I'm studying kanji at moment and I wanted recommendations on the "order of operations" when studying them through renshuu. for instance im going to learn the all the four components : sight, meaning, kunyomi, onyomi. Other than sight what would be the order of "reps". At the moment it just feels like i am being blasted with info, for context the most difficult component is the onyomi; just because my katatana sight reading is slow. Thanks.
I agree with the answer above me : even if you don't plan being able to write kanji, it's a great exercise to do when you're learning, because it forces you to analyse how kanji are composed, and help you memorise them.
One thing I know is that the situation is like this:
Learning the kunyomi and onyomi of kanji is not always everything when you put them together. This is not to say it isn't useful to know about. It isn't going to be the only matter, so learning straight from a kanji dictionary isn't enough on its own.
Like, regarding readings, some kanji have one or the other. Some have multiples of one, or both. The context is gonna depend on the word. And at that, there's a thing where sometimes you have that pronunciation, but you actually have to change it. That's not really gonna be noted in a dictionary. If at all, there are even readings not in a dictionary, but you'd see them form a word. That can throw you off without knowing some vocabulary.
There are many kanji, that it's a lot to remember by heart. That's a lifetime of study. But think of it this way - with Latin letters, you learn how they'll basically sound out in languages like English. Sometimes they differ. Obviously letters don't all have meaning themselves, but put that aside, you'd know how it sounds out in a word once it's put together. If you treat kanji that way, and add meaning, you'd find that in your subconscious without worry about having to do a hard study of readings alone. Because otherwise, you'll have a hard time with all that info and burn out. Obviously that is the kind of information you'd be bombarded with and get overwhelmed, it doesn't quite become meaningful without meaning.
Some people rush the kanji and try to remember at least one thing (the meaning most of the time) while the other takes their times and put more effort to remember more things before moving on. The first approach will make learning new words easier in the long term but you will need more additional review later. Those addional review will be easier too because you will already have seen every kanji at least once. The second approach takes more time but make learning new words even easier but only for the kanji that you've studied. And even with that, you will some additional review later. The first time you will learn those kanji will also be more difficult.
Basically, it's a quantity vs quality compromise.
There are also people that focus more on speaking/listening ability first. The advantage is that they will be able to speak or immerse themselves sooner and they will get used to the nuances of a lot of words sooner too. That makes kanji a lot easier to learn later. It's also how native learn. Native also takes like 9 years to learn only the 2000ish most common kanji so, don't feel bad if you're feel overwhelmed right... They also spent 1 year on the first 80 kanji before moving on. And after that they study at most 200 kanji per year. Funnily enough, Natives are on the "slow" side. Or the "normal" side, you could say.
Anyway, the result is that you have people that have studied 200 kanji, 500 kanji or 2000 kanji after one year. And each of them have their own strenghts weaknesses that they will need to work on at some point. As long as you keep that in mind, you will be fine. Even if you don't study onyomi for 1 year, you will be fine too. You will learn a lot of onyomi through your words studies anyway. Which also a strategy btw. And after that, when you feel like you need or want to really improve you kanji, you can focus on that. But whatever you choose, don't get overwhelmed. If you're currently overwhelmed, just ignore the onyomi for now or slow down your pace.
PS: There is an upcoming feature currently in testing, the Community Study Groups, and among the groups, there is one called "Kanji Learning for Beginners" that could interest you. To be honest, it's only the beginning so there is almost no activity but from I can see, the manager of the groups is planning to focus on learning the first few hundred kanjis and will probably propose different methods to learn kanji. Like right now, there is two kanji lists (one order by school grade and the other by frequency). It may help you to find one method or kanji that feel less overwhelming or more fun to study.
Thanks so much minasan. I was so nervous posting my first question but every one was so insightful. I definitely fall in the camp of "wanting to study everything before moving on" but I can totally understand I should just do more exposure to kanji without the pressure to study.
When I used the word "reps" i just meant repetition. I mainly used renshuu for the "flash card system" (just banging out answers in quiz mode), but Im trying to explore more of the other features so I will definitely look at the games (didnt know there was a kanji one in particular). I was getting frustrated and asking for advice because when I finally started the kanji schedule, I just kept failing the onyomi questions...consistently. So now i do the slow process of handwriting the kanji, the readings, and then recording the words that show up in specifically in my vocab list (Known?).
I'm realizing now I can just turn off the onyomi vector in the quizzes but..whats the fun in that. thanks for the advice everyone!
