[Reposted from http://tonysensei.com/wp/2009/07/13/genkier-lesson-3-kanji/#comments]
On September 17, 2009 at 8:06 pm Lola wrote:
先 生、From the way you teach kanji, it seems like you use Heisig’s approach. I’m in second year Japanese and I’m starting to have difficultly with kanji like 勉強.. basically the more complex ones. Do you recommend his book? ありがとうございます。
Hi, Lola! I myself learned kanji using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji books, so I can attest that it is an effective system. What it isn't, however, is an especially optimized system, especially if you will be studying Japanese in a formal setting while learing the kanji.
The Heisig system in a nutshell, for those of you not aware of it, works like this:
- [Volume I] Learn a few basic kanji (mostly, the numbers 1-10, which most people start the books already knowing, and are pretty easy to learn even if you don't already know them).
- Learn a radical (a "part" of a kanji that is also used in other kanji).
- Learn all of the kanji that you can now make using the kanji that you already know in conjuction with the newly introduced radical. Learning is aided by mnemonic stories created using keywords associated with each kanji. At this stage, the readings of the kanji are not learned, only the meanings and how they are written.
- Repeat steps 2-3 until all of the kanji and their meanings are learned.
- [Volume II] Minimize the effort required to learn the readings by creating groups of kanji with similar radicals and readings. For example, learn that 丁、庁、町、 and 頂 (which all share the 丁 radical) are all pronounced ちょう. Do this as much as possible, but in the end you still have to learn a lot of single readings.
The Heisig system is very different from the approach taken by any standard Japanese textbook, one reason being that it is incompatible with classroom teaching. For one thing, the system sort of demands that learners work at their own pace, the goal being to learn all of this as quickly as possible (for most people, a year or less of dedicated study). But most formal courses, such as those you might take at a university, have to take a "weakest link" approach, being designed so that even the slowest learners can keep up if they really try.
I think that the Heisig books are the most effective books for kanji learning on the market, but they do have some fairly significant problems. My biggest dissatisfaction with the RtK books is that you have to study them as a completely separate part of your Japanese learning, and can't easily integrate the books with your grammar and vocabulary learning. For example, some kanji that are used very frequently aren't taught until late in the series because they happen to use less common radicals that aren't taught until late in the series. There is also no effort made to group kanji by use (kanji used as verbs, kanji used for days of the week, etc).
For some people, this isn't a huge problem. They figure that they definitely want to learn all of the standard use kanji, and want to do it in the shortest time possible, so they will just blitz through the RtK books without worrying about applying what they learned to actual reading until after they have finished the books. I think that is a perfectly valid viewpoint, but it is probably a minority one. Most people would rather use the kanji they have learned while they are still in the process of learning more.
That is actually pretty difficult to do, as it requires not only a redevelopment of the entire Heisig system, but a redevelopment of an entire curriculum for teaching Japanese, too. To do this job right, someone needs to write a new Japanese texbook that also teaches kanji using a well thought-out Heisig-esque system. Actually, I hope to eventually create just such a curriculum, but that will be at least a few years in the future (I have a few other things to do first, starting with finishing my Ph.D. (^^; ).
In the meantime, here's what I suggest: If you don't want to bite the bullet and use Heisig alongside your other studies, then any time you come across a difficult kanji in your text, do your best to break it down into smaller parts and learn the parts first. Use mnemonic stories to remember all kanji that you learn. Use Anki or (especially if you use Heisig) the Reviewing the Kanji web site.
To get you started, here's the components of 勉強：
勉（つとめる、ベン） ＝ 免（めん） ＋ 力（ちから）
（免, by the way is the めん in ごめんなさい, though ごめんなさい is most commonly written in ひらがな）
免（めん）＝ 勹（"bundle" radical）＋日 (on its side)＋儿 (the "human legs" radical)
強（つよい、キョウ） ＝ 弓（ゆみ、 bow, as in "bow and arrow"）＋虫 (むし、insect)
If you come across other kanji that you're having particular problems with, please ask here in these forums and I or other users here will do our best to help you! (^^)
先生、便じ遅くなって、すみません。アドバイスありがとうございます！
Sensei, sorry for the late responce! Thank you for the advice!!
Lola
drdunlap—
I think that Heisig Vol 2 is probably less useful than Vol 1, because the system he develops isn't as slick. You definitely want to pay attention to the big groups of similarly pronounced kanji, but once those groups peter out then you're getting less and less benefit from just memorizing individual kanji readings.
Much better, IMHO, is to just start reading something that interests you, adding unkown words (especially kanji compounds, with their readings, natch!) that you come across to an Anki deck that you will review every day. If you start with a まんが that has ふりがな, your job will be much less tedious, and you can focus on improving your conversational discourse skills. At first, you may want to look for a まんが that has an English translation or scanlation available (professional translation preferred), so that you have a "cheat sheet" that you can look at to see the meanings of unfamiliar phrases, etc.
When to start Heisig is an excellent question, but it isn't one that I can give a definitive answer for. Sooner is better than later, but that doesn't necessarily mean "right now".
I think that Heisig is best devoured, not nibbled, so I think that you'll get the most out of it if you're doing it at a time when you can devote a lot of time to studying Japanese. Like drdunlap did, you may want to try to race through it during the summer after JPNS 1002, depending on how busy you will be. I started a couple months after I went to Japan, while enrolled in Japanese language school (that's when I discovered the book). Starting now would be trickier, because you have a full load of classes already. Also, having 2000+ kanji bouncing around in your head doesn't do much good if you don't immediately follow up with lots of reading of real Japanese.
This semester I'll be "Heisigizing" all of the kanji that we learn in げんき, and if you take my class again next semester you'll get the same treatment, so at least you won't have to resort to using the "squiggle method" for what we'll be learning in JPNS class. Also, if you wait until next summer then at least you'll have some basic grammar to get you started on reading まんが or Japanese web pages or whatever.
But it's really up to you. If you feel a burning desire to start now, go for it! The first section is available for free online, so you don't have much to lose. If you find that you're too busy this year, you can always put it on hold and start again in the summer.
This is just my own experience with having completed Heisig (Book 1).
Over the summer between my first and second years of formal study (this past summer) I was one of those crazies who blitzed through Heisig from start to finish. Honestly, I have far too much time on my hands to study Japanese, but I think anyone learning the language could benefit from blizting through Heisig if they seriously intend to gain a high level of fluency/literacy. Learning the readings is a much larger and scarier beast, but if you work at it it's not near as bad as they say (much like the rest of the language).
The biggest gain I've seen from it is that Kanji simply aren't a mystery anymore. I can write most Kanji I run across in class (and elsewhere) so I can reasonably expect myself to learn the Kanji with the new word. In fact, it's painful now to go back and try to apply Kanji to the words I've already learned in Kana alone. It's also painfuil to try and read passages of text full of Kana. I'd rather see a Kanji I can't read than it's Kana reading.
Also, even if I can't read it, I can tell you what a sentence is likely to mean from knowing it's Kanji (one has to be careful with this, though, as there's some really weird compound words that don't seem to make any sense at all from their Kanji). Even Kanji that aren't covered in Book1 make sense because so many of them are made up of parts I already know.
As for prior knowledge, I already knew quite a few Kanji starting Heisig's method but unless I really REALLY knew the Kanji well I made up a story for it anyway to make sure it stuck in my memory.
It's been a while since I completed book 1, I'm using the Reviewing the Kanji website as well and have settled into a 90 - 95% success rate on my daily review. I can't recommend it enough to serious students of the language (but maybe only serious students).
My only warning!: Upon finishing Heisig, I've discovered that I'm addicted to Kanji.
Yes, it's true, I love these characters. Even when I forget them.
I may have rambled. It happens.
Would you recommend that, as someone in your 1001 class, we start studying Heisig now? I'd really like to get a jump start on kanji because there are so many. If I did start using Heisig, would prior knowledge of some kanji help or hinder my learning? The way I learned kanji wasn't even close to Heisig's method. ^^; So would I skip the ones I do know or just pretend as if I hadn't learned them and start fresh?