Ben Bullock wrote:

This may shock you, but is it possible for you to imagine for a moment that I kind of actually DO have some negative opinions about some of those learning methods, and I actually DO want to raise a red flag? As it says at the top of the page,

The list was compiled by the FAQ maintainer alone, and the reviews and ratings under each forum are merely the personal opinions of the FAQ maintainer.

Regardless of this, whatever learning method you choose, I wish you good luck with it.

Your sarcasm is coming off a little condescending... not sure if that's the intention.

Anyway, yes you certainly are entitled to your own opinion! And most certainly entitled to it on your own web page!

However, here's the thing with opinions... people will sometimes ask you to back them up... You asked what makes this forum so great and were given a number of answers from a few members.

So please let us know what you don't like... what are these "things" you want to raise a red flag about?

And I'm with Sebastian... you sound like an experienced language learner and I would actually love to hear what methods you have used in the past, and also what you think is effective, if you can find some time.

Ben Bullock wrote:

This may shock you, but is it possible for you to imagine for a moment that I kind of actually DO have some negative opinions about some of those learning methods, and I actually DO want to raise a red flag? As it says at the top of the page,

The list was compiled by the FAQ maintainer alone, and the reviews and ratings under each forum are merely the personal opinions of the FAQ maintainer.

Regardless of this, whatever learning method you choose, I wish you good luck with it.

Are you fluent in all aspects of Japanese?

Which method did you use to learn Japanese?

How long have you been learning/did it take you to Japanese?

Have you ever even tried the methods here?

Last edited by mezbup (2010 February 18, 7:24 pm)

Smackle wrote:

If a review is completely negative, I would expect a 1 star rating. Perhaps it needs explaining why it's not lower.

Nice (unless you changed us to 1 star) :-)

Fillanzea: Me too. I keep the "already read" stuff on one shelf or in one folder just to give myself some sense of moving forward.

I never thought this stuff in the forum was gimmicky. I found this forum by accident after downloading rtk from anki. I just randomly clicked on the word and it took me here. I'm so thankful I found this forum too! I'm using the methods and my learning is growing tremendously. I thank everyone here for their "gimmicky methods". ありがとう！

Thora wrote:

yudantaiteki wrote:

Of course it can't stand alone, what I meant there is that I don't have a high opinion of RTK when a learner is left up to his own devices to figure out what to do after finishing it.  I really think that in the next edition, Heisig should get someone else to write the introduction to say more about this -- given that he's asking you to do something very unusual and that has a short-term negative affect on your Japanese ability, I think he owes it to the learner to explain what this is going to do in the long term and where to go after finishing RTK 1.  [...]

I suppose I don't see RTK as a separate system because we did it as a supplement during univ.

Heisig says in the intro to RTK 1 (italics are in the original):
"The reader will not have to finish more than a few lessons to realize that this
book was designed for self-learning. What may not be so apparent is that using
it to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations
has an adverse influence on the learning process. The more you try to combine
the study of the written kanji through the method outlined in these pages with
traditional study of the kanji, the less good this book will do you. I know of no
exceptions."

(Beyond that, even here it's often recommended to completely finish RTK 1 before doing anything else, except maybe learning kana.)

I think every beginner needs to figure out how they want to go about learning Japanese and RTK is just one resource for a specific purpose. It shouldn't be expected to spell out a comprehensive system any more than a book on Japanese grammar should.

I don't feel that reference works need to justify themselves, but RTK 1 asks you to associate Japanese characters with English keywords and explicitly *not* to learn readings along with them.  Given this, I do believe that Heisig owes the reader some sort of advice on how to turn this skill into actual Japanese ability.  Especially since he already makes pedagogical claims in his introductions -- don't combine this with traditional methods of learning kanji, don't study kanji->keyword, don't try to learn on and kun readings at the same time, don't try to just learn from context.  As far as I can find, the only place in his introductions where he makes any sort of affirmative statement about what to do is in RTK 2, where he says that you can use "graded readers" in conjunction with the book after completing the first third or so.

The reason I say this is that before I discovered places like this forum, I had encountered several people in real life who were using RTK.  All of them had the same misconceptions -- they had very little idea of what was involved in learning Japanese, but they had some vague idea that if they finished RTK 1 they would immediately be able to jump into reading Japanese and automatically learn vocab based on their knowledge of the English keywords.  The book was publicly recommended at a panel during a JET conference I went to, and the person recommending the book said explicitly that if you learned the "meanings" from Heisig that was enough to start reading Japanese (he had not even finished half of RTK 1).  So I'm not just making up this idea that people can be misled. 

I think it's a lot to ask of a total beginner to make their own learning system.  Of course in a place like this we have a lot of motivated people who are interested in learning methods and enjoy doing that, but someone who happens upon RTK 1 in a bookstore and picks it up isn't going to be able to do that.  I think it's especially a lot to ask of a beginner to recognize that the RTK method can be good when used in a certain way, but at the same time to ignore very specific and strong statements the author of the book makes in the introduction.  It's easy to see what to ignore when you have the collective experience of this forum, but not by yourself.

With a traditional textbook, it's clear what sort of progress you're making because the material appearing in those textbooks is actual Japanese (or at least something resembling it).  It doesn't take a genius to figure out how reading a paragraph in Japanese is going to benefit your Japanese ability.  I think it does take a good amount of insight to *correctly* discern how associating a shape with an English keyword is going to ultimately benefit your Japanese ability, and it would help people out a lot if such insight were in the book already.

btw, I'm curious what you consider "short term negative effects on Japanese?"

I don't think there can be any dispute that a person who completes RTK 1, compared to a person who has studied from a "traditional" textbook for the same amount of time, will have a significantly lower ability in actual, functional Japanese.  Even RTK proponents admit this.  The idea, however, is that it's OK if your short term ability lags behind traditional methods because in the long term, you will be better off.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2010 February 20, 1:30 pm)

@yudantaiteki I dispute it, because I think very few espouse the strategy of prolonged, RTK-only study. In fact, those who compile all of nest0r's posts for their patented RevTK Study Method™ will be far more advanced in just one month than any other type of Japanese learner, and will also look and feel great!

Last edited by nest0r (2010 February 20, 2:43 pm)

Ben Bullock wrote:

Part of a website devoted to James Heisig's dodgy kanji learning books. This forum is concerned with the language, not Heisig's books. As might be expected, many of the users seem to love gimmicky learning methods.

In case you didn't notice the Index page, the forum has a specific area dedicated to Reviewing the Kanji Volume 1, and Reviewing the Kanji Volume 2 & 3. The RtK forum categories have been there since the forum's creation.

Ben Bullock wrote:

Would you rate Tae Kim's forum above or below this one?

It wouldn't be a fair comparison, because this forum tends to focus on the why and the how of efficient Japanese language learning, with a special emphasis on kanji. People here love kanji instead of fearing them.

The community that revolves around this forum (so I mean the members who actively participate in the topics), tend to be smart and self reliable. This is not too surprising since they would be the kind of learners more likely to pick up a book like Remembering the Kanji.

Likewise, it's not too surprising that you won't find a lot of grammar or vocab questions here, because people are self reliable and will go for websites or books or dictionaries and find it for themselves. The questions are welcome, and often get very helpful replies, but they never really picked up hence there is a catch-all category "The Japanese Language".

While the forum does not have a lot of native Japanese members, it has a lot of visitors who seem to be based in Japan. I'm too lazy to post Analytics screenshots here but the numbers go like this, out of 57000 monthly visits in January (rounded down for simplicity):
Northern America ~23000 visits
Eastern Asia ~9600 (8881 from Japan)
Northern Europe ~8000
Western Europe ~3990

This may be similar on other Japanese language learning forums, though I suspect the ones with more newbies questions will attract a lot more non-Japan based members who are fans of Japanese culture, anime and so on.

A great part of the active people here who use "gimmicky" methods are based in Japan, work or study in Japan, and know their way around Japan. Some are even married in Japan

Thora wrote:

We could start peddling it in elementary schoolyards.

Then what would we do with the monster army of genius 学生 that doing that would create?

kazelee wrote:

Then what would we do with the monster army of genius 学生 that doing that would create?

Start blogs?

Ben Bullock wrote:

Part of a website devoted to James Heisig's dodgy kanji learning books. This forum is concerned with the language, not Heisig's books. As might be expected, many of the users seem to love gimmicky learning methods.

ファブリス wrote:

In case you didn't notice [...] The RtK forum categories have been there since the forum's creation.

BB's intended  meaning might have been "This forum is concerned with the language, not [just] Heisig's books."  In other words, a description that would appeal to a broader group.

When I have kids I'm going to lock them in an unlit basement with various "Learn XYZ in 24 hours" cds playing on loop until they are 18.

That's just an insane amount of money.