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By Verdana, 2010/01/28

In my last post, I listed the tools that I use for studying the kanji the Heisig way. Now, I will explain the method.

The First Steps

1. Read the intro

First of all, you should read the introduction to RTK. Heisig there explains very nicely how the whole method is supposed to work. I’ve read the introduction at least 2-3 times before I’ve completely understood how to use the book. Believe me, it’s worth it in the long run.

2. Install and set up Anki

To install Anki, go to its website, download it, and follow the instructions.

After you install Anki, you will want to install Japanese support plugin. The instructions on how to do that can be found here.

Once you are done, set up your new deck to use Japanese model. To do that, go to Settings > Deck Properties… > Models & Priorities > Add. It should be pretty simple.

3. Create a RevTK account

Go to RevTK website and create an account. You may want to look around the site to get familiar with it too. It has pretty cool forums which will be a great time leach if you ever venture that way.

That should be it for the setup. Now on to the actual learning of the new characters.

The Learning

1. Look up the character in RTK

When learning a new character, look it up first in RTK. You will find the kanji itself, the English keyword associated with it, the information to help you remember it, the stroke count, any special instructions on how to write it, and possibly some info about its meaning, position, and changes when used as a primitive.

It looks like this:


Many characters are pretty straight forward without any special instructions, so you don’t really need to look them up in the RTK. However, some characters change drastically when they become primitives or they get different meanings. Sometimes you could figure these out with just using stories from RevTK, but other times there seems to be very little similarity between the original kanji and its primitive version. Also, certain primitives are not characters themselves so you wouldn’t find them in RevTK. Like this one:



However you decide to do it, keep RTK handy, because chances are good that you will want to look into it.

2. Find a story

Although Heisig provides the stories in Part One of the book, you are free to ignore them if they are not working for you. Heisig soon weans you off the stories anyway by giving you just plots in Part Two and only primitives in Part Three (the biggest part of the book), which means you eventually either have to make up your own stories or use stories other people already wrote.

That’s where RevTK comes in. This excellent site has an easy-to-use database of stories created by other learners just like you. They did the work, so you don’t have to!

To get started, go to RevTK website. Then go to the “Study” section and look up the character you are trying to learn. You will be faced with something that greatly resembles the frame in RTK, but the part where the story goes will be empty. You can click on it to write your own story. Underneath that you will find a list of stories from other learners.



Read the newest and most popular stories first. If you find one that resonates well with you, take it. Do star the story you picked, because it will help others who come after you. Every now and then you might come across a kanji with no good story. In that case put the primitives together and form a story that will work for you. Unless there is something very obscene or private, please share your story with the rest of the community.

You probably won’t know exactly what works for you right from the start, so experiment with the stories until you find out what makes it easy for you to remember. The feel for it will come with practice.

3. Add a new card into Anki

Click on the big green plus sign button in the main window to add new items. A new window will pop up. There are a few things to do here.

1. Set Model to Japanese (if it’s not like that already; you’ll probably have to do this just once)
2. Set Cards to Production (if it’s not like that already; you’ll probably have to do this just once)
3. Copy the character from RevTK page and paste it into Expression field
4. Copy the keyword from RevTK page and paste it into Meaning field
5. Copy the story you picked from RevTK page and paste it into Meaning field underneath the keyword
6. Highlight the story you pasted and click on the white color button (if the button is not white, make it so by clicking on the < , >, or + buttons around it
7. Click on the Add button

It should all look something like this:



Once added, the story will be invisible, since it’s written in white characters on white background. You may use different colors, but make sure to write the story in the background color. The point of going through this extra step is to make sure you only see the keyword when you review, but to have the story readily available. I will go into more detail about this in my next post.

4. Rinse and repeat

Once you’ve added a kanji, move on to the next and repeat the steps. RTK works mostly because of the way it is ordered, so make sure you follow that order. Start with frame number 1 and don’t skip any until you reach the frame 2042.

That’s it for today. In the next post I will explain how to review, although you may probably already have a pretty good idea.

Comments (1)

By Verdana, 2010/01/14

During the past 11 months I have been slowly learning how to write kanji following James Heisig’s method described in his Remembering the Kanji book. While the book gives you the groundbreaking approach to learning kanji, it is usually not enough on its own to get you through all 2042 characters. I’ve experimented with different tools and methods and found one that worked the best for me. This is the first post in the series explaining my way of doing RTK. Hopefully my experiences will also help others on their journey through RTK.

The Tools

• Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig

Since it’s the essential part of the whole method, you should get RTK book. To save some money I suggest half.com where you can get it from someone who already finished. Also, recycling is good.

• Reviewing the Kanji

RevTK website is a great tool for sharing the stories. This means you can have easy to remember stories even without being too creative and original yourself. The site also has a decent SRS tool for kanji reviews, but I found it too limited for my own needs.

• Anki

Anki is the best SRS program I’ve found so far. It works well for my RTK deck, but it’s even better with keeping all of my decks (kana, sentences, C++…) together in one place so I can save time while reviewing.

• Writing surface and writing utensils

I first wrote just “paper and pencil”, but in reality you could use just about anything to practice writing. As long as you have a surface on which you can write out the kanji and something to write it with. Even your hands and fingers could be enough to satisfy this requirement.

That’s it. Assuming you have a computer with internet connection, these are all the tools you’ll need to learn the kanji the way I’m learning them. In the next post, I will describe how to effectively and efficiently learn new kanji, add them to your deck, and review.

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By Verdana, 2009/06/11

For those of you who don’t know what All Japanese All The Time (AJATT) is yet, here is my attempt at defining it in one sentence: AJATT is a method for learning Japanese language by creating a Japanese immersion environment around yourself while having fun every step of the way. Khatzumoto’s AJATT website contains incomparably more information about the whole method, so please check it out, but I’ll try to explain its basic philosophy in the nutshell.

Writing
Khatzumoto suggests learning the writing and meaning of all the basic kanji and kana characters before ever trying to learn anything else in Japanese. The reasoning behind this approach is this: knowing the writing system will put you at the same starting point as a Chinese person studying Japanese. Kanji is considered the greatest obstacle for westerners in learning Japanese, so overcoming it right from the start will greatly help learning other aspects of the language. Being literate will enable you to read real Japanese (books, manga, signs, forms, websites, documents, etc.) from which you will learn real Japanese sentences.

Sentences
Sentences are another big part of AJATT method. Instead of learning words and grammar rules, Khatz recommends just learning complete sentences. Why? Well, it’s actually pretty simple when you think about it. When you learn vocabulary and grammar rules, you have building blocks to make your own sentences. It should be fairly easy to put them together and express your meaning, right? Wrong. It would be almost like learning to walk by training one muscle at a time and then learning different positions your legs will be in while you are walking, and then trying to go for a stroll in the park with all that information and trying to figure it out in real time how all those small pieces of information fit together. Not very practical.

However, when baby is learning to walk, she is learning it all together. All muscles are working at the same time, and even though she doesn’t know what to do with all of them in the beginning and stumbles a lot, she is still slowly developing a fluid walking motion. Even if she can’t really walk, she will be able to go from point A to point B in her clumsy fashion. Over time, she’ll figure out which muscles to use to move the right foot, which to use to move the left, which are used for moving forward, which for moving back, which lift the foot off the ground, which keep the torso upright, etc. and refine the motions of walking until she achieves acceptable level of walking skill.

Same goes for language learning. By learning complete sentences, you will get a feel for the language and where each word usually goes. You may not know the rules and reasons for that particular order, but let’s face it, you didn’t even know what irregular verbs were until you were in elementary/middle school when you already knew your native language well enough to read comic books and used those same irregular verbs just fine. It is no different with your second or third or any other language you decide to learn.

Immersion
Immersion is yet another important component of AJATT. By exposing yourself to as much Japanese as you can, you will slowly start picking up words, phrases, mannerisms, etc. without even noticing. People adapt to their surroundings. When you spend a lot of time with a new friend, you will most likely pick up some of their jokes, phrases they often use, their ideas about things you haven’t thought about before, and so on. You might even pick up their accent, and yet you’ll probably be oblivious to all these changes in yourself until someone who knew you before and hasn’t seen you in a while tells you that you’ve changed.

That’s why you should make Japanese your new friend and just spend a lot of quality time together. Just by being around Japanese all the time, you will slowly pick up stuff without even noticing. You will just be able to understand more and more of it, and then one day you will even speak it and make your own sentences.

FUN
Most importantly though, while spending your time with Japanese, you MUST HAVE FUN! If something is boring, it will become a chore and thus you will run away from it. So whatever you do, make it fun. If it’s not fun, stop it, and do something else. Japanese people have fun in their language, so you can have the same kind of fun in their language too. Or your own kind of fun in their language, whichever you prefer. Like to watch movies? Watch them in Japanese. Like to read books about whales? Read them in Japanese. Like to play video games? Play them in Japanese. Like to cook food? Cook it from recipes that you read in Japanese. Looking for a new car. Read reviews in Japanese… You get the point.

Don’t make Japanese the goal, make it the means to the goal, and you will have a lot easier time learning it.

SRS
In my opinion, Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) is not a required part of AJATT, but it makes it a lot quicker. SRS is basically an intelligent flash card application that makes sure you see the cards you need to see when you need to see them before you forget them or just after you’ve forgotten them. This makes remembering stuff you once learned much easier and reduces the time necessary for review, which in turn gives you more time to learn new stuff.

Well, I think this covers most of the basics. You really should visit AJATT and see it for yourself.