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When you study the core sets in Iknow how do you go about studying it? Do you guys write the word down over and over with the Kanji? Or just look at it for a second to try and remember it? Just trying to see what kind of techniques people are using to study those vocabs. When studying iKnow has it helped you a lot remembering the Kanji? It doesn’t really show you the readings of the Kanji unless i’m not paying attention haha.
RTK -> Core (using anki)
Oh so you just download the core decks and use anki instead? I’m going through RTK but it just bothers me a little that it only teaches you the meaning of it just feel like that I could spend that time more wisely.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
ScorpionVII.
I don’t write anything down, I just use the iKnow phone/tablet/web apps daily, I generally remember stuff. As for the kanji then I usually remember those quite well, but of course it takes a while to start recognising them quickly on sight, it depends on the words really because some compounds stand out more than others. (I think)
While doing the Core decks, write Lang-8 posts using some of the new words, that will help you remember the kanji further.
I did RTK and I feel like you should just ditch it and do Core all the way, I wish I did.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
I was on the iKnow bandwagon a while back but I fell off for a few reasons.
1 – it’s slow – I think the number of reviews per word per session is too high and there is a lot of loading time.
2 – it cost’s money
3 – I was having a lot of trouble with the mobile app
4 – (this is for the core series in general) Learning words that are not related to each other in any real way has proven (more than once) to be very difficult (boring) for me. I had much better success with learning from native material or with methods like ReadtheKanji.com which present the new vocab by words containing the same kanji.I want to add a note about what lowercasej said about his primary goal being communicating with people. If your goal is to say something (anything) to a native Japanese speaker as soon as possible, I would agree that skipping dedicated kanji study makes sense, as does learning words in order of frequency of use. However, if your goal is long term fluency, I think it’s a good idea to study in a way that puts the most information into your head the fastest and with the least resistance even if it’s not the most common information. As long as what you are learning is not functionally irreverent, even if it’s not common, you’ll have to learn it eventually anyway. I think it’s worth it to put in the overhead and delay short term progress a bit. This goes for RTK as well as learning vocabulary using a certain kanji together even if some of the words are less frequently used.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
thisiskyle.
Thank you all for the informative input, and my goal is to become fluent for the long run. So everything is pretty much important to learn I have a hard time deciding what I want to focus on first. I guess I’m leaning more towards being able to speak first but I don’t want to completely ignore Kanji. I tried ReadtheKanji.com and I feel like it’s for people that already know the kanji..the meaning/reading there are a lot of compound Kanji’s that I have no clue what the reading is. Are you supposed to know it already or supposed to look it up first study that and then use that application to help make it sink in.
Maybe I haven’t played with it long enough…
I agree iKnow is a little slow and the reviews come heavy and fast (though this depends how many new words you tackle each time) but I don’t know what the complaints are about the loading times, it takes around 1-2 seconds to load a “deck” for me.
I think iKnow is pretty great, you can definitely go the free route by using the decks with Anki though, but I do prefer using the iKnow apps and I don’t have to mess about getting Anki to play nice with media syncing across 4 devices.
Edit: I’ve not had any issues with the mobile apps (Android and iOS) either but I have no doubts that they could have been a pain to begin with, some apps just start off bad.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
Yggbert:
I don’t know what the complaints are about the loading times, it takes around 1-2 seconds to load a “deck” for me.May well be my connection.
Your philosophy holds true to some extent Kyle. English is not my main language, and I think I can safely say that I don’t know all words in English and yet I feel like I am able to speak freely(or so I think myself). Most words you might encounter sooner or later, but core has tried to learn me words that I have never seen in English before, and if I haven’t seen them in English before then I honestly don’t see any reason that I should learn them in Japanese, unless I realize they are actually used. For example the other day I met 万年筆. I had no clue what it was in English, and had to do a google photo search for it. Turns out it is a word that is of no use, so of course I suspended it right away. That is the same with words like 横断歩道,免許証,定期券,航空便,カセットテープ. These are all words I suspended during the last 2 days. They are useless to a person that doesn’t live in Japan, and this is why I would rather prioritize what I learn instead of just learning everything because you need to learn the words sooner or later. As I said I don’t know all words in English, and I feel I am able to speak freely, so clearly you don’t have to learn all words.
That being the case, I would rather prioritize.Edit; kyle does actually say “As long as what you are learning is not functionally irreverent” So I guess there was no reason to make this argument lol
マーク・ウェーバー: Edit; kyle does actually say “As long as what you are learning is not functionally irreverent” So I guess there was no reason to make this argument lol
Haha, typo…”irrelevant”.
マーク・ウェーバー: That is the same with words like 横断歩道,免許証,定期券,航空便,カセットテープ. These are all words I suspended during the last 2 days. They are useless to a person that doesn’t live in Japan
Unless they want to read and listen to Japanese media… I don’t live in Japan, but those are all words I come across in native material, aside from カセットテープ which is pretty dated now.
Though I’ll mention that when iKnow reordered the core series last year, several of those words were pushed further back in the Core 6000. So they don’t come up so early if learning through the iKnow site.
It is good to hear that iknow reordered some of the words on their website, because sometimes the words aren’t very relevant compared to other words at the stage I am at.
I do listen and read to a lot of Japanese media every day, but it is all related to AKB, and I think it is safe to say I won’t see the words, but if I do I will just learn them as they come up. I won’t dig words that I am pretty sure I won’t see in the near future, because I can dig word that will be much more relevant for me right now, so that is why I have suspended them. With that said, I will probably go back and un-suspend a few of them once I have finished core 2k, except for all the words that doesn’t have any use for me.From learning English, I know this is what will benefit me the most. ^^
マーク・ウェーバー:
RTK -> Core (using anki)REAL helpful response there :P It’s as if you didn’t actually read the thread title.
To be honest I might not have… lol
Yeah I don’t use iknow so I am of no help xDI have a quick question I keep seeing people downloading/studying iknow’s core 2k/6k what happened to the other sections?
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
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