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A Question on Remembering the Kanji | ||
Tags: Kanji | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Dshödsh Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5056 days ago 14 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 7 12 September 2010 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My impression of Remembering the Kanji is that it primarily aims at enabling you to distinguish between different kanji, and pick up a somewhat relevant meaning at the same time. However, both Reviewing the Kanji and the RTK deck available for download in Anki seems to live under the impression that the kanji are supposed to be learned in this way: four ---> 四 instead of 四 ---> four, ie. active recall, whereas I assumed the point was to acquire passive knowledge. To me, four ---> 四 just seems like ten times the work for virtually nada gain. Similarly, if I were to learn a new alphabet, I would learn it *symbol* ---> *phonetical transcription*, not vice versa. What I guess I'm wondering is:
1. Am I completely off base? 2. If not, is it possible to, through a simple operation, flip all answer and question fields? Edited by Dshödsh on 12 September 2010 at 6:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6626 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 2 of 7 13 September 2010 at 1:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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The point is more along the lines to learn how to write the characters, which would be at odds with the approach you suggest. Further along in your studies it will be preferable to see the kanji without having a reflex reaction of an English meaning--you'll of course want to read it as Japanese. As well, testing from kanji to meaning will not provide the writing recall.
So, while you could definitely switch fields and test it as you propose, I don't think it will be in your best interest in the long term. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dshödsh Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5056 days ago 14 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 7 13 September 2010 at 7:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, that can be done this way as well, especially since the cards doesn't give you any feedback on whether you did it right or not.
This, however, is a large problem I hadn't thought of. Wouldn't this be relevant both ways though? Edited by Dshödsh on 13 September 2010 at 10:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 4 of 7 17 September 2010 at 10:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I kind of admire the people who make it through RTK, just because it seems unnecessarily hard and it takes commitment to finish it. There's no reason to go directly from zero knowledge to active recall; it's a lot easier to cram 500 or so into your passive memory within a few weeks and then immediately start reading simple things. After those characters have been bouncing around in your head for a while and you've seen them all over the place, it doesn't take flashcards or writing them hundreds of times in order to actively remember them. You basically just have to practice your handwriting at that point.
For pretty much everything after that, it's a matter of learning WORDS, and learning the kanji they are written with is just a part of that process. I think memorizing an English meaning for every character can probably make compound words (a huge part of Japanese vocabulary) more confusing, since they often won't match up with the keywords you learned. The biggest lie that RTK tells you is that you'll have the same advantage that a Chinese speaker learning Japanese would have, when the real advantage for Chinese learners is the large number of shared compound words, as well as simply feeling comfortable with the characters after having used them in daily life since they were kids. You can't get anywhere near to replicating that with a crash-course in writing. (I did try RTK early on just to see what the fuss was about, but out of all the things I dislike about the method the thing that actually turned me off was the made-up kanji etymology and radical meanings. It's especially weird to try to make each part fit into some kind of story, when for many of them only part of the character gives a hint at the meaning and the other part was originally a phonetic clue. Knowing which part is which is much more useful, especially since some of the phonetic hints still work. Another issue is that when new characters were invented, one of the parts could have nothing to do with the meaning at all, but be used for its phonetic sound that matched a homonym whose meaning actually is relevant to the meaning of the character as a whole. You can try Henshall's book if you're interested in that kind of thing. http://www.mediafire.com/?xwqypgy2wwib4n4) Edited by galindo on 17 September 2010 at 10:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| junnis22 Newbie Joined 5208 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 7 23 September 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I admire people who can cram 500 or so kanji and immediately start reading things. I updated my flashcards recently and found that there are about 850 kanji that I know at least one reading for, plus a few dozen more that I can read in compounds...and I still need to rely heavily on a dictionary when reading light novels.
I did RTK last year and I can tell you the payoff, OP. If you do it right, you will find it incredibly easy to correctly write kanji that have confusing look-alikes or that even Japanese people have trouble with. It's not a matter of guessing whether there was a vertical line or a box in that tangle of lines, you know the radicals in a kanji because you've taken ownership of them via your mnemonic. As far as time committment, I don't really think that's an issue. I did the first 100 or so kanji in the book over the course of 9 months. Granted that's not quick, but I was being very casual about my approach at first. Then I buckled down at the end of last year and did the last 950 kanji in the book in about three months, averaging 1-1.5 hours per day, 6 days a week. So I took about a year, but I think it would have been possible in four months. I have met a lot of students at college who have been studying Japanese for four or five years who can barely write 500 kanji and they put a lot more effort into it than me, studying for tests and whatnot. To answer your question, OP, yes, the point of the book is active recall. Flashcards go from keyword to kanji. You should do it the other way around too, but the main review method is active. BTW- You will remember things 1000% better if you make your own flashcards the way Heisig describes in the book. Edited by junnis22 on 23 September 2010 at 8:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6789 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 7 24 September 2010 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||
No no no no! Recognizing a kanji does NOT mean being able to write it, no matter how many times you've seen it. I can read over 2000 kanji, but sometimes I can't write even basic ones that I've seen thousands of times. Flipping randomly through the Harry Potter book in front of me, I come across words like 魔法 and 決闘 that I've known for years and have seen hundreds of times, yet I would draw a blank if you asked me to write them. Many native Japanese my age have this problem, too - sometimes my friends have had to ask me how to write a kanji because they couldn't remember, and other times I've corrected their mistakes, despite how much I suck! Think of it this way: you've probably seen your mother's face thousands and thousands of times, and would recognize it in a millisecond if you saw it, but could you draw it accurately from memory? Even as you try, the image starts to get fuzzy in your mind, and then you start to doubt yourself - what does her chin look like again? An extreme example, but I think it's the same phenomenon. We can see the 'big picture' clearly in our mind's eye, but when it comes to reproducing it down to the finest detail, our mental image crumbles. When I decided earlier this year that I wanted to be able to write more kanji, I had to actually go back and relearn hundreds of basic kanji that I've been able to recognize for years. Apparently, learning a kanji for recognition and learning it to be able to produce it are two different processes entirely. At that time I felt like I was wasting so much time relearning these elementary student level kanji from scratch, and wished I had focused on production from the beginning. I understand your point, and I agree that doing it that way from the beginning must be a slow and arduous journey, but it saves some pain and embarrassment in the long run, and even if you don't care about writing it also increases your recognition (especially because you won't confuse similar-looking kanji like 維 and 推 anymore). So active recall creates and strengthens your passive recognition, but the opposite isn't true, which is why it's better to focus on active recall.
Absolutely - this is true not just for Heisig, but for flash cards in general. Edited by Lucky Charms on 24 September 2010 at 5:23am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 7 of 7 24 September 2010 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ok... Well, it might just be something weird about me. However, I seriously doubt I have some unique combination of mental skills no one else does, and I don't have photographic memory either. When I first learn a kanji, it is definitely the 'big picture' you describe, and at that point I can't reproduce it from memory. But after reading it lots of times, what I see in my head then is more like a group of individual parts and the pattern they belong in, not one big whole kanji. So of course I would never confuse 維 and 推. Maybe that's because I tend to visualize words when I think or when I hear someone speaking, in any language. It's similar to how I never had spelling problems as a kid, because in my mind each word is inextricably linked with its written form. In Japanese that link is much more tenuous at the beginning, but after enough exposure, remembering how to write kanji is the same as remembering how to spell a word. Because of how closely I equate the written and spoken forms of a word, by the time I actually know a word well, I am also able to write the kanji that it consists of. I don't count a word as fully 'known' unless I'm familiar with the way it's written. Of course, I still have to practice writing in order to get the proportions right, so in the end it doesn't save that much time. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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