RTK 2 goes onto this, though most people say it's easier/smoother to just learn as you go.  From what I understand, you just need to learn the basics about the difference between kun-yomi and on-yomi, then go ahead and start learning vocabulary.  As you learn vocabulary (in Kanji) you'll be learning on-yomi and kun-yomi along with it (i.e. at jisho.org if I look up a word I can generally guess which sounds come from which kanji, and if I can't, I hit the "Kanji details" and figure it out from there.)

And then you just choose if you want to learn it passively through experiencing the common onyomi/kunyomi when you encounter vocabulary (while you're actively learning the vocabulary themselves), or actively by, for example, making an Anki deck for seeing a Kanji and having to say its onyomi/kunyomi to get that card "right"  (Most people wouldn't do this, especially because a lot of onyomi are very rare and better to learn on a per-word basis)

OR you could use RTK2 to do both actively at the same time, though I've heard this is very challenging/discouraging.

For me personally I've noticed that i just pick up things through reading sentences with furigana.  I use the website iknow.jp and the grammar text 'Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar', which provides A LOT of sentences with furigana.  It doesn't take many sentences for a pronunciation to stick. You read a sentence a few times or you see another sentence with the same character, same furigana and voila.   It kind of happens like diffusion, naturally.. After learning RTK, the diffusion happens easily because you have some background with the kanji you are seeing.  I do have RTK2 and RTK3 which I will probably go through.

iknow.jp, pronounces the sentence for you too and you just have to take some time to match up what you hear to the written sentence.

I think it's definitely easier to just focus on RTK and finish it and then focus on vocabulary because it makes vocabulary learning faster since you know and can recognize the kanji that make up the vocab word.  It makes it stick in your head better than if you didn't know the character.  Depending on how much time you have and dedication, you could finish RTK1 in 2 months, which is about 30-40 kanji a day.  If that's the case, it's not that long of a wait.

Last edited by Miyumera (2012 August 06, 10:48 am)

shinsen wrote:

You need to put yourself in the position where you are actively encountering vocabulary. How you choose to do this depends on your interests - do what you find fascinating.

So, from this part on, it's more like the AJATT immersion "method", right?

Thanks, everyone. You helped a lot! :)))

Last edited by akemimeka (2012 August 08, 2:00 pm)