chamc Senior Member United States Joined 5381 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French
| Message 1 of 15 01 March 2010 at 5:53am | IP Logged |
I'm pretty new to the forums, but I've searched intensively through the relevant topics and haven't found this
discussed anywhere. After reading the LR method threads over a few times I've found myself interested in giving
it a try with Japanese, however as many have pointed out there is the kanji problem. What I am wondering is if
perhaps a combined strategy could be used such that you use the LR method almost purely for listening
comprehension and speaking ability while studying the kanji readings separately. I've completed Heisig's RTK 1
book and am proficient with the Kana as well. During my limited time studying Kanji readings I've found that
linking a reading with the kanji used in a word is 10x easier when I already know the word. Which is the reason
Japanese school children can learn them more efficiently I'm sure. My familiarity with the kanji from RTK
eliminates the recognition and production (writing) barriers and leaves only the matter of linking them to their
readings, something I think would just "click" so to speak if one already knew the words.
To summarize, do you think one could use the LR method for basic listening and speaking fluency and then use
that as well as an RTK background as a platform for the study of kanji readings?
If anyone has any experience with this I'd be very interested. I don't mind being a guinea pig but if it's been
attempted or if someone with more language experience (nearly everyone here I'm sure) has any thoughts they
would be much appreciated.
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 2 of 15 01 March 2010 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
It's been done, including by the person who started the L-R thread - s/he used L-R to learn Japanese, including reading Kanji. S/he thinks RTK is a waste of time; I disagree, but have vastly less experience.
That said, to answer your summarized question: yes.
Good luck.
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Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6850 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 3 of 15 01 March 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
At first you don't look at the L2 side of a parallel text at all, so you could just use a translation and an audiobook in Japanese. If you want to have Japanese without kanji as a reference you could use this website
literature in romaji
combined with a tool that will convert it to kana. Links were originally shared by kirutamenikiru.
My experience with heisig and learning new words matches yours.
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 4 of 15 01 March 2010 at 11:47am | IP Logged |
Use texts with furigana. From reading manga with furigana alone I learnt the readings of quite some words that I didn't even know the meaning of yet; but those I have to look up just once and know them afterwards.
L-R also is helpful. What I found is that when I started playing around with it (I haven't done any 'real' intensive L-R though, don't work well with parallel texts), my reading speed was too slow to keep up with the recording.
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chamc Senior Member United States Joined 5381 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French
| Message 6 of 15 01 March 2010 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
Volte: I did see that she mentioned learning Japanese with the method, although I think
she mentioned somewhere around 400 hours for reading recognition. It seemed to me a
more divide and conquer approach would be more efficient for kanji study. As you said,
I believe RTK to be very valuable in this type of situation and was more interested in
if anyone had used the LR method first and then using that comprehension knowledge to
"bootstrap" so to speak their reading studies.
Kubelek: Thank you for the resource. I haven't looked at it thoroughly yet but it looks
quite useful.
AniaR: That is quite similar to the layout of some texts I've collected. Did you follow
the LR method while studying or did you find yourself doing more of translate as you go
sort of method? Either way did you find it useful to your studies or did you have to
supplement it with focused grammar study?
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chamc Senior Member United States Joined 5381 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French
| Message 8 of 15 02 March 2010 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
Well it seems like there's not a whole lot of knowledge in the area so I think I'll go ahead and give it a try. I'll have to
block out some time to do it since it requires so much at the beginning. I happen to have a Japanese version of the
Harry Potter book and audiobook so I'll use those. I know they are generally frowned upon by some but it's the
largest translation I have and I've read several articles from the translator stating how long they spend getting the
translation done well. If anything comes of it I'll possibly start a language log and if not I'll try to post a follow up
message here.
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