Is RTK really that helpful?

6 comments

1. Unless you somehow didn’t know how to even **LOOK** at kanji (by which I mean you can tell just at a glance that 連絡 and 合格 don’t use any of the same kanji) 500 in, there’s really no reason to go through it. Well, maybe if you want a fast track to claiming you “learned” 2200+ kanji in a month or something.

   Most study guides that push RTK intend for people who know no usable Japanese to start with that. One of the reasons is that the keywords they use won’t always work if you already know what you’re doing. What I mean is that the keywords only serve as a rough idea in terms of meaning, rather than teaching what they would mean even if the kanji in question can be a standalone word. To follow along, you kind of have to set aside what you know to accommodate the book’s (sometimes misleading or wrong) keywords.

   If you can already read stuff, my unironic advice would be just read more stuff.

2. I did the full RTK like 3 months into learning Japanese and I found it pretty useful. Took me about 4 months to do all 2200 but it also meant doing like 300 reviews a day so there are trade offs.

   The big use for me personally was afterwards there were almost no kanji that I hadn’t seen at least a dozen times so it was really easy to just focus on learning vocabulary after that (as opposed to the vocabulary and the kanji at the same time).

   If you’re current method works fine I’d say stick with it but if you feel like a lack of kanji familiarity is holding you back it might be worth a shot.

3. I did RTK as a beginner and am glad I did. Sounds like you already have a great hold on the language but we all benefit from learning tools, I’d recommend you grab RTK/WaniKani/whatever just so you can build a *system* for yourself to learn/recognize kanji and radicals, that’s the important part. Rather than just trying to remember the whole character as an image.

4. As a friend of mine put it, RTK is better than nothing, and “nothing” was pretty much it’s competition for some time. WaniKani is easily better to start with, but 500 kanji in, you likely don’t need a structured system for learning kanji, and the limited definitions in RTK aren’t ideal. What you need is the kind of “in the wild” experience you’ve mentioned from communication and media. Any unfamiliar terms can be folded into bunpro, KameSame, Anki, or whatever self-structured study resource you’re comfortable with. But where you are, yeah, consistent, repeated exposure is key for both learning and motivation.

   The way I came to this conclusion at around the same level of progress in WaniKani (700 kanji) was comparing the benefit of a new kanji to where it was initially and, say, the benefit of a new phrase or grammar structure. Each individual kanji was then almost an unnoticeable improvement to my Japanese, compared to the massive leaps of learning fundamental ones, or the doors opened by grammar and cultural knowledge. I have to imagine at 500 kanji it’s about the same pretty much regardless of which ones they are.

5. I REALLY recommend the “Kanji Look & Learn” series. It helped me significantly with vocabulary, writing, pronunciation, and using kanji in a sentence. There is even a workbook the goes with the main book.

6. Talked about it with a senpai from my college Japanese program who went much further with Japanese and now works as a professional translator for a large Japanese company and does his own literary translation practice on the side. He and I both found RTK later on in our Japanese learning journey but found it really beneficial for scaffolding the learning of more complex kanji. Where it really helps is in pre-learning components of kanji (and how to write them), and through the keyword associations, building denser (bush-ier?) associational networks (more links, more things to stick it to in your brain). Then, when you go to learn-learn them, in the way you’re doing, it just expedites that process. Maybe akin to phonics?

   So I’d say definitely get your hands on a copy of the book (you can find it at a library or used or online) and give it a go (Kanji Koohii is the free SRS website) but don’t commit to using anything that doesn’t work for you. If you’re one of the people whose brain already breaks down & remembers the kanji efficiently, it might be more of a distraction than a help.