Issues, Questions and Thanks

Should I really stop reviewing using the Heisig keywords?

I started using Japanese prompts a long time ago with Supermemo. I had my RTK deck that randomly tested me on all of the kanji and at regular intervals, I would replace the Heisig keyword with some Japanese. This resulted in my reviewing with English and Japanese prompts at the same time. I found that progress was pretty slow and things improved rapidly when I just stopped with the English keywords.

If you choose to continue reviewing using the Heisig keywords, I would at the very least recommend deleting the cards that you learn Japanese prompts for. This avoids duplication of effort.

Why go through in Heisig order again? Wouldn't it be better to order by frequency of use?

Personally, I found that going through in Heisig order was by far the most efficient method and I think there are good reasons for this. By grouping kanji together by their underlying primitives, you gain a lot of practice writing the same primitive. If you go through in any other order then you may have many cases where you are recalling primitives that only appear once. You have to re-associate the imagery from your Heisig story with a Japanese prompt so repeatedly associating the same primitive with various Japanese words is more efficient than associating various primitives with various Japanese words.

You can of course change the ordering if you wish. Let me know how you get on!

How do I go about learning new words?

I used Kenkyusha's online dictionary a lot. After an email exchange with the editors of this dictionary, it turns out that all of the example sentences and phrases are written by Japanese people. It's not perfect but it is by far and away the best dictionary resource that I've found (with the exception of the koujien). I encourage other people to invest in an online subscription. The key to learning language is seeing it in action so example sentences/dialogues etc. are very valuable.

The best case scenario is where you already know the word and you can USE it. You may therefore wish to replace some of the words in the list with words that you know.

If I put the example sentences in my flashcards then I get the contents of the sentence confused with my Heisig story

One of the other contributors to the project brought this issue up. She has chosen not to put example sentences in her flash cards and only to put the word in hiragana with a hint afterwards if necessary. You may also find this approach appropriate and it seems that it was popular on the forum.koohii.com thread. 

After trial and error, and some thought, I decided to include the sentences in my flash cards. I put the target word in a much larger font so that when I'm reviewing quickly, I don't need to look at the sentence if I don't want to. However, my aim is to practice writing kanji so that I can write them in the Japanese environment that I live in. In reality, I'm going to want to read and write the kanji in context so I have to get used to the fact that the context is never going to match my Heisig story. 

I found that keeping the example sentence and the Heisig story separate weren't a big problem. Let me know your approach!

The Japanese prompt contains two kanji. When I answer I can only remember one. Should I fail the card?

I think that this is very much individual preference. If a Japanese prompt contains two kanji and I remember the target one, I don't fail the card. If I don't remember the other kanji and I think I should, then I usually don't give myself a perfect score on the flash card, but I don't fail it.

You may wish to alter the prompts. For example instead of having

かんせい　→　完成

you may prefer to have

かん成　→　完成

when the target kanji is 完. i.e. you display the other kanji in the question. If someone wants to compile a list of prompts like this then let me know!

I haven't completed RTK 1. Is this work of use to me?

This is a bit of a hot topic. The very firm opinion on the forums seems to be that this work is best suited to those that have completed RTK 1. The fear is that some people may give up on RTK 1 half way through if they try and use Japanese prompts from the start.

My personal opinion is that if you want to, you should try it. I would be very interested to see how it works out.

The list isn't complete!

I know! It's time for a few confessions. As of May 2008, I haven't finished adopting all of the Japanese keywords into my studies and I still have about 200 left. The results that I posted on the first page are for the 1800+ kanji that I am reviewing. 

Secondly, there are still some difficult and rare kanji where we have yet to post candidate words and sentences. Please help us and make some suggestions!

Google Spreadsheets is slooooooooooow

The master spreadsheet has bloated to a size that google spreadsheets was never designed for I think. I haven't tried it yet, but there is an offline version, which I believe effectively allows you to work on the spreadsheet offline and then sync. If you'd like to contribute then I think that might be the best method. 

Thank you

Thanks go to all those members of the Reviewing the Kanji forums who helped me compile this data. I've been surprised by how long it's taken and it would have taken longer without help. Since it took so long, I'm very eager to encourage other people to use the work we've done so that there can be some economy of effort.

Thora, Chadokoro_K, Synewave, JimmySeal - thanks!