By now you should be completely abandoning the idea of actual notecards for the superiority of the SRS system in your studies. Not only does it manage your study load for you, but it also saves the rainforests.
But there’s a drawback you may have already come across – Kanji input. Going through Heisig you’ll never actually have the need to write kanji – You’ll be able to recall them from memory just fine. (I can attest to this, as I was able to perfectly recall and write on the board during one of my classes [where I was the teacher, not the student] the kanji for 砕ける, as I was picturing in my head a scene from One Piece where a boat was “smashed to bits like a rock had been splintered into nine-needles”, having never actually written the character before myself)
The problem is that Remembering the Kanji (RTK) doesn’t offer a handy suggestion for getting the kanji into your computer. You may know what the kanji means, but the actual reading of it is supposed to come later.
The answer is in Jisho.org. Navigate your way to Kanji –> Codes –> Change the pulldown menu to “Remembering the Kanji index” –> and put in the number for the kanji you’re currently trying to input. Then just copy the entry that gets loaded. It’s as simple as that.
I do have one other tip for you as you enter in the “meanings” (your short stories for the kanji) – Type the actual meaning itself in all upper-case letters. That way when you start to internalize the kanji and distance yourself from their background stories, you can easily check your comprehension of the characters by locating the meaning within the story texts.
For example, using the same kanji for 砕ける above, perhaps your story (“meaning”) would read something like this:
A rock splinters into nine needles when it’s SMASHED.
Other than that, find a level-appropriate source that has absolutely nothing to do with Heisig, and use that as a secondary input. I recommend manga because there are pictures associated with the text. Don’t “read” through the manga just yet. Instead, just get through the text focusing on the kanji in it as a review. Skip any kanji you haven’t learned yet. See how much of the story you can understand without a dictionary.
After you finish Heisig’s RTK, then you’ll want to start reading to understand instead of just as kanji review.
Note: You can read a little bit more about all Jisho.org has to offer in a post by mike.
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I created a drop.io site with a 3007 kanji spreadsheet here: http://drop.io/2nihon_san It’s the sixth file down, called ‘kanji 3007 keyword radical.xls’. That’s another way of entering the kanji, and since it’s a spreadsheet and not a web site, it’s fully portable.
Thanks for the drop.io site, 2nihon! You’ve got some nice resources in there.
This goes along with my other comment about the Reviewing the Kanji site ~ on the page for each kanji (where you can store your story), they have the keyword and kanji typed out so it is so easy to copy and paste that over to Anki as you work. I usually keep up the online Anki for that, so I just have to click between tabs.
Also, there is a search feature, so you can quickly pull up any kanji’s page with the keyword or number. Even if you didn’t use the site to go through RtK, that might be helpful for when you need to copy & paste the kanji into a translator, no need to look up the number. (The only problem being stories where you might have changed the keyword, I do have a few)
They do have an SRS built into the site as well, but most people use Anki. But, if you keep the # of cards you’ve done updated at the reviewing page, at the reading page you can enter a block of text and it will highlight any kanji that you’ve already learned so you can practice reading them.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my other post that there is a lot of good information about when there might be a mistake in the book, or suggestions for better primitives/keywords/whatever. I always check over at Denshi Jisho to see if the info holds up, but there have been a few problems even in the most recent edition. Even on kanji where I came up with a story easily, I always made sure to check the popular ’stories’ to make sure there wasn’t a stroke order issue or anything I needed to be aware of.
Sorry that I’m sound like a spokeswoman for the site at this point! But there are quite a few nice features for people working through RtK, this post reminded me of a few more things. I promise I’m done now
Thanks for all of that helpful information, Tiffany! I’m sure with this comment and your other one on the other post a lot of readers will find a useful tool in kanji.koohii.com to assist them in their Heisig studies!