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Post by Jembru on Jan 28, 2015 1:18:07 GMT
I could have sworn we already had a thread for RTK, but it must have been on the old forum. I've been discussing this book at length with Bokusenou and thought the discussion might be helpful to other learners, so want to continue it here. So the story so far is that I bought this book around 2 years ago because I use mnemonics naturally, so it seemed like a logical system for me to use. I didn't get very far though. Firstly, I didn't like that you aren't given the readings of the kanji, but I knew how to look up kanji by radical on jisho.org, so I could at least check them myself. Doing so led to my second issue though; I discovered that in the first few lessons, a great deal of the characters that appear are only used in names, or aren't considered jouyou kanji, and so on.. So in the end, I went back to studying from my book that lists kanji in the order of frequency used in newspapers. I felt that if I only knew a few hundred characters, I'd rather it be a few hundred useful characters. The book popped up in a conversation recently though, and Bokusenou mentioned how she was able to learn all jouyou kanji in a relatively short time thanks to RTK. I currently recognise far more characters than I can write, and of the ones I can't write, I often confuse similar characters (although context usually helps me to guess them correctly). So I wondered; if I were to go back and try the system again, would it help me to write more characters, because I can already write most of the parts that make up kanji. I mentioned my concerns to Bokusenou, who pointed out that sometimes rarer characters are introduced early on because while rare on their own, they often appear as part of other characters. I was annoyed with myself for not thinking of that! So putting aside my prejudices, and ignoring my 'Japanese texts only' rule, I dusted off my copy of Remembering the Kanji. I must say I'm very pleased with the results already. I'm reading the entries even of kanji I know, because the author might suggest alternative keywords that could show up as part of kanji later. I'm discovering I can guess the writing of kanji that haven't been introduced yet. For example, as soon as I learnt 召 my brain instantly worked out that adding 'hand' makes 招, a character I could read so long as it was written in a familiar word, 招く or 招待 for example, but couldn't write, or even recognise if it stood alone out of the context if a sentence. A few days later, I was writing in my journal and almost without thinking rattled off '招待'. I hadn't even come across the character in RTK yet, and had never written it by hand before.. yet there I was, getting it right first try! I can finally write 真 consistently too. This is one of the characters I have written in my mini-notebook that I keep handy while writing in Japanese. It contains characters I can't write from memory, but that appear frequently. I might not need to use that for much longer! So I am definitely a convert, and I can definitely second Bokusenou's recommendation. If you want to learn kanji quickly, I have to admit there's not much better than this book.. and trust me, I spent the last 4 months of last year cramming kanji, using both grade school order (for handwriting) and JLPT order (for reading). So I can say with some confidence, that I am learning at at least twice the speed with this book!
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Post by Bokusenou on Jan 30, 2015 5:37:34 GMT
Jembru Glad to hear it's working out well! I owe any Japanese reading ability I have to a combination of RTK, JLPT prep, and novels, but RTK more than the others, because I don't think I would have gotten to a point where I could make use of them without RTK. RTK also helped turn me from someone who disliked kanji, into someone who really, really, likes them, to the point where I sometimes feel a little disappointed when I'm reading something in English, and I can't tell what unknown words mean by looking at them, like I can with kanji. One of my favorite things about the book is that the kanji are introduced in order of their radicals. For example, it introduces 明 soon after 月 and 日, so it reinforces things.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 11, 2015 0:52:20 GMT
I'm trying to take my time with the book. I'm reading ahead a little, but I'm not adding new characters to anki until I feel I'm comfortable with the characters I've added so far. All the same, I'm finding their not all sticking. I wanted to write 頑張る earlier and I remembered 'stick stubbornly to your original ideas' for '頑' and so wrote 寸 on the right hand side. I could see it looked wrong, but couldn't work out why. I wouldn't mind, but this is one of the words I had learnt to write last year, so I should have known better! Anyway, I figured I need a bit more repetition than just adding compounds to anki (because sometimes it is the other character in the word that reminds me of the reading). There are anki decks, but as far as I can tell they mix up all the characters together. I want to practice them by lesson they appear in. So I found a decent memrise deck that does just this (and also teaches readings.. which I'll probably skip for now and come back to later). I hope this will help, because the way things are going so far, there's no way I'll be able to read all characters in 4 months. I know others have managed, but I'm definitely a slow learner. I'm only up to lesson 9 and I'm already forgetting characters.
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Post by Bokusenou on Feb 11, 2015 6:36:44 GMT
Hmm, when I forgot certain kanji it just meant my mnemonics for them weren't crazy enough. XD Of course I reviewed the kanji I had already learned, but making sure my mnemonics were memorable enough helped a lot. If I was having trouble with a particular primitive, I'd tend to turn it into a character from a book or movie who reminded me of the primitive's meaning somehow, like the "taskmaster" primitive became "Snape" from the Harry Potter series for me.
The mnemonics included in the first half of the book are nice, but in some cases I found they weren't memorable enough, so I needed to either revise them, or make new ones.
Granted, I can only say what worked for me, but maybe some of it might be helpful.
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Post by chocopie on Feb 11, 2015 10:51:17 GMT
I'm trying to take my time with the book. I'm reading ahead a little, but I'm not adding new characters to anki until I feel I'm comfortable with the characters I've added so far. All the same, I'm finding their not all sticking. I wanted to write 頑張る earlier and I remembered 'stick stubbornly to your original ideas' for '頑' and so wrote 寸 on the right hand side. I could see it looked wrong, but couldn't work out why. I wouldn't mind, but this is one of the words I had learnt to write last year, so I should have known better! I went through RTK when i was studying for N1 and I found it pretty tough going. I definitely do not have a visual memory/mind so I found remembering mnenomics pretty tough, and making them too crazy made them completely impossible to remember! Now I tend to use a mix of phonetic readings of radicals and kanji meanings to remember kanji, and coupled with exposure to kanji through reading, it works out for me. For example, 頑. I can remember that the onyomi 'gan' comes from 元 (think of 元旦), and the meaning of the kanji is stubborn (think of 頑固). Stubborn-headed, bull-headed, hard-headed remind me that the other part is 頁 from 頭. I think I would try out for RTK for a bit and see if it works, or use the kanji order as a guide and change the method to suit you. Rememeber it's aimed at people who know nothing about kanji, but you already know a lot of kanji, radicals, readings and associated vocabulary. Use everything you have!
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Post by Jembru on Feb 12, 2015 0:07:09 GMT
Thanks Bokusenou and Chocopie. I guess things might get easier when I get to the section where I have to come up with my own stories!
I had never thought about using actual characters, but I had invented characters for the radicals. Like, no-gihen is a tree that has come to life (and that's why he's wearing a hat ^^). 'Taskmaster' for me is a tap-dancing goldfish.. I haven't met either of these characters in RTK yet, but I'll be surprised if either of these comes up.
The way I was remembering kanji before was probably a combination of everything you both have suggested. Some characters were stories, some I only focused on the reading.. like I know 紅茶 if I see it on a menu, because 紅 has 工 in it so I know that's 'kou'. However, if you handed me a menu offering 虹茶, I wouldn't notice anything was wrong (but I bet I'd love whatever they bring to the table.. just imagine it!^^)
I guess I just need to be patient and like you say, come up with something different if a character isn't sticking. 冠張ります! (冠 was the closest character I could find to how I'd accidentally written the character yesterday.. ^^)
Oh, about memrise. If anyone fancies giving the system a go, I've just discovered that the course I'm using actually has all the mnemonics form the book typed out for each character! It also has alternative mnemonics that other learners have come up with. So if you click the 'help me remember this' button, you can flick through them at your leisure, or add your own! They've also offered alternative keywords, that are recognised if you type those in instead of the main word, and they have the readings (and some play the sound, although I switch my sound off because it annoys me). There are characters missing (like all of chapter 1 for example), and the elements aren't present so if you don't have the book, you might wonder what on earth they're going on about, but it might give someone a taste of the system before you part with your hard earned cash! The course is called 'James W. Heising -Remembering the Kanji' and was made by 'TL-SweetFaceCake' if anyone fancies trying it for themselves.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 19, 2015 20:25:45 GMT
Just wanted to come back and update my progress. Using that memrise deck has made a huge difference. I'm really sailing through the book just now, although I'm a bit worried progress might slow down when the characters get more complicated. I've stopped adding so many words to anki though, because it might just slow things down. However, as I'm going through my anki reviews I'm recognising kanji. When this happens I'll sometimes edit the card and move it to the reading section. It's a cumbersome process, but not so time consuming as looking up words for each and every kanji as I learn it.
In most cases though, I'm just content to enjoy recognising kanji as I meet them. Like the other day I came by a word I didn't know よりそう. It was in a grade 2 textbook so wasn't written in kanji. Then when I went to put it into anki I saw how it was written, 寄り添う. I instantly remembered the story of the strange house and the keyword 'draw near', when I saw '寄', and that somehow made the word itself really easy to remember.
So I guess this is what Rin has been trying to tell us all along. That once you just get the general meanings of all the kanji out of the way, the nitty-gritty of learning vocabulary just gets so much easier.
I said at the start of the year that this WILL be the year I progress to advanced level. I'm more convinced than ever now, that this is perfectly within my grasp. Well, so long as I am creative with my definition of 'advanced', I can't possibly fail ^^
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Post by Jembru on Sept 29, 2015 12:11:14 GMT
No way! Was it January that I started with this book? So much for 'it'll only take a few months'. The memrise reviews take a lot longer to get through than the book itself. In the book I'm on page 354 (1701-1712), but on memrise I think I'm only around page 290 (1245-1255). This means that by the time I come to review the kanji, it's been a good few weeks since I first practiced it (and anyone who claims writing it just once is enough, is a freaking liar!!!), and I often have to go back through the book and double-check what a new component is meant to be. I don't always remember my mnemonic either.
I had hoped I'd have them all mastered by the end of July, but it's starting to look very unlikely that I'll know them all by the New Year even. So I'm a little dejected about that.
It's not all bad though. On the one hand, I can give a more accurate guess to how many characters I know. I usually round up to the nearest 50, because I definitely know more kanji than I've so far met in RTK. Almost every page of RTK has a handful of characters I already know. Like the page I'm up to in the book has 漢、難、乗 and 今 and the next page, 念、予、野 and 嫌.. next page again has 4 kanji I know.. and well, you get the idea.
The other good thing, I guess, is that although it has taken longer than I'd hoped, at least at the end of this, I'll never have to study these darned characters again! At some point in the next 6 months, I'll have reached the end for sure. Then I just have to.. you know... learn all their readings and common words they appear in and..
...remind me why I'm doing this to myself please?
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Post by Bokusenou on Oct 3, 2015 21:00:10 GMT
Well, I don't know if it will work for everyone, but RTK was really useful to me. After I finished RTK, I flew through the Core decks, and learning words was so much easier. Before RTK, I was upper-beginner level in listening, and only knew 200 or so kanji. A year after I finished RTK I passed N2 after taking it for the first time.
I credit RTK for playing a major role in acquiring any Japanese reading ability I have, because without it I probably wouldn't have learned any more kanji past those 200 or so, as I felt like I was hitting a kanji wall at the time, and had almost given up hope on ever being able to read Japanese. That said, I know it worked for me, but I don't know if it will work for everyone.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 4, 2015 1:14:59 GMT
Oh, it's definitely helping! I'm pretty sure too wouldn't learn them all without this course, and I'm already noticing that I can read pretty well even with a few hundred characters still missing.
I read somewhere (I forget where unfortunately), that RTK works better for those with little prior knowledge of Japanese. I was already conversational when I started, so I think I fall into the category of 'it'll work, but it'll take a bit more effort'. The article I read said something about it being because we already have pre-conceived ideas of what a kanji means because of common words we've seen it used in. That can interfere with the mnemonic process, because we're not breaking the characters down, but taking them as a whole. Already knowing many of the radicals is sometimes a problem too. Like, to me, 'nogihen' is a tree with katakana 'no' balanced on top, as it's name suggests. It's hard to see this as wheat or whatever RTK says it is. Then when I go to write characters, I'll sometimes leave the 'no' off and draw a tree, or add the no where it wasn't needed. At that point, the mnemonic process has pretty much fallen flat.
Don't get me wrong though, I still like the system. I'll get there, and I won't give up until I do. I can't deny that my vocabulary has exploded since learning the kanji. I just really wish I'd learnt the kanji when I started this journey way back in 2012! (OMG.. has it really been nearly 4 years? The time went by so quickly.)
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Post by Jembru on Oct 16, 2015 6:20:15 GMT
Do you think it would be okay if I just rushed through the characters by doing speed runs on memrise, and not getting too hung up about practicing their writing, or readings? Once I sort of know them all, couldn't I then reinforce my knowledge by reading as much and as often as I can? Even if that means sometimes I have to look up a character I've forgotten. Once I know a character, if I notice it in a word as I go through anki, I edit and move the card to my reading deck. Already knowing the word means I can learn the readings without much effort. So I could just continue doing this maybe, and then as I meet words I can't read next year, add them to anki.
You see. The regular reviews on memrise are a pain, and it's clogged up with kanji I know, but just can't remember the correct keyword for. I frequently have more than 100 reviews to do too, and it can be almost 200 reviews sometimes. I'm learning little more than 100 new characters a month, and am still no where near my first 2,000 so I have no chance of reaching my goal of knowing them all by next year unless something changes.
If I speed run though, I think I actually could do this! Picking from a multiple choice of either 4 kanji or 4 keywords, avoids the problem of mistyping, and even though they pad out your reviews with random characters that weren't actually due, you can burn through even a large number of reviews in a matter of minutes. It adds more and more 'padding' the fewer reviews you have left, so I tend to use the standard review system for the last 10-20, but even so it's much faster. I really think this could work.
What do those who mastered jouyou kanji think? Is having a rough idea of their meanings good enough to be begin with? I won't know them well enough to write them, but I'm happy to continue learning to write in grade order to be honest. Knowing the element meanings, and already recognising the character, should help with this process too though, shouldn't it?
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Post by Bokusenou on Oct 21, 2015 21:21:02 GMT
Yeah, that's pretty much what I did. I just learned the kanji & English keyword,though I did write each kanji twice when I first learned it & once when reviewing (writing it helps me remember kanji, so it was more about adding to the mnemonic then doing writing practice for me), I might have skipped doing it if it hadn't helped me much. After I finished RTK1 I basically flew through doing the Core 2k & 6k vocabulary decks because I no longer had to learn how to write the kanji as I learned words.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 22, 2015 9:44:43 GMT
Thanks for the reply Rin. That does sound similar to what I'll be doing I guess. Maybe I shouldn't ignore the writing of them as I learn them then. I honestly can't tell if this helps my memory or not, but I have noticed that I'm forgetting more and more lately. It could be that I've stopped writing them, or it could be that I'm rushing and not giving myself long enough to think about the mnemonic for each one (I'm barely even trying now).
When you started on the core vocabulary decks, did you find that some characters were familiar but you couldn't quite recall their keyword? Then you saw the answer and it came back to you? This is what I'm imagining will happen to me, especially as I'm already experiencing this with characters that I learnt after I'd stopped automatically adding compounds to anki. Did the core decks reinforce the characters you didn't know so well?
The core decks weren't much good for me because my vocabulary is all over the place, and I don't know how to write a lot of the words I know. It meant there was no good starting point where I won't have missed too many important compounds, but won't be constantly bombarded with easy English-Japanese or listening words and sentences I already knew (besides, the decks are gone now right?). I'm hoping that DS game I ordered from Japan might be a useful alternative. It's designed for users who already know the words phonetically, but just don't know how they're written, which sounds ideal for someone like me. Of course unlike a native speaker, I won't know all the words, but one mode actually defines the word, gives the kana and then asks you to provide the kanji, so this mode should help me to learn new words without using my dictionary too much. That should recreate a similar learning experience to yours I guess.
On that note, I think I'll skip my memrise reviews today, go back a few chapters in RTK and start handwriting some characters for a while... before I have to go back to bed for work tonight. :/
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