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@ winterpromise Oh, hey, it’s good to see you around again. :) I can relate, actually, given that I’ve just dived into the the second half of RtK (1100+) and can see the insane amount of time it can sap if allowed. Reviewing earlier Kanji and adding new Kanji can take as little as an hour, or as much as an entire day, and I’m here hoping that’s just the nature of the beast for the first few months. On the plus side I can say Kanji seems less intimidating on the whole, easier to process relating to vocabulary, and easier to process in authentic Japanese material (before my eyes would scan over a mess of Kanji as seemingly random strokes and not even try to comprehend how it’s structured). Still, there’s already been a few instances where I nearly quit/allowed myself to forget large amounts of the Kanji requiring immediate re-learning.
Anyway it’s nice to see I’m not alone in JP learning struggles, having sadly quit/restarted efforts twice now. ^o^ Best of luck to you!
Welcome back Cassandra! I’m actually ready to get back into the swing of things! For this half of the year I’ve been focusing on finishing my degree, spending time with the gf and losing weight. (lost more than 60lbs since Jan 01!)
What happened with RTK for you sort of happened to me. I was so determined to finish I didn’t think about my long time retention and just burned through the last 1000 as fast as I could and then stopped really hard when I should of kept going. I had almost all 2042 in my short term memory at minimum but was so happy to finish I didn’t keep it up. So now I’m going to be working on my foundations again.
I just installed the Anki 2 Beta 16 and I’ve got a refresher course planned. Everyday
- RTK 1
- Kore 6000
- Tae Kims Re-Read
- Light native readingShouldn’t take me TOO long and it’ll get me back up to speed.
ONE MORE REASON WHY YOU JUST SHOULD NOT DO RTK
I don’t think RTK is a total waste of time. I just think it needs to be managed better, not a competition to get to the end of the book. If RTK was studied at a steady pace, with a mind toward what maintenance will be like, I think it’s a great program. I think it’s been extremely beneficial in that I can look at a page of Japanese and not be completely overwhelmed with the squiggles. I know what a lot of the kanji mean and can figure out a good portion of the rest. It’s given kanji a familiarity that makes it less frightening. It’s just not worth plowing through the entire book without taking the time (balanced with other study) to put the kanji in long term memory.
Chigun – It’s definitely not just you! :) Keep at it, keep it manageable, and you’ll definitely see forward progress!
Sheepy – Awesome to see you back. Rumor had it you dropped Japanese but I’m glad to see you’re back. Congrats on the weight loss!
Missing – You just don’t like RTK. :P
I’m not done with my studying tonight but wanted to say that I read a blog post in Japanese and left a comment. My first comment on an all Japanese website. It was nerve wracking. But at least the ice has been broken a tiny bit! Maybe next time won’t seem so scary… lol
I am with missing, I did RTK and really it feels like I should have just done vocab all that time instead. I’m tempted to ditch doing my reviews every day for it because it’s not really doing anything for me, although I don’t get many reviews a day so it’s not taking up much time.
Yggbert – Are you finding that recognizing kanji is any easier for you? Are you studying something besides RTK every day? How long has it been since you finished? I’m always interested in how other people view the program.
Didn’t drop Japanese, I’ve just been consigned to reading Japanese here and there instead of any strong studying. Also RTK did wonders for my study, my only problem is not doing it enough because I was in a rush lol. Like rushing to the end of a book and missing all the details in the middle doesn’t make it a bad book ;P
Sheepy – Are you going to redo RTK or just pick up reviewing where you left off? I suspended all of my RTK cards because I was sick of seeing so many due without being willing to invest the time to catch up. But I kind of wonder if it would be worth starting all over and only doing a few minutes a day, spending the majority of my time on grammar and native materials… choices, choices. I would say there are no wrong choices as long as you’re studying, but I don’t believe that anymore. :P
I’m just going to be starting from scratch as anki basically told me every single one was due anyway. Plus I thought It’d be good to start over and try out Anki 2 and see how it is. Anki 2 actually has a thing that reduces the amount of reviews when you go nuts and have millions of reviews too which is nice if you need to do that just to get back into the swing of things. Anyway I’m not going to be hardcore burning through RTK as i’m doing everything else at once too and this time I’m in no rush to be honest. For now I’ve increased the new cards per day because the first 500 are incredibly easy and then I’ll probably put it down to a lower number. Maybe 20 per day.
Also, I don’t think there are many wrong choices that are worse than doing nothing at all :P
@winter There’s definitely a lot of kanji I recognise really easily now, but at the same time I’m not sure if that is really helping too much. Learning words with 2 or more kanji that you already know seems helpful, but at the same time if I didn’t spend time doing RTK and just did vocab it feels like I’d have seen more benefit in a way.
I’m not sure if I’d recommend it or not really, it’s really boring and takes a pretty long time, I feel brute forcing kanji through vocab might be a better option, that’s what I’m doing now as I gave up on RTK at around 2000 kanji in, it got soooooooooooo boring.
It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s like an extreme exercise routine that if you can pull it off will be really good for you but for a lot of people it’s just not a good method. Some people need more encouragement and a personalised pace.
The main benefit I can see vs kanji I’ve just brute forced in vocab is when I notice a kanji I can recognise it by sight but god knows if you told me to write it blindly i would never be able to. Kind of like how many natives are with rarer kanji. I definitely like how RTK breaks kanji down.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
Sheepy.
I finished reading the parallel text short stories book, and next up is something that doesn’t come with a translation. It’s Level 1 Volume 1 from a series called レベル別日本語多読ライブラリ. Or maybe it is called にほんごよむよむ文庫. I can’t really tell.
The idea of the series is to limit the vocabulary used for each level. It says that level 1 uses a vocabulary of 350 words. There is also an audio CD.
[13:58:57 | 13:59:06を編集しました] missingno15: its funny how i learn things in japanese that are coincident with my life
[13:59:42] missingno15: for example, yesterday, i randomly encountered (and perhaps learned) the word 誘爆（ゆうばく）
[13:59:51] missingno15: and later that day, i go see fireworks
[14:00:40] missingno15: and today, i randomly encountered (and perhaps learned) the word 荷造り（にづくり）
[14:00:50] missingno15: and my dad is packaging up something downstairsRandomly encountered and perhaps learned? LOL
Today – 15 minutes in Anki (doing good at limiting myself) and 15 minutes reading a blog post in Japanese about knitting. I think tomorrow I’m going to add in some grammar studies.
So today I spent my whole day attempting to “rekindle” my fondness for Japan, and I’m considering very heavily going back to studying Japanese again.
But, if I’m going to carry on where I left off, then that’s kanji, and since it’s been over a year now that I’ve not properly studied, I’ll have to start from scratch. I’m absolutely dreading this, and I find it very hard to work up the willpower to start it up again.
I’d be more motivated to do vocab instead, but I don’t want to risk doing things “out of order” and then make things harder for myself in the long run…
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
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