Forgetting The Kanji
Okay, so as the links in the sidebar might suggest, I tend to lean towards the AJATT/immersion style of foreign language learning. And since I discovered Khatz’ site in September last year, I’ve been roughly following the steps he sets out – RTK –> Kana –> sentences (plus immersion the whole time). Overall, it’s been going well. The progress, compared to five years of French in high school and university, is amazing. I’ve realised recently that I’ve botched something up, though.
Should I continue reviewing kanji after, like, finishing RTK? Definitely. Yes. Big yes.
(From here.)
Guess what I stopped doing when I started sentence-mode? Yep. “Oh, it’ll be okay,” I said. ” I remember all the 2042 kanji in RTK1 with near-perfect accuracy. So when I read them in the context of real Japanese, it’ll be all I need to reinforce them.” *cough*
Moving to sentences was a rocky transition. I tried grabbing random sentences from here and there like Khatz did. Comprehension? Nil. Frustration? Insanely high. Persevered for a few weeks before tossing it in. Tried Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide. Entered the sentences in to my SRS. Comprehension? Low. Frustration? Still moderately high. Boredom? High. (N.B. I’ve recently – after getting a grounding in basic grammar – re-read Tae Kim’s site, and it’s excellent. It just wasn’t what I needed at that point in time.)
Then I found Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar [insert triumphant music]. No book or system is perfect for everyone, but this was the one that clicked for me. So I worked through it, and got a reasonable grounding in all the really common, standard grammar structures. There was only one problem: UBJG is very light on kanji. This is a twofold issue: firstly, it uses kana where kanji would usually be used; secondly, it uses the same kanji over and over, as it focuses on a university student mindset/lifestyle. Hence, there are a lot of 先生 and 学生, and a fair few 論文, 教室 and 研究室. I can read these without thought now, as well as a lot of basic compounds (今日、昨日、明日、時間、今晩、先ず、新聞、電車、電話、自転車、etc.). But there are a lot of joyo kanji that don’t get a look-in in UBJG. Without the reinforcement, they’re eroding from my memory. This is not good.
The problem I’ve hit upon now is that there’s a few ways to go from here: do I redo RTK in the original English keywork –> kanji? Or the Japanese keyword –> kanji? Or do the Movie Method? In the interests of avoiding paralysis-by-analysis, I’m going the original route to begin with. Mostly because I’m no longer confident of the meanings, and because ‘setting up’ the Movie Method is far too time consuming (especially after I tried to do a tally of all the movies I could use, and came up with a grand total of 31, even after including tv series’ and books – there are far more onyomi groups than that).
The moral of this story? Do not drop the RTK reviews before you can actually read the kanji, or you’ve just made a whole world of extra work for yourself.
To err is human. To arr is pirate. 
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