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I believe that こいちせんせい mentions early on that each season should take 1-2 months to get through for the average learner. I’d like to know people’s experiences with this, especially with the revised Season 2. Season 1 took me about 2 months to get through. Season 2 – which I’m almost done with – is looking more like 3, though now that I (think I) know what I’m doing, I could probably take 2-4 weeks off of that. Is 2-3 months consistent with your experience for Season 2?
I don’t know but Season 1 took me a week but that was because I knew a bunch of the stuff beforehand. Everything else, I don’t remember
It’s kind of up to you really, because you only move on once you feel like you’ve got things down pat.
Like Missing, I already knew a bit so I can’t say for sure how it’d go from scratch.
I have a confession to make…
I haven’t used TextFugu to study Japanese in months. >_>
LOL. I feel bad now.But yeah, just thought I should mention that you should go at a pace that feels comfortable for you. 1 person might learn something in 2 weeks whilst it might take you 4 months.
Of course, ignore what I said above if you’re asking out of sheer curiosity.Winter – It was mostly that I was wondering why it was taking me so long to get through things. It is possible that Koichi’s estimate was from before he revised/expanded Season 2. And, though I go through Anki and physical flashcards every day (it’s getting to the point where these take up nearly an hour a day), I don’t always have time to go through part of Textfugu every day, so I might be slower than those on, say, summer school break right now.
What are you using currently, now that you’re done (?) with Texfugu? I still have Season 3 and the 5-stroke kanji to go, but I’m going to catch up with Koichi eventually, probably within 2-3 months. A lot of people mention RTK, though I think I’ll pass since I’m more interested in the readings and the vocabulary, which apparently RTK doesn’t cover. There’s stuff out there online to read at a very basic level, but I don’t think I’m hardly there yet. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Quufer, I think the 1-2 month estimate wasn’t for each season, just for season 1. There’s alot of vocab to memorize and alot more going on in season 2, so it should take considerably longer. You’re done with it as soon as you feel comfortable with the material presented!
I’m taking an eternity to get through season 2, and I study every day =)
Oh no, don’t get me wrong. I’m still on Season 1, haha. Although my Japanese is at the standard of a 2nd grader.
I have a Japanese tutor (who is native) who I go to for an hour once a week (not during School holidays though) although I haven’t been in the past 2 weeks since I was ill 2 weeks ago and her son was ill 1 week ago.
I’d highly recommend doing RTK – you learn readings which help you remember the kanji themselves and learning to write them can play a big, helpful role in memorizing them. Also, learning how to write them is very useful – believe it or not.During the Summer holidays (when I’m not in Amsterdam or Turkey) I’m going to continue with TextFugu and hopefully RTK.
As for the main question, I have no idea because I can’t remember haha But I would highly recommend RTK 1 (not 2 or (at the moment) 3). It seems counter-intuitive to not learn readings, but you can just do that some other way (I’m using TextFugu’s section for readings, but there are others). Doing RTK 1 has made *everything* I can think of about Japanese much much easier, but I guess it’s hard to see that until you have done at least a chunk of the book. You still have to learn to recognise and write kanji, right? You can’t just ignore it forever hehe. Have a look at Tofugu’s review of it (I’ve been over how good it is so many times with so many different people already haha I just can’t be bothered going in-depth any more :P). In a nutshell, RTK is a divide-and-conquer approach – learn one part of kanji first (meaning and writing (and thus “familiarity” and “recognition”), then learn the next part… next :P. Makes it easier if you break it down into chunks.
Am I missing something on RTK? Koichi (http://www.tofugu.com/japanese-resources/remembering-the-kanji/) says in his review that it helps you learn what the kanji look like and their meanings, but that it “won’t cover other things you eventually need to know, like on’yomi / kun’yomi of the kanji and vocab that use each kanji”. I think I’m doing pretty well so far with learning kanji on Textfugu – I often find the kanji easier than other vocabulary – but I think that learning the readings and some starter vocabulary with each kanji helps a lot.
Does RTK have kanji readings, or not?
RTK 2 has readings. The first does not.
If you feel like Texfugu’s kanji section is working for you, by all means, continue to use it. The style of RTK and Texfugu are similar in the sense that they both use mnemonic devices to help you remember the kanji and build up larger kanji from smaller ones. The main way in which they differ is related to pacing.
RTK focuses on learning all the meanings before anything else. (In fact I think the author recommends learning them before studying anything else in Japanese, kanji or not). The idea is that once you know the meanings of the kanji, you can learn the readings in context. Textfugu’s method spreads the kanji learning out, intermixed with other aspects of the language at the same time and slowly integrates them into things you’ve already learned.
I used RTK and liked it, as have others on the forum. I think the reason you hear so much about RTK here and so little about Textfugu’s method is a result of the fact that many of us signed up for this site a long time ago, before there even was a kanji section, and due to rewrites and updates to the site (some of which have come quickly, others not so quickly) have always been a step ahead of what the site has covered (at least in depth) and have gone off to do RTK while waiting for the site to catch back up.
The fact is that nobody can give an honest review of the Textfugu method because nobody has done it, at least to completion.-facepalm- I didn’t mean READINGS lol.
I’ve spent approximately 5 months, and I’ve reached ch 8 in season 3-.-
It’s insanely slow, but I have school, so I’m not studying new textfugu stuff each day:( But now during vacation, I’ve done 5 chapters in a week^^..and by the way, RTK is recommended:D Once you get through RTK 1 you can at least see the difference and know the meaning of kanji, which helps a lot!
Listen to these people about RTK and do it^.
They talked me into it, and although I’m only doing it as kind of a side project thing next to Textfugu and various other things, it has already made a difference in my Japanese studying life.
I think – after reading the other thread about finding the book for $34 on the U of Hawaii website – that I’ll definitely order RTK. For others, the UH website also has the first third of the book (276 kanji plus some radicals) available online if you want to see what the book actually looks like:
http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK%201_sample.pdf
Hmmm, I also sometimes wonder how one paces themselves. For me it took about a month to go through season 1-2 and a bit into season 3.
The chapter in season 3 that really interests me now is ‘The Dip” Does anyone else think of this?
I was kinda glad it is not only me as sometimes whenever I learn new things, even when I was at school; I could learn stuff fast as long as I keep momentum and then stuff starts to decay here and there and requires me to go back and figure out what is missing!
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