heisig method in review

So as of today, I have gone through the whole RTK1 book! It took a lot of diligence to meet the deadline I set (to finish before Christmas) but it feels good now that the book is complete (although I know my study of kanji as a whole is far from complete). It's a strange feeling that I consider myself intermediate in writing/reading but still beginner in speaking. Hopefully it was the right choice to make for my circumstance. I am hoping that the spoken will be more intuitively learned by living in the country and being able to immerse myself much easier.

And now to make some more critiques on the method.

I agree that the Heisig method is one of the best out there for people who want to be fluent one day, or at least gain a HIGH comprehension of the written language but is not a good tool for those who just want the basics. Also, using "imaginative memory" has reduced my mixing up of similar kanji substantially (one of my greatest stumbling points in the past).

One of the most important things you should think about if you are considering starting this method is if you will be able to finish it. You do not need to do it at the pace that I did (actually I do not recommend that to anyone, I'm probably just a little too OCD for my own good). As I've said before, keeping interest levels and spirits high is probably more important than anything else in learning a language. Otherwise stated by Tim Ferriss:

"if sprinting uphill with bowling balls in each hand were the most effective way to lose body fat, how long would the average person adhere to such a program?"

The main reason that completion of the program is so important is that there are a lot of essential, high-use kanji that appear right at the end of the book. For example the kanji for "station" is kanji 1984 of 2042 on the list. So if you looking for practical use just using this book then covering all of them is key.

That being said, even if you don't finish the book a great advantage is just learning how to learn kanji. I should think getting through part one of the book should be sufficient for this and then you should read the prefaces to the rest of the lessons as there are good points scattered amongst them. That way even if you never learn something like "station" you can just pick it up later. Then you can use the heisig method to 1) memorize it and 2) help you with kanji similar to station you learn afterward, whether it be through intentional study or just immersion/exposure.

So not finishing will leave some important gaps, but you should have the tools needed to fill in the gaps later. And since I always seem to find a way to make diagram-metaphors here is one. The different methods of learning Japanese are like two ways of building a wall:
focusing on more important words is like building the wall by hand and no mortar; it will give you a full foundation which will be of the most use to you, but it is a harder and more tedious process. You will forget/mix up kanji and have to relearn them more often. As one blog I read stated "80% fluency can come from 250 kanji" (no comment on the accuracy of this statement from me).

unfinished heisig is leaves important gaps, but gives you tools and the bricks that are laid with mortar stay better (won't be mixed-up or need to be re-learned)

The only other comment about heisig is regarding the use of false "primitives". most of the time primitives aren't kanji, which is fine. They are just a tool. but there are two primitives that they just dump at the very end and tell you they are kanji. They are:

kanji 2033 屯 = barraks (which is already earthworm in my mind)
kanji 2034 且 = moreover (which is already been shelves in my mind)

I don't know why they couldn't just introduce both at the same time like they did with kanji 1909 番- turn but the primitive is dice. Still 1 guess 2 kanji to complain about out of 2042 is not bad at all.

Lastly for anyone that is interested in seeing my review schedule over the last while

I'm not very good at updates

sorry I have been neglecting this so much. I guess my mindset is if I have time to write blogs, I'd rather use it to study. As of now I've been very regimented on myself and have been trying to keep to 50 kanji per day and I've completely stopped doing smart.fm after item 600. It's been hard, and somewhat unpleasant at times. So I wouldn't recommend the load to anyone unless they're trying to meet some deadline or know they have the ability to keep their spirits high as it is very important to not hit a frustration wall that can turn a short break into a long break into losing sight of the goal altogether.

as of today I can write and identify at least one meaning of 1250 kanji! It's pretty cool that I know most of the kanji in stuff I see now. still a couple of steps away from actually understanding what is written, but a good start nonetheless. Keeping at my current pace I should be able to finish the RTK1 list in 16 days when I only have 32 before I leave!

For people who are interested I've been using anki which gives some nice graphs showing my progress. you can see things like fri/sat that have been skipped for more fun activities and Sundays where I have done extra cramming to make up for it. enjoy! note that I almost never click easy and that sometimes I'll leave anki open and forget about it, so a few of the review times as much greater than they actually were.

Update and Praise for Heisig’s RTK

So thanks to a much slower weekend then usual I’ve had lots of time to catch up and review putting my smart.fm studied count up to 600! Now that I’m done the first 3 steps I’m going to wait a bit before I move on to make sure that I get these items firmly set in my mind they’re not feeling too concretely set in my memory yet. This will also give me time to decide whether or not I’ll move on to just pronunciation in smart.fm after this.

As promised I will also elaborate on some of the impressions that Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji” (RTK) book has made on me and explain how they have changed my ways of thinking about my study.

So some quotes from the introduction:

“In a word it is hard to imagine a less efficient way of learning the reading and writing of the kanji than to study them simultaneously. And yet this is the method that all Japanese textbooks and courses follow. The bias is too deeply ingrained to be rooted out by anything but experience to the contrary.”

“I do not myself know of any teacher of Japanese who has attempted to use this book in a classroom setting. My suspicion is that they would soon abandon the idea. The book is based on the idea that the writing of the kanji can be also based on the idea that the pace of study is different from one individual to another, and for each individual, from one week to the next. Organizing study to the routines of group instruction runs counter to those ideas.”(this quote is seriously making me reconsider whether I want to take language classes while in Japan or not)

“The idea of “mastering” the kanji comes from overexposure to schooling, the notion that a language is a cluster of skills that can be divided and completed. No language can do this…” (this is a fault in thinking I make too often in life. I do it with sports, academics, hobb0ies. Although I think is is a flaw of logic, it can do wonders to provide motivation to meet a goal

“The best order for learning the kanji is by no means the best order for remembering them.” (that is the key aspect of smart.fm vs RTK1. one gives you more useful things right away, but at a cost of more work to remember them. RTK has me needing less reviews than smart.fm)

“Using kanji as primitives allow one to review known characters at the same time as learning new ones.”

“The meaning and writing, the two hardest part of kanji, separated from everything else.” (this seems to make sense to me)

The book also gives a great analogy about memorizing a kaleidoscope. If you just look for a long time and try to remember the image you are using visual memory, but the next time you pick one up and look you encounter a problem. Since it always looks so similar either you replace the previous image in memory or the two get mixed up. The solution the book offers is to use imaginative memory and make a story. you then don't remember the image but the story.

for example given this image:

you could imagine two wizards (one with a hat pointing up, the other with it pointing down) under a sun gazing into a crystal ball with rays coming out...

Now i bet you can remember this part of the image weeks after reading this (please leave comments if this is true).

"You shouldn't ask yourself why you forget some kanji, but instead ask why you remember the others and apply that technique to the others."

"If you are confusing one kanji with another… Take a careful look at the two stories. Perhaps you have made one or the other of them so vivid that it has attracted extraneous elements to itself that make the two kanji-images fuse into one. Or again, it may be that you did not pay sufficient attention to the advice about clarifying a single connotation for the key word."

Reply to my Jamaican feedback

This is a reply to the post jamaicanlearningjapanese made for me. Since I seem to making rather long posts I’m going to try do this point form

- bad episodes at the banks/ post offices/ illegible mail/ no conversations/ police paranoia? Hearing all that both terrifies and excites me at the same time. It’s going to be interesting time for sure.

- As stated in my previous post, I withdraw a lot of my claims about your methods. I now know the difference between Heisig and AJATT. I was making comments about AJATT not having pronunciation or use but it was really Heisig I was talking about. Also you WERE getting pronunciation and use through AJATT. You separated the writing and speaking using two methods. Now that I’ve had some more experience, I fully believe this to be the smartest way. I will likely do a similar system myself. I am thinking of switching to kanji only through RTK and keep going on smart.fm only using the romanji pronunciation only.

- Great point with the linguistic jargon like “dangling modifiers”. For any of our readers, be weary if any method you are using focuses on these.

- You make a good point. The fact that you are in Japan and I in Canada is no minor difference. AJATT makes a less sense for me here and now, I might consider jumping into it once I am over there.

- I cannot take in ONLY Japanese media as well. I’ll try and think of some things to send you that I have found and liked if you’ll do the same. (although I get the vibe our music tastes may vary a bit)

- It’s funny you mention the realization of 10,000 considering that’s how the Japanese count (ie: forty ten-thousand NOT four-hundred thousand). I was just remarking that it seemed odd to me since I felt that suki should have been one of the first things to learn due to its high use, but I now realize that view is short-sighted and is in fact the harder way in the end.

- Interesting to hear you say about needing to look up words you know. It makes a lot of sense now that I have seen that kanji, even on their own, have different meanings and pronunciations than the one keyword you learn (ie: I have been told 生has 22 pronunciations and almost as many meanings). Again this was due to ignorance on my part due to lack of experience, and nothings a better teacher than experience.

- Kotoba is one of many apps making me seriously consider getting an iPhone when I am out there.

- I agree with your statement. No matter what method you use, learning Japanese is not easy. (But as I’m sure we both agree it is not impossible. Anyone can do it if they want to)

- With my homer comment I wasn’t making an argument in favour of rote memorization, only that the story seemed unnecessarily abstract. However I’ve realized two things now.

1) The more abstract, the more you remember it (like you've said).

2)It’s only too abstract to me since we are different people, with different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. I was making stories just as abstract without realizing it. The difference was that I wasn’t doing it deliberately or systematically like you were (and I would pay for this later). This became clear to me when I was studying the world “world”界 and I had a mental image of atlas holding the world on his back. I also thought using the same object in many stories would make things confusing, but instead I have found it helps you review old kanji the same time you learn new ones! If anything my un-systematic use of objects and stories is more at risk of getting confused with each other. Although you still need to make sure you don’t start using inner objects as the meaning of a kanji, it can be overcome by focus. (ie: 真truth has me thinking of a guy using a needle as a tool, threatening to stab it in an eye unless the truth is told. I need to blow the importance of truth up in my mind to make sure I keep the right meaning. It takes longer but works great for me)

- my initial argument was “why bother learning poignant or rend? Instead focus on more useful words.” But now I realize how learning a few obscure words is well worth the little time and effort considering how much they help with the other useful kanji you learn later on in the Heisig method.

- The brain is a wonderful thing. Having worked a lot in computers and tech I’ve gained a better appreciation for how much more amazing it is then most people even realize.

- 15 year olds unable to read the newspaper sounds surprising. But Heisig makes some similar points about the inefficencies in the Japanese school system which I’ll bring up next post.

hmmm... Still seems pretty long. oh well

Long overdue update

So there have been some developments since my last post.

First, I'm now up to 535 items studied and 242 of them mastered for anyone following me on smart.fm! (and I've also done ~200 kanji in Heisig's RTK...but more on that below!)

Although this is pretty good progress, it’s hard to say if it is good enough to meet my goal by my initial deadline. I only say that because I have noticed a slow down of my pace on these new items and expect it to get even slower in the future. One reason being that the difficulty was a major step up in part 3 compared to parts 1 and 2. I guess this is why there are 33,334 users on level 1 and only 4,660 users on level 3. (and only 982 seemed to have made it to the end of the core 2000). Another reason being that I’ve started doing Heisig as well which cuts into my time.

Much more interesting news is the new discoveries/realizations I've made after reading the feedback given to me and through my struggles with these newer, harder words. I have some lengthy comments to make on the feedback but I’ll save those for my next post to keep this one shorter.

The feedback helped me realize that I my previous critiques were made with insufficient knowledge of what the AJATT method (and some others discussed) were about. In hindsight now I have come to realize that my critique was about the Heisig method, not AJATT. My opinions were directed at the concept of only learning single kanji and had nothing to do with the immersion aspect that AJATT preaches about. So feel free to go back to my previous post and replace AJATT with Heisig.

With that stated I will say that I think the AJATT method (basically increasing your Japanese input through heavy immersion) is a good idea, but it should still be done intelligently. The immersion should be at a level where you can pick out some items from of the media. If too much of it is beyond comprehension and goes over your head, the method becomes inefficient. The common argument is that kids learn their first language through immersion. However they watch kid shows where they don’t understand most of what’s going on, but they do get some. I don’t think kids would learn a language through immersion if they just watched documentaries. The immersion needs to be at/near the right level for you.

Another thing I will say is that my method and Heisig method should be reversed on my hill diagram from before. I will explain why below:

At the same time as I was starting to look into the other methods I began step 3 on smart.fm and experienced a lot of problems. One of the reasons for this was that I was didn’t consciously realize that a lot of the words in the previous lessons I had already either seen or heard so I only had to learn the other parts that I didn’t know. Having that little foot in the door took a great load off my mind and is what let me fly through the first two steps. When all of a sudden I had not seen any single kanji in a multiple kanji word and had no idea how to pronounce any part of it, each item became much harder for the mind to digest, like eating a hamburger in one bite. (hence why my method is the uphill battle).

I found I was forgetting these kanji more often than the previous lessons and that's when I realized my way just wouldn’t work. It would be so much easier to learn one kanji at a time, increasing difficulty instead of starting with ones that I can’t even make out the details at size 12 font (ie: 建設 construction, 機能 function, 状態 state/appearance)

So I read the preface/introduction of Heisig and a few other books from a website full of resources and RTK made a lot of sense! It even talked about the Japanese school system teaching in order of usefulness and how it is actually a bad technique for memorization. At this point I realized I really need to define WHY I’m learning the language. WHAT I want to use it for. HOW LONG I plan to study the language. Etc. It also helped me realize there is a difference in what is the best method to LEARN kanji and the best method to NOT FORGET kanji. Heisig also made a very good point about the difference of visual memory and imaginative memory which I will discuss more in my next post.

Although now I think the Heisig method is the SMARTEST way to learn the language, a lot of the words are obscure and will likely not get used often. Hence it is a longer but easier/smarter process to focus only on kanji meanings then switch gears later to application and pronunciation. (this is why it should have the gentle curvy path).

I would only do Heisig now if my goal was only to “one day learn the language” but I realize that a big part of my goal/desire is to be able to make friends and function in Japan as close to my arrival date as possible. And that starts in 2 months! Committing to Heisig, although the smarter way to go, will not give me the skills I need in time to use them so I’ve decided to do a hybrid system now. I alternate multiple times throughout the day on which method I study. So I feel better about my studies and have already noticed some benefits, but it is slowing me down so we'll see if I can still make that goal of 1000 items by Jan. Wish me luck!

My Goal

Okay now that the prologue is done, onto the good stuff. Currently I have 396 items studied in my smart.fm profile and 65 mastered (my user is pnogas for those who wish to follow)

I get really excited when I hear the core 2000 description: "Mastering these 2,000 items and sentences will give you enough to feel comfortable in most everyday situations"

And even more so with the core 6000 description: "Once you have completed this series, you’ll have a solid command of spoken Japanese, and you should be able to follow the majority of what you read in newspapers."

So as of this instant I am setting the goal of having 1000 items mastered (not just studied) by my flight to Japan around Jan 5th. Please hold me to it!

A Biased Critque of Two Methods

Since I support you visiting jamaicanlearningjapanese I also think it is important that I comment on the differences in our methods. Again I am no expert and am only giving a naive personal opinion which could very well be incorrect. I am also by no means trying to put down the AJATT method. Each method's effectiveness will depend on the student's personality and goals.

From what I have read it seems that our Jamaican friend is learning the whole 2,045 jooyoo Kanji. And if I am correct, he is focusing on their meaning and how to write them only. This would not include their pronunciation or their use in sentences. It appears that those aspects are to come after learning the whole 2045. I can see the benefit in this method and suspect that our two methods will have similar results to the following picture. (I'm sure this is painful for Marcus to look at as he works with graphic design)To me the AJATT seems difficult and brings your focus away from the actual comprehension of the langauage (ie: speaking, reading full sentences and knowing in which context to use words). This became apparent when he posted sentences he would figure out which I found were fairly simple. Granted this post was early in his journey but he claimed to know 330 kanji before this which is more than I probably know right now. Also the pictures he posts of the Kanji he knows proves he is MUCH more knowledgeable than I am in that department. I think what happens with the AJATT is that after you hit a certain critical point and get to a certain number of kanji it will just snowball. You'll know almost all the kanji you see and you won't have to waste time looking up the kanji you don't know. You can make connections using your own logic.

Now on the other hand I think that the smart.fm method is always toward the goal at the cost of being slower (hence my grey beard and cane). In smart.fm:
1) some kanji are repeated to cover the different context (見ける, 見る, 見出す)
2) some are repeated to cover changes made by combining them (many+ minute/part = probably 多分. I don't know if I could have made this connection if I knew each Kanji on their own.)
3) some of the words taught are made of only hiragana/katakana.
So the kanji progress is slower but you will continually be gaining REAL understanding which should be more motivating to the me. As I have previously posted , I think motivation one of the hardest and most important things in learning a language.

It seems that AJATT is more for people with an iron will who want to learn the language ASAP. I find it funny because I would think that following the fastest method is probably not a concern for people with an iron will.

One problem I can see with my method is the ability to fall into a comfort zone. I could very well hit a point where I can have conversations and do basic readings so I won't feel motivated to learn more. I could just look up the odd word I didn't know. Why should I learn words I will hardly ever see? By delaying the gratification of being able to use your knowledge you feel that you need to keep studying and you push harder. You end up with a larger word bank from which to draw before you switch gears and start applying / using your knowledge for conversation and sentences.

The last thing I would like to talk about is how jamaicanlearningjapanese talks about stories using things like Homer to help learn the kanji. In my opinion one should be very careful with these stories as they can use a lot more brain power to think up but provide only a little more retention. Also if you're not careful making your stories they could hold you back (ie: if two are too similar and you mix them up). It reminds me of a site I found with stories for hiragana. I found some of the hiragana stories so unnatural that I would expect they would hinder me more than they would help. (would appreciate other people's comments on this)

So far I've noticed when I think of the kanji what I have been doing is visualizing the picture that comes with the sentence in smart.fm. Sometimes I think of the stroke patterns as well. The best is when I can link kanji to kanji. my favourite is that eating (食)and drinking (飲) are good (良) for me.