I found the start of KO2001 really hard too.
Look at the 3rd sentence for 円 - the 3rd sentence you learn:
　　円安で日本企業の輸出が増えた。
I mean, come on, 増 is Kanji 359!

The good news is it does get easier (I'm up to Kanji 620). And to answer your question, yes, I believe all (?) of the compounds you see at the beginning are used later on. Also, you will see a lot of these words many times in other sentences (the number of times 輸出 is used, you will learn it eventually).

I don't know why they couldn't come up with sentences using only the Kanji used so far plus the same group. That would be a major improvement IMO, keeping with the 'i+1'. Maybe it's too hard to get enough variety in the beginning.

BTW- how do people cope with that difficulty? For a while I was a bit lenient on marking cards if I failed a reading for a Kanji I hadn't covered, but mostly I just failed it until it stuck. I failed some of the cards a lot of times, but eventually they seem to stick (for instance, I actually found 輸出 hard).

がんばってね！

avparker, thanks for your encouragement. yeah- its tough, but luckily I do recognise a fair number of the compounds from previous studies- or with words such as 増える　or 狭い, knew the word in hiragana but now- with RtK- can link it up with its kanji.

Still, theres definitely a lot of new compounds I need to learn- I guess there's no way around that, and if as you say they repeat them then that will hard consolidate the learning.

頑張ります！

What I've been thinking of doing is having the sentence card, e.g.

円安で日本企業の輸出が増えた

then having four separate "vocab" cards of the new compounds- I find it quite easy to remember seeing the compounds after the initial sentence, but then need to test myself on each individually.

Also when I come across a new compound I check it in DenshiJisho, then look at the kanji details, then check it in ALC if the meaning is subtle.

I finished KO2001 about 3 weeks ago and one of the things that helped me get through it is to just suspend cards that are too hard. I was doing 5 new kanji every day(a page a day) and if I had one card that I failed over and over because it had too many new compounds I just suspended it. After about a week you'll usually come across the compound in the book. After you learn the kanji and compound in the book it's much easier to remember. Then just unsuspend the card. Another thing I did was add more example sentences. If I was having problems with one word, I would look it up in yahoo's dictionary and add the 2 or 3 easiest sentences from there to Anki. After that I just reviewd as normal and that tricky word became one of the easier words.
  Anyways, don't worry so much everything will work itself out in the end if you stick with it.

As much as its a pain adding so many compounds when looking at the earlier, and seemingly simple, kanji, just remember than it'll have to be done at some point anyway. If you have two really hard compounds in one sentence, why not just add another sentence right there are then from ALC/Denshi Jisho/Yahoo Dictionary? I can't see any harm in adding extra material to what is in KO2001- its all about learning sh*t loads of vocabulary and the various readings of kanji anyway isn't it.

stevesayskanpai wrote:

Wow, I've learnt up to kanji 60 on KO2001, and in my deck I have 207 unique kanji! When these kanji come up in there own right, rather than as example sentences, will a lot of the vocabulary/compounds be repeated?

KO2001 is going to be a real b*tch!

I was more like "207 kanji covered already? Yes!!"

vosmiura wrote:

I was more like "207 kanji covered already? Yes!!"

Yes, its a two-edged sword (or perhaps a more appropriate metaphor)- I like the idea that after a while I'll be doing less work because I've put in the leg work at the beginning.

vosmiura- what do you mean ala Iverson's method? I agree completely with what you say about spending some time learning the new words- very important.

I'll just add that I first got the sentences for KO2001 from the torrent, and toyed with not buying the books. I decided it was important to support the author though, plus the books are obviously a very useful reference guide, so I ordered them. I'd encourage anyone else who is trying to do KO2001 without the books to do the same- the authors are clearly not from a big company, and deserve credit and money for the approach they've put together.

In which case can I ask that when my books arrive, someone with the login can give me access to the actual spreadsheets? I'll willingly email a picture of me and my books

I'm looking at ordering the first couple of books perhaps, but I seem to recall some folks preferring the audio/cd version. Having a book is much more convenient than using a computer, but audio would be great. Experiences?

stevesayskanpai wrote:

I dont understand why people need the audio with Japanese. Its not a difficult language to speak, like Chinese, or even Korean. My choice was easy- the books.

speaking it, ist not the only problem, understand it when it is spoken could be sometimes very difficult.

In addition, one can easily mispronounce a word even though you read it's hiragana form correctly. Sempai being an obvious example, you'll not know it if you only used kana. Hearing a native reading of the sentences can clean up mispronunciations early on.

I'll be honest, I still can't tell the difference between hashi and hashi (bridge and chopsticks). Heck, distinguishing tsu and su is still a pain for me.

That would be correct, the rest of the kanji on the CD are just the reference pages, showing you example compounds of the kanji, but it's still extra stuff than you get from the books.

I personally bought the CDs because I wasn't willing to torrent it after getting the books as the audio and reference pages are not in the book and therefore getting those things without paying for them seems wrong.  I also chose the CDs because I agree audio is important, and I love being able to click on any kanji I don't know very well and see readings and some example words.

My problems with Japanese pronunciation consist of tsu changing and sounding exactly like su half the time and knowing when to make ga sound like ga and when you make it sound like gna.

I also have a huge problem picking out words in a lot of Japanese if I don't know the word.  Sometimes I'll think the ni in the middle was a particle and the second half was a new word, and other times the opposite happens.  I really hope listening to a lot of Japanese will make their word separation more noticeable, but I swear they always make the particle after the word a part of the word.  Hence how beginners think watashiwa is the word for I and some such and so forth.