Hey guys,
So for context I have been studying Japanese for a pretty long time but only since last year I have actually started taking it seriously as I have more free time having just graduated my master’s degree. (im not a native English speaker btw)
My progress up until recently has been pretty steady and decent as i have accumulated a lot of materials over the years and i have gone through the basics many times until i finally got used to how Japanese works in general. My general routine is to go through my kanji deck and read “something” (usually small stories/ a couple anime episodes/ read through a VN ) for about 2 hours every day.
Right now I would say that I am decent at grammar as with enough time i can make sense of the majority of sentences that i meet, my vocabulary for anything other then basic concepts however is lacking and so is my kanji as those two are interlinked. I have also encountered the problem of Rikai skimming/ Yomichan skimming thus going through text without learning much.
I started learning Kanji about 6 months ago by using RTK but later found anki and started learning using the ” Kanji all in one Heisig RTK + Kondansha” deck because it is pretty clear to use. As expected my progress was pretty good up until about 300 kanji, afterwards it slowed down and now i am at about 600 kanji and i am encountering serious issues I seemingly cannot progress, in the sense that i am relearning the same kanji day after day and keep forgetting them just as fast, therefore i am constantly having a backlog.
The strategy that i have heard most suggested is to just “keep consuming content” or “keep reading”, and i have been doing this until now but I am either not noticing or just not making progress though i “feel” like I am not learning anything.
Right now it feels like stuff is going in one ear and out the other, if you guys have any suggestions it would be very welcome and I will keep updating the post if I manage to overcome this.
3 comments
IDK if this is the right way, but I’ll tell you what is giving me a really good result, especially with kanji recognition
I hope this isn’t too long
ok so I only know about 900 or so kanji (IDK the exact number) I’m not some kind of high-master
But what I do is a modified heisig thing, basically I only learn kanji I encounter in books. Now keep in mind my reading level isn’t super high in Japanese, but I do see lots of kanji anyway.
**Part 1: Add kanji I see in books**
If you add kanji you see in books, you might keep reading and keep encountering those kinds of words. It’s kind of like SRS, an author seems likely to repeat more likely to repeat the same word, especially if you encounter it 2 or more times in the first place.
**Part 2: Add more words which use the same kanji**
And I also add words that I don’t see in books which use the same kanji, for example I saw this one:
閃光
so I added this one
閃電
as well since both use せん reading of 閃
And I do that for most kanji I see. That way I have multiple words using the same kanji and I can build a “web of knowledge” which seems more resilient for some reason (I don’t understand the science behind how it works)
**Part 3: Also do a few E->J cards if it makes sense**
I mostly do J->E cards (passive). But I found doing some active magically helps the passive ones stick better.
ESPECIALLY with ones which are leeches, it can have a chance (50%) to un-leech them like magic. IDK how it works, but numbers-wise, this is a really significant discovery for me.
You may want to pick up some Japanese vocabulary books. I have one with 2000 vocabulary and a sample sentence and Hiragana for each vocabulary. I think the Hiragana of each kanji is more important than the kanji itself. Unless you go to more formal websites like NHK or read Japanese books, hiragana is more important cause it allows you to watch Japanese videos, say on Youtube or NHK News. Some Kanjis really don’t mean much like 面白い, 面 (おも) means “face”, 白(しろ)means “white”, but 面白い means interesting. And many Kanjis pronounce differently depending on context. To be honest, I am just a beginner of Japanese. But I think I will be able to pass JLPT N4 by the end of this year if I put more time into it.
> I have also encountered the problem of Rikai skimming/ Yomichan skimming thus going through text without learning much.
Every day, read one short article *out loud*. That’s the best way I know to strengthen the connections between kanji <->pronunciation<->meaning.
Choose a relatively easy article. Look up all unfamiliar vocabulary and write it down. Make sure you understand the meaning of each sentence. Then read the whole article out loud.
For the rest, keep on consuming content – If you’re doing 2 hours of study a day, keep on doing that, and maybe just allocate 15 minutes or so to reading out loud.
Other than that, how much time are you spending on learning individual kanji/vocabulary? I personally really dislike Heisig, and I think there are a lot of people it doesn’t work well for, and if you’re spending a lot of time forgetting and relearning kanji I think you should consider ditching it.