Ever since I finished RTK 1 and 2, I found myself gradually moving towards maintaining my kanji knowledge by reading texts, and using 'real-world' stimuli, and moving away from using Fabrice's website. One of the reasons for this I had realized, was that as one's ability with kanji grows, and the more he or she wishes to use this knowledge in actual kanji-using societies, the more they will need to move away from learning the characters as individual units and focus on learning to view them more exclusively as morpho-syllographs functioning within a language. This is not a poorly known fact, and I believe many of us here on these forums have already begun moving on to this next step.

However, another reality of the kanji which many of us also come to realize is that while the Joyo Kanji (and those beyond in RTK 3) are all indeed valid and active parts of the language, and a working knowledge of all of these is recommended for those who wish to function at the level of the well-educated, a large portion of these are not often used in materials one will read, and almost never used in speech. As second language learners, we are more prone to lexical loss as a result of disuse than native speakers. I have been considering this problem for some time, and I have watched my 'expired' pile grow taller and taller. I found that when I did attempt to clear my piles, more often than not I could read the character in Japanese, but could no longer remember the exact keyword, because I had developed a sense for the subjectivity of many Japanese words which the target kanji being reviewed were related to. An example of this would be the use of 風 (ふう、かぜ) in the unrelated words 風速 (ふうそく- wind speed) and 風格 (ふうかく- personality, character). What I believe this illustrates is that at a certain point in one's Japanese education, this subjectivity begins to become more apparent, and the keywords become less valuable.

I believe Dr. Heisig mentioned in RTK 1 that his method as far as the keywords were concerned, was meant to be a tool, a stepping stone to help students more easily overcome a prohibitive learning curve. This tool could be used as long as one needed it, but the knowledge developed was designed to be long-term (with maintenance) and would be available to help the learner at any time which he or she needed to fall back on it.

What I decided was the best way for someone in my situation to maintain this knowledge and stay sharp with characters that do not see everyday use, was to utilize the power of priming. This would entail just allowing myself to see and briefly mull over more characters more frequently. However, with the current tools available on the kanji.koohii.com review page, I cannot simply view characters sans their information without either moving many characters back to the failed pile, and having to tediously bring them back, or ruin the efficacy of the Leitner system by simply hitting "Yes" on every card to view many character test cards quickly. A simple "Skip" button, which would allow me to just move on to another card without it moving to another Leitner box would make for much easier, and more effective, focused general reviewing.

As always, I appreciate all of the wonderful work Fabrice has done for kanji learners, and I earnestly hope that he will take this suggestion for addition up for consideration. I believe it will make an already excellent page invaluable.

Apologies for the long post, thanks for reading.

Weber,
Dartmouth College '09
Hanover, NH

Last edited by Weber (2007 October 30, 12:45 am)