Help! I'm restarting RTK( for like the 3rd time), so i'm not on sentences yet. i really wanna learn new vocab but, since i can't do sentences yet, my vocab is suffering. Does anyone have any ideas how i can learn new vocab in a way that won't interfere with my kanji studies?( I do srs the kanji by the way, i'm at about number 365, and i'm using the lazy kanji format.)

Do song lyrics with rikai chan

I started with sentence cards before after only having done 500 kanji. It was tough, but it got progressively easier the more kanji you learn.

A suggestion: if you really want to learn new vocab and you're starting RTK for the third time... don't learn any new vocab until RTK is done. This way, your enthusiasm to learn vocab will thrust you forward at those times where you're getting sick and tired of the kanjis.

The problem is that once one have a strong kanji basis, especially a little about onyoumi, learning vocabulary become much faster.
otherwise learning kanji at the same time with their on-youmi is a good option for you, being already accustomed to RTK you could reassemble Kanji with same on youmi in one location, or use methods described on the forum.
But if you really want to separate Kanji from vocabulary, I think it may be a little difficult.For exemple seeing how much word contain KOU would get you really crazy.(that happened to me too)
But if you still want to learn some vocabulary you can use mnemonics,audio.
As like japanese have only hiragana tough his seems to mee really non efficient (comparing myself when I didn't knew anything about kanji).

you have yet to pass the 500 mark, which i think is an important motivator in itself. i think when you start making your own stories it becomes more fun. i don't know much about the lazy kanji method as i just did the traditional method of keyword to kanji. whatever works.

pick a suggestion:

you will get to the vocab eventually (and you can do some immersion with movies, music, jisho/RTK2 skimming etc. in the meantime) but you want to maintain your momentum and plow through RTK so it won't have to come back a fourth time.

or

lower the amount of new kanji you do each day, start doing vocab decks or smart.fm/core2k or sentence decks or what have you, and just not pressure yourself to rush through RTK if you don't love doing it that way.

either way, be sure that you don't lose momentum. don't let a day--and certainly not a week--go by that you don't do at least 3 new kanji and complete all of your reviews. 頑張って

One thing you could do is go through Core 2k or 6k and suspend all the cards that use a kanji you don't know. This is probably easier if you go through studying words instead of sentences (I'm going to switch to sentences when I'm done, though I still listen to the sentence audio). I have finished RTK and I still do something similar - I have a base of about 400 or so kanji, and I first did all the cards that only use those kanji, and now I'm going through and selecting kanji that look interesting, and adding all the cards that only use that kanji (and the ones I already know, of course). I'm very limited in the amount of studying time that I have, and I find that learning a bunch of words for a given kanji helps me to remember the readings - and the meanings too, for that matter.

My method is a bit bass-ackwards, but I tried going through Core the "normal" way and after 3-4 days decided that I wasn't learning anything. This way I seem to be doing ok adding 20 words/day. And yeah, back last summer before I did RTK, it would take me a week to do 20 new words (hiragana only, come up with a mnemonic for each, etc). So learning words via their kanji really helps.

If you're starting for the 3rd time, its probably better to just let Heisig go.

blackbrich Wrote:If you're starting for the 3rd time, its probably better to just let Heisig go.

Yeah, i'm pretty much am done with the whole heisig nemonics thing.( it's how i got stuck the first few times. Trying to think of nemonics, for me was very hard for the more abstract keywords.) i just use it for the keywords now.

Well, isn't third time's a charm?.

By not interfering, you probably mean, learn vocab containing only known kanji?
Well, if you use this site to review your kanji (RevTK), the vocab shuffle in the lab section is for you.
http://kanji.koohii.com/labs

Technically it's, not SRS, but since you have very few kanji, you'll probably see the same words frequently enough. And with a little extra time, making yourself an Anki deck with the data displayed shouldn't be a problem.

And you should probably focus on RTK lite (the most 1000 frequent kanji from RTK, there are threads about it in the forum) before thinking of the whole RTK.

cae99v Wrote:

blackbrich Wrote:If you're starting for the 3rd time, its probably better to just let Heisig go.

Yeah, i'm pretty much am done with the whole heisig nemonics thing.( it's how i got stuck the first few times. Trying to think of nemonics, for me was very hard for the more abstract keywords.) i just use it for the keywords now.

So you're studying kanji in isolation without stories to memorize the radicals, or readings? Simply a character on the front and an RTK keyword on the back? If it were me I'd do away with that completely and just learn words instead, the gap isn't exactly big at that point. Really, why try to brute force a keyword to the kanji instead of an actual Japanese meaning?

There are many that just skip to learning the characters as they are in compound words.

I'm doing Tae Kim at the same time as doing RTK for the second time (worked fine the first time, I just stopped reviewing). It's actually working better than I expected, I just rely purely on visual recognition to remember any new words that use kanji I haven't seen in RTK yet, and I'm gradually catching up, so the word becomes solidified in my memory once I do get to the kanji. I'm not sure I really need RTK, but it does seem to make things clearer, so I feel at this point at least, it's still worthwhile.

cae99v Wrote:

blackbrich Wrote:If you're starting for the 3rd time, its probably better to just let Heisig go.

Yeah, i'm pretty much am done with the whole heisig nemonics thing.( it's how i got stuck the first few times. Trying to think of nemonics, for me was very hard for the more abstract keywords.) i just use it for the keywords now.

If you're not doing the stories, don't do Heisig. Trying to cram large amounts of out-of-context information with no help is a recipe for failure. If you're determined to try it, it's probably better to go with something like the Kanji Learner's Dictionary than Heisig (although I don't recommend it).

There are three features of Heisig that set it apart from other learning methods:
- The idea that you should learn to write the kanji before learning how to read them
- The idea that you should learn (about) 2000 kanji at once, organized by the shapes (primitives) that they contain rather than by frequency
- The use of fully developed "stories" to retain the writing of the kanji rather than just ad-hoc mnemonics or writing them multiple times.

IMO, if you are not embracing all three of those things*, you should not use Heisig. In particular, you should never, never use Heisig with the primary purpose of learning the English meanings. That's not the intent of the book and it won't do you much good.

* The exception is if you use RTK Lite or super-lite to learn only a subset of the kanji presented.

I agree with blackbrich (and maybe yudan?). Just don't do RTK. Just jump straight to the sentence method. It's not like it will be that much more difficult.

yudantaiteki Wrote:If you're not doing the stories, don't do Heisig. Trying to cram large amounts of out-of-context information with no help is a recipe for failure. If you're determined to try it, it's probably better to go with something like the Kanji Learner's Dictionary than Heisig (although I don't recommend it).

There are three features of Heisig that set it apart from other learning methods:
- The idea that you should learn to write the kanji before learning how to read them
- The idea that you should learn (about) 2000 kanji at once, organized by the shapes (primitives) that they contain rather than by frequency
- The use of fully developed "stories" to retain the writing of the kanji rather than just ad-hoc mnemonics or writing them multiple times.

IMO, if you are not embracing all three of those things*, you should not use Heisig. In particular, you should never, never use Heisig with the primary purpose of learning the English meanings. That's not the intent of the book and it won't do you much good.

* The exception is if you use RTK Lite or super-lite to learn only a subset of the kanji presented.

I don't agree with your third point. Pictographs work wonders and they aren't "stories". Also, making a full story isn't necessary since we use SRS.

Well, I'll let people who have actually used RTK comment on that -- I was not aware that SRS was a substitute for the stories. Heisig specifically warns against pictographs also.

If your aim is to learn to read Japanese then I agree with the ones who say don't do Heisig. You are inventing stories that later you are going to discard anyway (the process of recalling a story is too slow for your fluent reading, where you need to rely more on visual recognition rather than any semantics that you associated with a character). Heisig is helpful in a way that it's a soft introduction to seeing through the squiggles and actually differentiate characters but is not really necessary for that.

For the purpose of learning to read you can use textbooks like Kanji in Context, 2001 Kanji Odyssey or even simple native texts* which you can use to incrementally build your vocabulary.

If however learning to write is part of your studies then I don't think there is a supplement for Heisig (unless you write a lot in Japanese that is...).

* Like those published by CosCom at
http://www.coscom.co.jp/newsweather/weather/index.html

yudantaiteki Wrote:Well, I'll let people who have actually used RTK comment on that -- I was not aware that SRS was a substitute for the stories. Heisig specifically warns against pictographs also.

I didn't say it was a substitute for stories, but found that using a normal mnemonic occasionally won't hurt because you'll review Kanji based on SRS and you can easily detect if the mnemonic is too shallow for the Kanji to stick. After all, I think, breezing through RTK in the shortest time is better than perfecting it.
I don't remember him warning about pictographs, but he warned about shallow mnemonics. I found that pictographs not only help in memorizing the Kanji, but also in recognizing it and in differentiating it. Basically, it's a free ticket to mastering a Kanji, IMHO.

Why is everyone assuming that you have to make up your own stories. After Heisig stopped providing them in the book(500+?). I switched solely to this site and used user provided stories from then onwards.(2300+)

As for vocab learning; I gave up trying to learn vocab and kanji at the same time because any word with a kanji in I didn't know would be forgotten. Now that I've completed RTK1 plus the most useful kanji within 2200-3000, learning new words is a breeze. Currently at 3k words in the core 8k deck.

[RawToast]

Kysen Wrote:Why is everyone assuming that you have to make up your own stories. After Heisig stopped providing them in the book(500+?). I switched solely to this site and used user provided stories from then onwards.(2300+)

Whilst I am only at ~370, I plan on doing the same when I finish part 2. I find Heisig's stories are long and forgettable, strange, and very American (baseball...) Whilst using the book I often try to make my own story or browse my Anki deck with the top 2 stories in it. The user stories even have some good extra primitives in them (furniture and sea weed.)

I plan on just using my deck at a set pace once I hit part 3.

Kysen Wrote:As for vocab learning; I gave up trying to learn vocab and kanji at the same time because any word with a kanji in I didn't know would be forgotten.

I tried the first part of Core 2k on iknow and failed completely for the same reason. I also found I know asking sentences with grammar rather stupid when you haven't been introduced to the grammar!

RawToast Wrote:Whilst I am only at ~370, I plan on doing the same when I finish part 2. I find Heisig's stories are long and forgettable, strange, and very American (baseball...) Whilst using the book I often try to make my own story or browse my Anki deck with the top 2 stories in it. The user stories even have some good extra primitives in them (furniture and sea weed.

what about 'smash' and it's cricket reference? what the heck is a wicket? i bet you won't forget that kanji if you go learn how to play baseball just to remember it. and you'll get exercise which helps the blood flow to your brain and you remember kanji better. kanji is all about baseball and cricket, really.