~100h of Japanese I took over the course of 2 years, 2 years ago (sigh, yep only 1h30/week...ridiculous)

Thank your very much for your answers!

penpex Wrote:So I would appreciate if somebody had a link to a deck for Anki that I could use to select which Kanji I need to review according to how far I am in RTK. Because my main tool for study is gonna be my phone that runs Android.

Best way to find RTK decks in Anki is via Shared Deck.

File> Download > Shared Deck

Then write "RTK" in the search bar and you should get some decks you can use to do RTK reviews in Anki. "RTK 1 and 3 w/ Kanji Definition and Yomi" and "Heisig's Remember the Kanji 1-3 w/top 2 community stories" are very popular decks.

Also what version of the book are you using? If you're using the 6th edition, it's been updated and won't reflect the order of the 2 deck titles I previously mentioned because they were created before the 6th edition was published. Here is a quote from the publisher

Quote:The 6th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji.

Source: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/...anji_1.htm

I know there is a Shared deck for the 6th edition. Just look for "rtk 6th". Hopefully this helps.

You can also use the spreadsheet provided in Nukemarine's Suggested Guide for Beginners Thread and import in Anki.

EDIT: They have Anki for android phones called AnkiDroid. That way you can study on the go

Thanks a lot for your answer I actually didnt find Nukemarine's guide yet and this is exactly what I have been looking for as I have roughly 2h sth/day to study.
I am gonna look for what you suggested in Anki, and as I have the 4th edition this shouldn't be a problem, I'll just study the extra kanji after. Also I actually already have AnkiDroid so this is gonna be easy!
I was just wondering if anybody had feedback on Obenkyo as I asked above?

Thanks!

Hi, I am the developer of Obenkyo (thx Google Search :p ).

What kind of feedback do you need
Concerning the fact that there is no way to say "how long you don't want to be shown a specific kanji"; I have to see how hard it would be to add this ...

If you have other features you would want me to add, don't hesitate
(I might not add them immediatly because I have a lot of stuff to add already, but I'm always interested in new ideas)

I found your website hehe, so yeah I browsed what was available on Obenkyo, this is why I dowloaded the app!
I just wanted to know if people out there were actually SRSing using Obenkyo. Because to me the fact that you can actually write the Kanji seems very important and useful, more than the fact that the recogniton isn't the best for example. Because in Anki you can't draw the Kanji before you check your answer, ok it's in your mind or you can draw it in the air but it's not the same.

Concerning features that I'd like I don't have a request (especially if it's but gonna be coded right away, haha so mean! ) but I was wondering if there was a way to review in RTK mode with just the keywords? Because I just tried for the first chapter and ok as the keywords are one of the meanings it works but maybe in some future chapters the keyword isn't gonna be one of the definitions and I'm gonna be lost! So maybe it's already possible via the import function? If someone tried already and has a deck to import please let me know.

I would still like to know if people think it's feasible to SRS RTK1 with Obenkyo depsite the obvious lack of algorithm that knows WHEN to ask you such or such Kanji depending on the result you got?
Is the writing part (that Obenkyo offers) really not that important?

And to give me an idea, for example, let's say you learn 20 Kanji each day with RTK1, how often do you need to review with Anki?
Practical case : After 5 days so 100 Kanji, the 5th day, how many Kanji does Anki tell you to review if you always got them good?

Because my plan with Obenkyo, is to review a pool a 50 Kanji (~10mins) 6 times a day, with ~20-30 new Kankis a day, and Obenkyo has a wighted random system, so it seems good, but I have no idea how it compares with Anki.

Sorry if I'm too precise, but I really need to find what is the best way to review before I go deeper in RTK1.

Thank you.

penpex Wrote:And to give me an idea, for example, let's say you learn 20 Kanji each day with RTK1, how often do you need to review with Anki?
Practical case : After 5 days so 100 Kanji, the 5th day, how many Kanji does Anki tells you to review if you always got them good?

By adding 20 new RTK cards a day and always finishing the respective reviews Anki 2.x gives you for the day, answering most of them with "Good", you would stabilize in around 80–120 daily reviews until you finish adding new cards (which would be after a little more than 3 months, if you have perfect consistency); then, it starts decreasing slowly. Of course this is just an approximation, as it depends heavily on how you grade the cards.

penpex Wrote:I was wondering if there was a way to review in RTK mode with just the keywords?

The fact is that I don't have the RTK keywords ... and the main reason is that in some sence, it's RTK's recipe, so it would not be fair to use this data without giving something back to the author. In Obenkyo I try to use only creative commons data as much as possible.
The chapter info cames from KanjiDict project so I consider that I can use it, but I don't have a "CC" source for keywords.


I tried to contact James Heisig to know if I could not "embed" RTK into Obenkyo (with in app purchase), and he refused saying that he would "pretty" soon get to work on the android version of RTK. So I don't want to add RTK "data" into Obenkyo

I don't believe James Heisig would attack me, but I want to keep Obenkyo as "Creative Commons" as possible.

played around abit with it.....quite a nice little app for beginners.

BTW my experience using the edict kanji dictionary in JWPce, the first keyword more often than not overlaps with Heisig keywords anyways. I sometimes use it as a quick way to look up when my memory is fuzzy. (I think I can only remember one or two occasions when they didn't match up)

So it should be the same with Obenkyo....

penpex Wrote:Hi,
I've been looking for more than two weeks now at the Heisig's method on this site, and Ajatt's one, and many others, and I have to say that I am pretty happy to see that it seems possible to achieve some kind of fluency in Japanese in less than two years if you work regularly and use the methods described on these sites.

Fluency in two years or less is a hoax. "Some kind of fluency" is no fluency at all. Let's be serious here. NO ONE can learn Japanese to any reasonable definition of fluency (= being able to read anything without a dictionary, say anything one wants to say in the language without any impediment, and understand 100% of what other people say - media and conversations) takes 5 -10 years, and I am being very optimistic with this estimate.

The task is formidable as you pretty much have to learn all the words of a language completely unrelated to most other languages, which to begin with has a complex grammar and a huge vocabulary. NO ONE - unless you are a native Chinese or Korean speaker, NO ONE can achieve fluency in 2 years. RTK DOES NOT put you on an equal footing with speakers of Chinese or Korean, as you do not know intuitively from your own language the huge mass of compounds that these speakers know. Getting to know - and internalize for fluency - this huge mass of compounds and understand their nuances and proper use is a long and arduous endeavour that takes years to complete - if you ever complete it, at a very high cost in terms of time and effort. I would bet my life that most people who complete RTK drop out from learning Japanese a few years down the road when they realize how long and arduous the task is.

The ridiculous claim of reaching fluency in 2 years comes from 2 categories of people: you have first the harmless braggers who just bask in the admiration of others (many post in this forum) and torture the definition of "fluency" as to mean whatever the level they reached in two years - which is NOT true fluency.

The second category of people are the crass hucksters - or should I say THE crass huckster who promises it for personal monetary gain. But then if one can't recognize crass hucksterism when one sees it, one is probably hopeless. Let's just say that when someone asks you to wait on some phony waiting list in order to be among the happy few to have the privilege of receiving a costly e-mail, then that pretty much sums up what crass hucksterism is.

Sorry for the delayed answer, but so first, thanks for the details on Obenkyo to atomusk and midonnay, and for the one on Anki by gdaxman, I think I'm gonna try Anki this weekend, but so far Obenkyo dosn't look that bad ans seems to do the work, it's just that I don't know how much to review (beacuse the Kanjis become "green" fast so you don't know what to review and how often till you add new ones then...)

To louischa, thanks for your reply, my intent wasn't to start a flamewar obviously (and that's good noone trolled after) but so here is what I meant :
Whern I mean some kind of fluency, I mean being able to understand 95-99% of conversations, reading newspapers, and being able to be understood. That's all. And in my opinion that's a good start, and possible in 2 years if you put the work in it.
You don't name it and I didn't either, but let's name the people you obviously blame : ajatters I guess. I will NEVER pay for that if it can reassure you (!) but I believe the people truly following this kind of method (and all the others doing sort of the same stuff, without paying either) will succeed in getting some kind of fluency. Once again that's all I need for the moment (I mean in 2 years!)
I believe it works because I know at least 5 friends, who studied by themselves for 2 of them (NOT with RTK or any website, just textbooks and doramas), and 3 others that did 2 years of Japanese at school (so the 'regular method') and then went as exchange students in Japan, and they all succeeded in achieving the fluency I am talking about in 2 years because they had not too many problems even right when they arrived in Japan. But they all worked a lot! This is why I believe that with this (supposedly efficient) method it will work too!

penpex Wrote:I found your website hehe, so yeah I browsed what was available on Obenkyo, this is why I dowloaded the app!
I just wanted to know if people out there were actually SRSing using Obenkyo.

I currently go through a Lesson of RTK, then do the 3 quizzes for the Chapter I did on RTK, in Obenkyo.

Ok thanks for the feedback! I may do that once too, and then do Anki. Because yesterday I passed the lesson 5 where he says NOT to write the Kanjis...I thought it was kinda cool but I'm not sure what people do...
Btw how do you do so that Anki shows you only the cards you want? (and not the 3007 cards it contains in the deck I downloaded - RTK1+3) I didn't find this option yet.

penpex Wrote:Ok thanks for the feedback! I may do that once too, and then do Anki. Because yesterday I passed the lesson 5 where he says NOT to write the Kanjis...I thought it was kinda cool but I'm not sure what people do...
Btw how do you do so that Anki shows you only the cards you want? (and not the 3007 cards it contains in the deck I downloaded - RTK1+3) I didn't find this option yet.

By suspending the cards you don't want to see during reviews.

More info: http://ankisrs.net/docs/SuspendedCards.html

Thanks, it worked on Anki, but I was wondering how to do in on AnkiDroid too?

penpex Wrote:Thanks, it worked on Anki, but I was wondering how to do in on AnkiDroid too?

The First way is to open the 'Card Browser' and long press on the Kanji in the list (don't open it) and then select suspend.

The second way is to press menu button while reviewing the card, select 'Dismiss Card' then select 'Suspend Card'.

That's what I thought, so it's totally not convenient when you're starting with RTK1. In Obenkyo you can select which chapter you wanna study, so it's pretty convenient. Because I don't see myself suspend the 3007 cards by hand, it would be cool if there was a way to unselect all of them, and THEN select the ones I want...
I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder about that.