Hi! Since I learned about he's blog, I've been trying to follow Khatzumoto's (from AJATT) advice on how to learn japanese. He says people should learn kanji before studying grammar and vocabulary(actually he suggest no study at all - just immersion and SRS frases).
I've been following this method and it's been working quite well: I learn how to write and the general meaning of the kanji without going over the readings. The point of doing this, the way I see it, is to learn vocabulary easily for already knowing all the kanji involved. It really works for me because when I see a word composed by unkown kanji I have a hard time learning both the word and the kanji. When I know the kanji involved it gets pretty easier.
My problem here is that I saw somewhere that up to 6[sup]th[/sup]grade's characters composed 95% of the ones used on newspapers. I'm in an internal conflict here 'cause I don't know whether I should follow Khatz advice (which has been great so far) or I should stop at the 6[sup]th[/sup]grade's characters and avoid possibly wasting two or three months studying kanji that are not that relevant.
I'd really like to know the opinion of you guys on this subject. I'm really confused and unsure whether learning an extra thousand characters will be necessary or time-wasting.
Thanks in advance.
If the RTK system is working well for you, and you think you can finish in a relatively short time-frame, I would go ahead and finish. It's true that the RTK order does not correspond to usage frequencies (i.e., the way Japanese students learn the kanji... more or less) so it is only helpful if you do ALL of it, because there are some extremely common kanji you'll only encounter near the end of the book. On the other hand, while it's true that the most common thousand or so kanji make up for 95% of kanji usage, that means that one in every twenty kanji will be one you don't know. Try reading a passage in your native language with one word in twenty missing - it's difficult! If you want to read anything more complicated than things aimed at 6th-graders (and even 6th grade material will contain harder words - it will just have furigana,) you are going to need those extra thousand kanji eventually.
That said, if you want to get into real Japanese sooner, starting to study vocab and grammar now will not hurt you. My understanding is that Khatzumoto is opposed to doing it this way because he thinks it's less efficient - and if your options are "study kanji" or "study vocab including unknown kanji," it may be. But if you don't have an infinite attention span for kanji, using time that would otherwise not be spent on Japanese for different Japanese can only help. The vast majority of people who have learned Japanese learned kanji and Japanese concurrently, and if you want to, you can too.
That was really helpful できるだけ. I actually think you couldn't have answered it better :D
I'll try and finish the 2k kanji, but if I get tired of them to the point of taking long breaks I'll just do something else in japanese for a while (just until I can stand studying kanji again :-[).
One thing I forgot to say is, while I do use the RTK system, I don't use the book itself. I use an android app called Obenkyo and use my own mnemonics (which I actually prefer) with the kanji ordered by grade. I don't think that's really important though, since you made a very good point at "try reading a passage in your native language with one word in twenty missing"... I'll go for them all!
Wish I could give you more than one 好き！ ;) Thanks
I am not aware of the RTK system but I think what I have been doing is similar. While studying for N3 (and now N2), I use sou-matome and shinkanzen books. I always study in this order: KGB (Kanji, Goi, Bunpo) and then CD, oftentimes I am well ahead by 2 to 3 chapters in Kanji. I can say it is really working for me.
