activeaero wrote:

Finally met a group of Japanese students at the local coffee shop, which is a rarity here in Alabama, and I think they've taken a liking to me lol.  They've asked me out to dinner and then to play pool last night.

Anyways, they gave me a huge confidence boost.  After hearing that I had learned over 1,200 Kanji in just 2 months they decided to sort of test my claim.  Needless to say they were quite amazed as was I.  In fact I was even writing Kanji that THEY couldn't identify lol.  It was so reassuring to know that most of Heisigs keywords are in fact a darn accurate representation of the general idea that a native Japanese thinks of when seeing an individual Kanji.  For almost every Kanji they wrote the keyword I stated was met with an almost immediate confirmation as being correct. 

In fact one of the girls even got me to write down the name of the book and this website because SHE wants to try it out.  If that doesn't say something I don't know what does.

Good job. I downplay it now, but the ego boost you get from natives that know how difficult this was for helps quite a bit. You are arming yourself with a powerful tool to help in the next phase of your studies, no matter what path that takes.

To be honest, I thought you were about to say you got one of the girls to write down your number and you got hers. Now that would have been motivation.

For people wondering just how useful the strange Kanji is that you're learning, well, I'm finding that at the moment I seem to be seeing the Kanji from Lessons 27-32 -everywhere- here in Japan.

It's pretty motivating to see Kanji from the book in real life. It can get a bit frustrating to recognise all the primitives and not remember the meaning though!! just needs more reps!

activeaero - Nice one!!

mistamark wrote:

It's pretty motivating to see Kanji from the book in real life. It can get a bit frustrating to recognise all the primitives and not remember the meaning though!! just needs more reps!

The was another bonus I forgot to mention from my encounter with my new Japanese buddies.  When they wrote Kanji that I haven't learned yet my brain instantly started assembling all of the primitives that I recognized.  That above anything shows the true power of this method.  Instead of my brain just going "what the heck is that, just looks like a jumbled mess of lines that I've never seen before" it instead found the "new" Kanji completely familiar and simply lacking in a key word.

saizen wrote:

Ok i just had to come back and make a comment after some time has passed after finishing.  Recently I have been studying vocab and KO2001 and I must say....this book (RTK) makes it not only extrememly fun, but ridiculously easy to remember new vocab.  I can not believe i am getting the kanji compounds perfectly right and making mistakes on hiragana spellings lol. I had no idea how powerful of a tool heisig's book is.  It has multiplied the pleasure of studying japanese.  To all those not finished...i hope this motivates you because your japanese abilities will skyrocket if you put in the effort after finishing this book.

Try doing it while already knowing the onyomi. =]

I'd imagine, that just about destroys the huge wall of Japanese learning.

Just from reading the first 2 pages, I think I've realized something about our different learning styles.  I was envious of people that can do this literally every day, especially people who do, like 50 a day or something. But, while some students have the time (indeed, some even remember better this way), some of us don't. It even seems some people start forgetting a lot if they do too many (from the posts here).

It is easy to get excited after reading that many people learn all Jouyou kanji in 3 months, and try to learn too much at once. For some of us it makes sense to study fewer at a time, and focus on regularity -- whether that's a couple times a day, once a day, or a few days a week. And also review often.

If you will get behind in other stuff (at school, in your life, whatever), and then you have to skip some days in kanji study, that's actually bad. I am also working hard at improving my grammar.

Every day do some review, then learn however many kanji you have time to do -- whether that's 20 or 10 or 5, just to do it is the most important. And to review ones you know first is important, I think.

Also, I now only use RTK for new kanji learning, though I still pick up new kanji as I write, but whether they stick or not, at this point I don't force it -- I will focus on RTK kanji.

Someone even suggested looking up compounds, taking very frequent meanings and working them into your stories -- that's a wonderful idea!

OK, my stats:
RTK: 52 kanji
Previously picked up: ??

Before, I was learning kanji through (some) rote memorization, and more by writing, but writing as an adult you don't repeat many kanji.

I though I only reliably knew less than 50, but it was probably over 100. Add more than half of those 52 RTK kanji (some I already knew), and new ones I've used in writing and have absorbed easier because of RTK, it's probably over 200.

For someone who's been writing (casually) for a while, that probably stinks, but I don't do rote memorization well, so I had given up on literally studying kanji until I found RTK!

If you haven't guessed, I'm for doing small chunks at a time (mostly because that's my only option) but for the people who posted they did a lot but forgot, I'd suggest trying small chunks every day, and that review be the first thing you do each time -- in the end, you might learn faster.

kazelee wrote:

I'm 90 percent nocturnal. It's 5am as I post now. I work best when, statically, the human mind should be at its most sluggish. Weird, no?

Hey, who you callin' weird?
;-)

AdamLeliel wrote:

450!

I started doing this last week (I think?), for motivation:
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i5/ne … 0014-2.jpg

It now has the number "400" on and four sheets instead of two.

The picture is too small to see clearly online... what did you do? Are you printing out something with all the kanji, and checking them off? Or did you write the kanji you've learned on the sheets?

@ Walden:

I think this may be an important key for you. You seem to be having trouble even though you don't do too many new kanji at once.

kazelee wrote:

canji wrote:

So my point is that this is encouraging that the cards that l made it to the 3 and 4 reviews piles have stuck with me even if I had been ignoring them. The system seems to be working.

Awesome. This is how I felt after I gave it up the first time... Most of it just stuck even with a couple of months of neglect...

You know, just because something isn't "scheduled" for review doesn't mean you can't review it any old time you want. You may want to review your recently reviewed kanji more times.

If I don't want to do all the ones in a stack at the same time, I just log out when I'm finished. I don't see a way to say "leave this lesson" or similar, but then I am new to the website. Drill in even the ones you already know! For example, if you add 10 kanji a day, review 20 others, or if you add 15, review 30. Or alternate review-only days with review-and-new. This will help you remember newer ones better (in my humble opinion).

TerryS wrote:

kazelee wrote:

I'm 90 percent nocturnal. It's 5am as I post now. I work best when, statically, the human mind should be at its most sluggish. Weird, no?

Hey, who you callin' weird?
;-)

My bad...

* It is less frequent.
* There is no expectancy of quick reply.
* Handwriting is larger and easier to read.
* I have my drafts (and therefore new vocabulary) on paper for future reference.

Hey, if you hit ctrl and + it makes the Japanese script so much easier to read. I use it when I read text.

kfmfe04: Of course, seeing a kanji before it's due isn't a problem at all. The problem is to study kanji ahead of time on this website because you mess up the SRS scheme. Let's say it has passed 3 days since you entered a kanji, so you get it expired and you pass it. Now it's 7 days until you get to see it again, but you want to study so bad so the next day, you review that kanji again. Now it's like... 30 days until you get to see it again WITHOUT that review in 7 days... there's no way you're going to remember.

Reviewing kanji more often outside of the site is fine though, it's not detrimental to see a kanji too often.

I will be up to about 262 today, its a weird number because I skipped the very easy ones I knew from studying Japanese before. I am doing 35 a day, and this has to be the longest time I actually stuck to something, I usually don't like repetition, but the fact that I can remember about 90% of them all motivates me to keep going. My major in school is Japanese so I do have some studying to do for that besides the RTK. I like copying and pasting articles in the reading and see more and more Kanji highlighted =P

My motivation for starting the RTK was I still sucked at Kanji after being in Japanese classes for 5 years, sure I still remember individual words and kanji compounds, but the classroom way hasn't been very effective on me, I learn some vocab one week, do pretty well, then forget it totally. I want to apply for JET and i'm taking an advanced class is Japanese soon which has a lot of reading so I want to at least recognize the individual Kanji by then. I hope I don't hit a wall anytime soon, 35 a day is fast but writing them and saying the story while writing them has been pretty helpful. I hope to be done by the New Year so wish me luck! 頑張ります〜

kazelee wrote:

TerryS wrote:

* It is less frequent.
* There is no expectancy of quick reply.
* Handwriting is larger and easier to read.
* I have my drafts (and therefore new vocabulary) on paper for future reference.

Hey, if you hit ctrl and + it makes the Japanese script so much easier to read. I use it when I read text.

That only works on webpages. I don't use webmail unless someone beats me! Well, except for school, but then unlike commercial webmail our school webmail doesn't take forever to load a page.

Plus there is the benefit that writing helps you remember, and I have my original and translation with list of new vocab.

I could give my school email to people but I really don't want to because:
a) I reserve it for important stuff (school communications, important online accounts) to keep down the volume that goes there.
b) When I am done there, that account will cease to exist, and I like to save old emails that mean something to me. Using Thunderbird, all you have to do is export it. I can't export from the webmail.
c) I can't even save the darn contact list from my school webmail. I can't copy and paste from the list in this particular application -- something about the way it's designed.

But again, one of the biggest things is I have to translate the email, and if I don't have time to do it for a while, it makes my inbox fat.

Last edited by TerryS (2008 October 31, 11:34 pm)