Try to find some native speakers you can talk to if at all possible.  If you live near a university, ask the japanese dept if they have any speaking clubs.  At my uni there's a twice-weekly get together to speak japanese, with about one native speaker per dozen students.  anyone could just walk in, they dont actually check if you're a student (though a lot of the dialogue ends up being about university life since it's such a common ground)

Last edited by snispilbor (2008 April 20, 11:57 pm)

Hey, welcome to the forum!
If I had it to do over, I would put my Heisig kanji as my first priority.  If all I had was 30 minutes to study, instead of doing 30 minutes of Pimsleur, I would do Heisig.  If you have the time, you could do Pimsleur as well (they work well together), but I would put your priority with Heisig.  As quickly as possible get through the book. 
After Heisig is completed, the main priority would be doing Pimsleur everyday.  Only after Heisig was done, would I add textbooks.  And I would look for textbooks that start with kanji from the beginning.
That said, the important thing to do is what works for you.

Hey- thanks, all of you, for responding! The SRS I'm using is Anki, which is a great program; I've put in lots of words and sentences from "Japanese for Everyone" and find that I remember more of them then I thought I would. I'm only using this website and the book for kanji, currently, though I will probably add entries for those later in Anki. I'm only taking a break from Pimsleur on the weekends because I really don't want to get burnt out again (because I did before!), but it's not exactly difficult, so it probably would be good to do it on Sat. and Sun. too. It does sound better to do Genki *after* finishing Pimsleur and RtK1 and not before. I've already got Japanese grammar down pretty good, but Genki seems like it would be decent enough for practice. "Japanese For Everyone" sort of overwhelmed me by the 8th or 9th lesson and I think it would be a lot better in a classroom setting or studying with someone else. I tend to actually learn better with written materials [that's why I want to conquer these kanji!] rather than spoken, which is why it took me awhile to get to Pimsleur because I want to get better at conversation.

zdude255 wrote:

My advice is to try to make Heisig and RevTK a daily habit. It won't be that beneficial if you keep it to weekends only. ~20 a day seems to be a good pace for a lot of people, but doing just 10 new kanji a day will allow you to finish in 7 months.

I have to second the advice of zdude255 and all others who have commented on doing Heisig and/or Pimsleur on a daily basis.

As mentioned, these are based on an SRS principle so you get the most value out of doing an amount you can handle on a daily basis rather than larger chunks on the weekend, etc. (Pimsleur has decided the amount for you with one lesson per day, but with Heisig it is up to you to decide how many kanji you do per day. And even one kanji per day is better than none.)

If you feel like you are getting burned out...
1) Drop Pimsluer (for one day ... or until you finish RTK)
2) Review RTK stacks that are due but don't add any new kanji for the day
3) Do something fun with your Japanese ability (watch a Japanese drama sans subtitles, listen to a Japanese song, flip through a manga or Mangajin, etc...whatever interests you)
4) Try learning just one new kanji. Sometimes this is all just a mental block and once you sit down and begin you find you want to continue. (I believe it was Fabrice who recommended this to me once. And more often than not, it worked!)

Once you no longer feel burned out, begin to learn a few new RTK kanji. Try just 5 or 10 a day until you build back up to a pace that feels comfortable to you.

If you have to take a break from RTK, just give yourself one or two days off from adding new kanji (but continue to review kanji that are due) so that it really is a short break rather than a long one that you have to start all over from. (Been there, done that.)

The part about continuing to review the kanji that are due (even when taking a break from adding new kanji) cannot be emphasized too strongly. Reviews have a tendency to snowball into huge demoralizing loads if you don't stay on top of them. And the best way to have small daily review load is to add new kanji regularly (daily) in small amounts. If you have a burst and go for 50 or even 100 a day it can feel great but the reviews will come back in greater loads as well. So slow and steady will get you through.

And really, adding just 10-20 kanji per day is a relatively easy way to get through the RTK in 3.5-7 months. No need to go faster than this unless you are enjoying the process and want to do more each day.

Last edited by Chadokoro_K (2008 April 21, 8:54 pm)

TGWeaver wrote:

the best method is the following method: study, review, and (most importantly) push yourself.

it sounds like you haven't been pushing yourself. if you know 300 kanji, why are you bothering with Genki I? it's a basic grammar book. perhaps you should try something more advanced?

the same goes with pimsleur. pimsleur 1-3 covers most of what's in genki I (as far as i can remember). why don't you try some of the advanced courses over at japanese pod, or maybe rent a few movies with subtitles (in english, or in japanese... the latter being the most productive).

stop thinking about the method and start studying =P

there is no "easy way." there is no "best way." there is no path to success.

but as far as suggestions go, i suggest that you stop using an SRS. it's boring. and it won't help with your "cultural fluency." instead, start reading short stories and children's stories. when you read them, read them outloud. and when you're done, try to sum them up in japanese. describe them in japanese. a few weeks later, read the story again and try to add to your description.

this does two things: (1) it gets you to start using japanese; (2) it gives you something to talk about. it doesn't matter how many cards you have in your SRS if you don't have things to talk about (which i learned the hard way).

good luck!

I disagree with dropping SRS entirely. It keeps words, kanji, and grammar concepts from dropping out of your memory. However I think that sentence mining & putting them into an SRS (which is the basis of AJATT) is not a great idea and is kind of a fallback to the traditional learning methods of learning phrases and sentence patterns. You should use sentences when you initially learn the word or grammar, but more importantly, make your own sentences. The SRS is just there to keep you from forgetting. Even daily conversation (I talk Japanese pretty much all day every day) doesn't stop uncommon words or expressions from dropping out of your lexicon. If your SRS cards are short and sweet you can review them in no time. Sentence mining & inputting also eats up a lot of time that would be better spent actually studying or using Japanese.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 April 22, 4:11 am)

Ryuujin27 wrote:

But remember, do not make your own sentences without someone there to correct them (a native speaker)!

Seriously, this is dangerous and will instill bad habits into your Japanese, which you definitely do not want.

And furthermore, unless you are have a low level of fluency, making your own sentences isn't going to help you at all, anyway.

Of course having your sentences validated is a good thing. However making your own sentences is not just for beginners. It's the most natural thing to do with grammar that you learn - use it. Using it helps you remember it and more importantly, helps you incorporate it into your active lexicon. Even if you make some mistakes it's good practice. Hell, it's BETTER practice if you make mistakes and get them corrected, preferably in an embarrassing manner. Note I do not mean to make up your own sentences and then proceed to memorize them in an SRS. Just make up a bunch of sentences and write them down when you learn a grammar point. Get them checked by someone then just throw them out.

Back when I was still taking Japanese classes I would overuse whatever grammar points we were learning when talking with my girlfriend, and she would overuse them back to me. It really helped make that grammar active knowledge instead of just passive - which is all a bunch of reading would give you.

I suppose it depends on what your priorities are though - reading/listening (passive) vs writing/speaking (active). I was (and still am) focused on active knowledge. Focusing on passive knowledge is what Japanese education in the west seems to be focused on. I meet many people who are beyond my reading ability with 小説 and such, but are totally unable to carry on a conversation or express themselves.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 April 22, 12:33 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

Of course having your sentences validated is a good thing. However making your own sentences is not just for beginners. It's the most natural thing to do with grammar that you learn - use it. Using it helps you remember it and more importantly, helps you incorporate it into your active lexicon. Even if you make some mistakes it's good practice. Hell, it's BETTER practice if you make mistakes and get them corrected, preferably in an embarrassing manner. Note I do not mean to make up your own sentences and then proceed to memorize them in an SRS. Just make up a bunch of sentences and write them down when you learn a grammar point. Get them checked by someone then just throw them out.

I think the point is that for things you enter in an SRS it's best to play it safe. If an SRS is your only means of study (I don't recommend this either), then you will probably only want to mine actual sentences. For lower level grammar, I'm personally sceptical that you can learn it without producing output as well. However, putting an authentic example in your SRS can have the benefit that you get an idiomatic usage for free with vocabulary you want to learn. I do think AJATT may take sentence mining too far, but as a way to quickly memorize things you encounter in your studying, I think an SRS is quite helpful. Also, once you've learned the basic grammar, all the subsequent grammar fits into one of the categories you've already learned, and so one sentence in an SRS can be sufficient to allow you to use it actively. At this point, IMHO it is actually a waste to try to generate your own sentences before you actually need to use new grammar; essentially, grammar and vocabulary cease to be separate entities, and it becomes inefficient to try to devote a significant amount of time to practising each grammar item (unless of course you do hit something you really have trouble understanding).

Last edited by mystes (2008 April 22, 1:56 pm)

I like SRS (like Anki) for quick review on a semi-daily basis, but they aren't everything. Listening to/speaking conversational Japanese and reading/writing sentences in context of a book/article/etc. are essential practice. I guess it's not a good idea to start Genki even if I finish Pimsleur and do RtK1? Maybe going back to Japanese for Everyone would be a better idea since it gets intermediate quicker than Genki...it seems like there ought to be a textbook in there *somewhere*, right? =P. I'm doing Pimsleur and new kanji daily now, so I'll be moving along more swiftly. I know how to construct a lot of basic Japanese sentence patterns, it's just the variety of vocabulary that needs expanding (hence Anki).

I have been slowly working through Pimsleur and RTK / RevTK as basically my first introduction to Japanese (I knew a few phrases and <10 kanji before beginning, but that's it). 

I've been pretty satisfied - I'm at about 1500 kanji, and halfway through Pimsleur II.  I'm going very slowly - only in spare time, usually about 30 minutes every other day or so for about 18 months now.

One of my best internet finds was a spreadsheet with all the Pimsleur I sentences written out in kanji, kana, and English. You can drop it right in a SRS and review that way.  After learning 1500 kanji, I'm very anxious to start reading / testing sentences, and am only just beginning using the sentences in an SRS, but want to do more.  Tough to find time for both RevTK and sentences, though.  Email me if you want a copy of the spreadsheet.  I would credit where I got it, but can't remember.

A while back, I was also working with some folks on this site on the idea of "high speed RTK" - the idea being that you you could begin with learning the most common 1200 or so kanji using the Heisig method, and this would get you a high level of coverage in elementary texts, putting off the other Heisig kanji till later.  I have another spreadsheet that lists these top kanji.  Again, email if you're interested.

Jarvik7 wrote:

You seem to be telling me the point that I myself just made in my previous post and the one before that

Argh, yes it does seem that way. I guess I got sidetracked. I originally was curious about how you said:

Jarvik7 wrote:

However I think that sentence mining & putting them into an SRS (which is the basis of AJATT) is not a great idea and is kind of a fallback to the traditional learning methods of learning phrases and sentence patterns.

I'm not sure I completely understand how AJATT suggests conducting sentence mining, but is your only objection that you think it is necessary to practice before entering them into an SRS? It seems like sentence mining would encourage learning of phrases and sentence patterns.

I'm going to disagree here.  There is an easiest way for each person, but it doesn't matter if you're not one of the "vast majority of people" or not.  The only thing that matters is that you find what works for you.  That may, or may not, be "the" way that works for that "vast majority of people".  It may be the best way for many people, but if it doesn't work for you, then it's not the best way *for you*.  Then you should pick some other way.

In language-learning, it is often difficult to discern what is actually "working" because there are so many factors at stake; retention and contextual recognition being among the more subtle.  For example, all my life I have been very good at rote memorization (im even good at jeopardy).  When I initially attempted to learn kanji a few years ago, I bought a book which recommended this practice.  I spent the better part of a year "learning" close to 1000 kanji in this manner with the book's guidance.  It seemed to be working well; I knew the meanings of most of those kanji as well as the onyomi and kunyomi.  The problem is I rarely seemed to be able to recognize or reproduce these characters outside of the book.  It took me a long time to realize that I was unconsciously memorizing the page positioning along with the kanji, and that had been cluing me in probably more than anything else.  Sure, I had learned a little but it was mostly a waste of time.  I could have spared myself of that mess if I would have done research on what had worked best for most people instead of relying on the individual opinion of a (possibly cluele$$) author.  He didn't even say to use flashcards.  He suggested cutting holes in a note card and sliding it down his specially formatted pages.  Heisig is 100 percent correct when he advocates breaking each kanji down into memorable pieces before memorizing the sum of its parts.  I learned the hard way, as I'm sure many have, that it is very difficult to remember what is essentially unknown.  I had the illusion that I was succeeding, and that is why I will always be skeptical of what one individual says works without some kind of science, reasoning, or testimonials backing him up.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 April 23, 1:03 pm)