Doing it that way certainly will not hurt you, as long as you just use it as a supplement. Just make sure that you still do also review the standard way as well, because that it what ensures that you REALLY know the kanji.

shinsen wrote:

What you're aiming for is to be able to read in Japanese, not translate kanji to English keywords.

In my opinion one of the benefits RTK gives is recognizing the meaning of kanji instantly, but I ran across the same problem of not being able to recall the keyword from kanji very fast. I did kanji to keyword for a long time, and got really good at instantly recalling the keyword, and it helped me a lot. When you're really fast at that, while learning a new kanji compound you can just be like "ok, this word is made up of these keywords", which helps more often than not with the meaning of the actual word, and it just helps in noticing the patterns. I've tried recalling the keywords with only keyword to kanji reviewing and it was way too slow, and I didn't like learning new words without recalling the meaning of the kanji first. So in my opinion it helps. But you just have to decide for yourself if it's worth the extra time.

Thanks for the replies guys and I fully understand what you are all saying. This is probably because I don't own the book unfortunately, but I agree with your points and will most likely follow the advice given. It does make more logical sense to recognize kanji through their japanese reading and meaning first and I see why this idea is quite pointless to some degree.

I could see it helping in ways but it'd just slow things down in the long run I suppose.

That's what I immediately thought! Although I have not read the book if he advises something then quick! Do as he says. Without his method kanji would take a lot, lot longer to learn.

nuh-uh. just because you didn't  read/apply yourself enough for whatever reasons doesn't mean it can't be done.  by reading I mean reading stuff that actually interests you.
You mean 2000 and not 3000 or 4000 or whatever rtk2 is right?

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2012 August 02, 12:26 pm)

All I'm saying is that its possible to do RTK in just a few months or whatever, but actually learning the vocabulary of the Japanese language is a process that takes years.
If reviewing from kanji to keyword can help you figure out the words that you are reading while you are working up to that point, then whats the problem?

The book is "available" as a pdf, people should read it (or at least the written parts, like the intro and somewhere in the middle) even if they don't buy it.