aaronvanvalen
Member
From: the Netherlands
Registered: 2009-02-11
Posts: 67
I recently took up reviewing a RTK Anki deck that I neglected for the past 1.5 years. As always I am neatly writing out all the kanji.
This deck however is only to be the first step in what I hope to be a long future of language acquisition of Japanese. After this one will be rooted deeply enough I plan to maintain it and add a new deck to really get to the fun stuff: sentences and new words, useful, practical Japanese.
I was asking myself: is it still necessary in this day and age for us to focus on being able to write out all these kanji, or would simply recognizing and being able to type them be sufficient to get along in society?
I wonder because I am afraid that this dry humping with the language comes with the risk of me getting bored or lacking motivation again to keep it up. Like Katsura always says: it should be fun.
What are your thoughts?
I wrote them on my palm with my finger. It doesn't take much longer than not doing it, and it helped with learning reading and writing, at least for me.
And I guess it's also a matter of priorities. If you skimp on writing now, you could regret it later (see other threads where this has happened to people). On the other hand, if writing isn't a priority at the moment and learning it now make things unbearable, by all means just push it off to later. Worst case you'll end up comfortable reading but unable to write... in which case you can just pick it up again then.
Last edited by headphone_child (2012 November 28, 11:19 pm)
Taishi
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2009-04-24
Posts: 127
There have been a lot of discussions on this forum concerning whether learning to write is a useful skill nowadays. But instead of trying to convince you either way, I'd just say, decide for your self. Do you want to be able to write with your hands, or do are you fine with needing an electronic device in order to write?
Personally, just like I prefer reading dead tree books rather than on a Kindle, I like being able to write notes and illustrations by hand, so I tend to write out the kanji more often than not when I review. But I also know a lot of people have had their share of paper books and pencils and want nothing to do with it if it can be avoided.
If you do write them out, I'd probably suggest against spending extra time on trying to make them look neat. Handwriting usually means you jot something down, unless you're writing something that you have to hand in. Learning to write quickly but in a readable way is probably the most useful skill, and it also cuts down the extra time you spend by writing them out, win/win!
However, if I don't feel like writing it out, I don't. Having fun is important, and if you feel like writing the kanji out is slowing you down to an unnecessary extent, or it just doesn't feel fun, then stop. You'll pick it up quicker if you decide to start again later on, so it's not like it's time wasted.
Tzadeck
Member
From: Kinki
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2484
Well, basically the only good way to do RTK is by writing out the kanji. One reason is that if you don't write the kanji it's too easy to evaluate yourself incorrectly. Another reason is that one of the biggest advantage of RTK over other methods is your ability to distinguish between kanji that look very similar, and writing out the kanji helps ensure that you can do that (writing the kanji a bit helps with recognition as well, rather than just writing ability).
So I think you'll find that if you write out the kanji while doing RTK the benefits will outweigh the added work. You should only be writing one kanji per card anyway.
Now, no, it's not necessary in modern life to really be able to write out a full essay in kanji or anything like that. Computers and cell phones will be your primary means of producing written Japanese. You'll find that if you wanted to write full essays in kanji RTK is not nearly sufficient practice, as you would need to practice production in other ways.
However, it IS necessary for you to be able to write out kanji for your studies. You will write notes to yourself about Japanese words, notes to yourself in the margins of books, or short J->J definitions on study books, and so on. You will do this more and more as you get better at Japanese. This doesn't require that you have the ability to write out a full essay in perfect kanji, but it does require some basic kanji writing skills. So I think you should stick with writing as you do RTK. It's minimal effort that helps in the long run.
