You should do exactly this:

Whatever you want to do.

Learning a language isn't set in stone, even when it's something as useful as RtK. No matter how you do it, if you keep trying and enjoying it, especially trying new things, I think you'll get far.

So good luck!

zachandhobbes wrote:

You should do exactly this:

Whatever you want to do.

Learning a language isn't set in stone, even when it's something as useful as RtK. No matter how you do it, if you keep trying and enjoying it, especially trying new things, I think you'll get far.

So good luck!

true, experiment and play around and find your own way of doing things as well.
Take the best of all sides and add it to your methods of learning. That's a good way of using the situation(thread)

mezbup wrote:

I'm actually 2/3 the way through reading an amazing book in Japanese atm called "書けない漢字が書ける本” which is written by a Japanese kanji researcher and each kanji gets a two page spread, the first gives a mnemonic from the Japanese perspective and the second page covers some etymology and or really interesting stuff about the kanji.

Mnemonics in Japanese from a Japanese perspective have been a HUGE eyeopener. One of the things that this book has taught me is that things like 胸　can be broken down into 月, × (batsu), コ （katakana "ko") and ク　(katakana "ku"). It's the use of turning things into their katakana equivalents makes making mnemonics in Japanese a lot easier!

Anyways, for those of you who are at a JLPT1 reading level, It's a fascinating book that I find hard to put down.

thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely try it. I'm always into books that are talking about kanji/different perspectives.

fakewookie wrote:

How do you plan on learning Japanese vocabulary without linking back to English definitions?

This is the easiest way to learn vocab and works for most words.  However, sometimes it doesn't.  For example, I have trouble with words that have a ton of homonyms　(かける、つく).  I also have trouble with words that have many possibilities for their English language equivalent （合う）.

Spirarel wrote:

prink- What method do you use?

For learning kanji? I just learn kanji as they appear in new vocab. I have several srs decks, one of which is the very commonly used Core6k. Here's how my cards are set up.

Side A:
sentence audio and nothing else

Side B:
sentence in Japanese with furigana
English meaning

I have two identical Core6k decks set up like this. One deck is for listening and repeating. For the other one, I write the sentence out. Generally, if you can write it, you can read it. As I learn kanji, I focus on its readings rather than its keyword, which I think is more practical. I could combine the two decks, but I prefer to space listening/speaking separate from reading/writing.

Training wheels are an interesting analogy to RTK. But, when you first learn to ride a bike using training wheels, you're focusing on how to ride the bike. The training wheels just prop you up. You can sit on the bike without falling over, but you can't make it go forward without pedaling. Similarly, RTK will not 'pedal' for you. You'll still have to learn the readings on your own. For those who feel RTK works for them, it simply props them up, eventually it becomes completely unnecessary. For those who don't feel RTK works, it just a hindrance that fills us with extra, unneeded information. I don't have anything against RTK, and I do refer to it on very rare occasions out of curiosity. I'm sure it works for many, but I'd rather not use something that is clearly meant to be supplemental as my main way of learning kanji.

I like how Tae Kim puts it in this blog post.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/200 … o-methods/