fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5028 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French
| Message 185 of 1702 23 December 2011 at 6:22am | IP Logged |
Even if you cant add new cards, try to stay on top of your reviews!! not learning new cards is one thing, forgetting the kanji you already knows is very disheartening.
Just do some every day and you will catch up :)
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 186 of 1702 25 December 2011 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
Well I had this idea that I would at least study the whole RTK book before the course started even if I didn't memorize all the kanji. At the rate I'm going I'll have to go ahead and move on today and add a bunch more. I'm ok with that. I'll do the reviews as much as possible but since I'm studying it the harder way - IE I see the English, draw the kanji, and then flip the card over I think my recognition ability is actually stronger than the large amounts of reviews would indicate.
It hasn't helped that I got a an ear infection and now a sore throat either =/. But I'm feeling a bit better today so I'll be studying.
I've been watching a lot of anime again and I love looking at the kanji they use in the backgrounds and in the credits. They go by kind of fast for me so I only recognize a few but it's cool.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 187 of 1702 29 December 2011 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
I'm up to 766 kanji in my deck now. I'm about to start lesson 24. I feel like I've studied tons of kanji and yet the next lesson starts off with the kanji for mountain which is pretty much the 1st kanji anyone ever learns. Yup. Heisig's order is a little different than the rest of the Japanese learning world. Which is all the more reason I want to get through the whole book if possible as soon as possible since there's going to be basic kanji towards the end. No matter if I don't retain it all. Although I think it's sticking pretty well considering how fast I'm cramming it in.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 188 of 1702 29 December 2011 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
I don't know that it is advisable to go so fast, but some people manage it. Maybe you're one of them. I found that I had gone too fast, got bogged down in reviews, forgot far too many kanji, and in the end, found that the best thing to do was start over. The good news is -- I finished volume 1 today! I'll start on volume 3 next week -- again going slowly.
If you're worried about not learning simple kanji like mountain, person, come and go because Heisig leaves them for so late in the book, stop worrying. Those kanji will learn themselves. You see them so often in beginners' materials and will be taught them very early in your classes, so there won't be any problem. They will be like old friends when you finally get to them in RTK. "Ah, finally an easy kanji that I don't even need a story for!"
Good luck! If I can do it, I'm sure you can too.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 189 of 1702 29 December 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
Yeah I downloaded a deck into my flashcard app on my ipad and the author of the heisig deck includes his little stories for each kanji. Most of them are as good or better than what I would do myself and this is making the learning process go faster. While some kanji seem to create a story themselves without any effort from me others are a real pain. I'm not sure why "First Time" was hard for me...the primitives are a cloak and a dagger. I was like hmmm "I got stabbed by some guy wearing a cloak and dagger for the first time...." Not even lame enough to be stupid enough to remember. I think I just ended up remembering that one through repetition.
I have a 4 day weekend starting now. I plan on just plowing through the rest of the kanji. Then everything will be review. If I were writing my own stories for every kanji that wouldn't be possible but since this guy is sharing his own I think it's quite doable. I keep reading how people started on Heisig but got distracted and stopped partway through. I have a fear that partway through this deck I'll find that his stories stop O.o. I'll probably go looking online for someone else's stories to copy then.
I'm really looking forward to learning how to spell all the Japanese I already know using kanji once I get this done. I think it's really interesting to see which ones they choose to spell each word since the letters themselves have an actual meaning. For the past couple weeks I've been true to my word - all Kanji no Japanese otherwise. It's weird.
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Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5041 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German
| Message 190 of 1702 30 December 2011 at 3:53am | IP Logged |
Hi, fellow teammates. I believe I know a little more about kanji and its etymology. If you don't find a good story for a particular kanji I may help tell one. In fact, even if my story is still not good enough, discussing the kanji online itself may create an extra hint in the memory.
For 初, the left is clothing and the right is a knife or tool => Using tools to make clothing to cover the body signifies the BEGINNING of human (civilization). Well, this is how the character was formed in the beginning.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 191 of 1702 30 December 2011 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
I think I mentioned this site before. It is for reviewing the kanji from Heisig. You might not want to use the SRS since you'd have to start the reviews all over again and you've probably been using your own for a while. However, you might like the study section. Lots of people make their stories public, so if you can't think of one, it might help. I've used it a lot and it's given me many good hints. It got me using Mr T as my person primitive, Spiderman for the thread primitive, a pirate for the wooden leg primitive, etc. It's made the stories much more vivid and memorable.
One of the hardest things with Heisig is that so many keywords are almost the same and it can be hard to keep them straight, which is why it gets harder and harder as you get toward the end. Everyone has that problem though, and there are sometimes interesting tips given on that site for how to distinguish similar keywords and kanji.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 192 of 1702 30 December 2011 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
I've now gotten 1000 kanji from the new pile into the due pile in my flashcard app. I found myself making my own stories today instead of using the deck author's ones. Anyway I'm a bit beat. But I'm going to get lunch and then do some reviews. I have 690 cards due now O.o. That'll take several hours if I do them all. I might just spend two hours on reviewing then move on. I took a quick look at the forums at the Reviewing the Kanji site and I agree it's a great place to find motivation and just talk about the whole kanji learning thing.
Yeah I really do plan on spending almost all of my time this 4 day weekend studying kanji. I want to learn it that badly heh.
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