First impressions. Give me some advice please!

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Printable Version

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First impressions. Give me some advice please! - poblequadrat - 2014-03-11

I've been using Heisig and koohii for 3 lessons now.

I had already studied some Japanese before. I advanced quickly with grammar. However, I found vocabulary terribly difficult because, since there are so many compound words and so many homophones, I think you need to know kanji to remember words. I'll never forget "metro" is ground-under-steel, but if you throw "chikatetsu" at me I'll have a hard time remembering - and that's a word with no homophones! I think the same would apply even to compound words that don't make much sense. Anyway, when I stopped having time to try and learn kanji by rote, I quit.

So after a couple of years I'm coming back to Japanese. Because of my difficulties with vocabulary, Heisig seemed like the right thing for me. I'll start taking classes next week - we'll see how that works out, but so far, I'm happy.

However, there are things that worry me. I understand mnemonics are arbitrary, but I fear I might eventually get confused because of the use of a keyword for primitives that are slightly different from eachother. For example I fear I might forget that the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook, or that the "thousand" in "liquid-measurement box" has a curved stroke. I'm sure I won't forget Heisig's story about a tenth of a shaku being a droplet of a shaku, or about drinking a thousand needles, but his story doesn't account for the primitives actually being different.

Keywords being arbitrary, I don't get either why he would use unrelated keywords for kanji as stand-alones and kanji as primitives. You can make any story up! Now not only the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook and the "droplet" is mirrored, but I also have to attach the keyword "glue" to it, which hasn't got anything to do with the story about one tenth of a shaku. I guess this is something minor, though. So far I'm still keeping all this stuff in my head.

Don't get me wrong - I'm liking the book and I plan to go on with it. But I wonder if the same approach would work if it used the actual radicals and sensible keywords. Maybe I'll write that book when I'm done learning, heh, heh. I've read there's actually a book like that, but its name escapes me. Is it any good for beginners?

I'm also worried about my classes. Taking classes means I'll be trying to learn vocabulary without kanji. I believe my teacher will use Basic Kanji Book, too. We'll see, but I'd like to hear about your experiences with using Heisig and taking classes at the same time.

Also, what about the pacing? So far the 3 lessons have taken me 3 days, and I'm counting on koohii to put my memory to work. Is this the right way? I've seen later lessons have many more kanji, so maybe one a day won't be feasible. I also wonder if attempting to do one a day might scramble my memory. What do you think?

Thanks a lot for this site! I'm excited to be studying Japanese again!
Cheers,
pq.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - JusenkyoGuide - 2014-03-11

poblequadrat Wrote:I've been using Heisig and koohii for 3 lessons now.

Welcome to the jungle then. Smile

*snip*

Quote:However, there are things that worry me. I understand mnemonics are arbitrary, but I fear I might eventually get confused because of the use of a keyword for primitives that are slightly different. For example I fear I might forget that the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook, or that the "thousand" in "liquid-measurement box" has a curved stroke. I'm sure I won't forget Heisig's story about a tenth of a shaku being a droplet of a shaku, or about drinking a thousand needles, but his story doesn't account for the primitives actually being different.

Keywords being arbitrary, I don't get either why he would use unrelated keywords for kanji as stand-alones and kanji as primitives. You can make any story up! Now not only the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook and the "droplet" is mirrored, but I also have to attach the keyword "glue" to it, which hasn't got anything to do with the story about one tenth of a shaku. I guess this is something minor, though. So far I'm keeping all this stuff in my head.

Don't get me wrong - I'm liking the book and I plan to go on with it. But I wonder if the same approach would work if it used the actual radicals and sensible keywords. Maybe I'll write that book when I'm done learning, heh, heh. I've read there's actually a book like that around, but its name escapes me. Is it any good for beginners like me?

You can change the keywords if you so wish, you just need to make sure that they are something you can remember. For example, I, and just about everyone else, uses Spiderman for 糸. The whole idea is to make something you can see and build the story out of. It's not a mnemonic as much as it's storytelling and visualizing it. By the by, in time the story starts to fade and only the keywords remain. Eventually they fade as well and you're left with the kanji and its meanings. I actually have to look up my stories now for a lot of kanji since I no longer remember them. I just remember that 彼 is kare = he.

Quote:Also, what about the pacing? So far the 3 lessons have taken me 3 days, and I'm counting on koohii to put my memory to work. Is this the right way? I've seen later lessons have many more kanji, so maybe one a day won't be feasible. I also wonder if attempting to do one lesson a day might scramble my memory. What do you think?

I started off with one lesson a day and it worked up to a point, eventually though some of the lessons got very, VERY long and obviously was not going to work to do in a day, not and still have time for working, sleeping, eating, etc. Don't feel bad about breaking them down if you have to. What I ended up doing was going by the radical or keyword. I.e. I'd tackle all of the 人 kanji for that day if there were a lot of them and just go from there.

Quote:Thanks a lot for this site! I'm excited to be studying Japanese again!
Cheers,
pq.

Good luck!

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Stansfield123 - 2014-03-11

My main advice would be: don't expect learning vocab to become that much easier.

I mean some things will get easier, if you learn the Kanji, chief among them the fact that you will be able to read stuff. And reading is the best form of immersion, because, unlike with listening, you're going at your own pace. It allows you to focus, and soak it all in, rather than drift off.

And it's immersion that will most help you remember the vocab, not the kind of logic you describe with the chikatetsu example. You can't deduce the Japanese language. Like all languages, it's fairly arbitrary. Chikatetsu does have some sensible Kanji (especially 鉄, which is a common word on its own), but most words don't. And even with chikatetsu, when a beginner sees 下, he thinks "shita" or "kuda", not "ka".

So, beyond the "tetsu" part (which helps whether you know the Kanji or not), a beginner is more likely to learn the word phonetically, through immersion, than through the Kanji (chikatetsu as a word is more common than the "ka" reading of 下).

P.S. To put it another way, chikatetsu makes sense, sure: but that's because Japanese is an agglutinative language, not because it uses Kanji. Chikatetsu would still make sense, even if Japanese adopted romaji. You'd still know the words chi, chika, and tetsu. They're all common words.

As an aside, chika means basement or underground, so chikatetsu is actually underground iron. As you can see, it would make just as much sense if you had no idea there's such a thing as Kanji. In fact, if I had to guess, it was probably originally supposed to be called 地下鉄道 (underground railroad), and they just dropped the last syllable.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-12

Kanji DO make acquiring vocab a whole lot easier. If you're at the stage where 地下鉄 is still tough for you, you might benefit from following up RTK with Core2000, then 6000, and then just reading a lot, first with Furigana.

As for "measurement" also meaning "glue" or the other primitives - they will become increasingly complex. You could remember for example 墓 as flowers, sun, big and soil, but it's easier to compress the upper 3 to graveyard and then add soil. In this case, and in others, it does indeed make sense to have one extra meaning from Kanji that are part of other Kanji. You'd have to write up half an essay for 藤 or 警, for example.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-12

problequadrat wrote:

"Keywords being arbitrary, I don't get either why he would use unrelated keywords for kanji as stand-alones and kanji as primitives."

In my opinion, this might well be the greatest weakness of Heisig's method. He so often chose his key words based on very superficial visual similarities that it made making useful stories with them that much more difficult. To add insult to injury, the key words he chose are often so concrete that they limit the range of possible stories/associations to an almost unworkable degree.
Take a key word like "outhouse". The only kind of association I have with that are American settlers living on the frontier in the 19th century in areas where there was no sewer system. And I recall a scene from "Young Guns" where an outlaw actually uses an outhouse to ambush Billy the Kid and his gang. Beyond that, "outhouse" just draws a blank with me. So I ended up replacing "outhouse" with "crowning", which is close to "crown", but that gave me no problems since I gave it the meaning of some intellectual achievement being crowned. And since it contains the "little" primitive that is so close to what is being used in intellectual Kanji like "study" and "memorize" this makes for a natural ordering in my memory.

So even if it may seem scary at first to deviate from the key words that Heisig-sensei supplies, I strongly recommend doing so whenever a key word feels "wrong" somehow. The counter argument that you will then have to remember to always insert your own key word whenever this primitive re-appears later on is not as convincing as it may first appear. You can simply make a table in Word with the key meanings your replaced listed in alphabetical order, followed by an example Kanji using the primitive and your own key word in the last column. (If you like, I can mail you the table I made in Word for just this purpose). And since specific primitives really don't re-appear *that* often after they were first introduced, it's really not that big of a deal. Plus: any alternative key words you come up with will stick out better in your memory, because they are *your* creations and in a way therefore your children.

Stansfield123 wrote:

"My main advice would be: don't expect learning vocab to become that much easier."

In my experience, it doesn't get easier during the early phases of RTK1 (circa Kanji #1-500). But since RTK1 is rather front-loaded with abstract and rare words, I actually found it got easier after that. But that also had something to do with me becoming more confident about creating my own key words and not taking anything Heisig suggested about key words all that seriously anymore.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - crayonmaster - 2014-03-12

Hi. My advice is not to worry so much. I did RtK years ago, and I'm glad I did. I, too, worried that I would forget the subtle hooks and other little things... but I didn't.

To tell you the truth... I never actually finished RtK. I stopped at around 1500. I think the greatest thing about RtK is that it makes you comfortable with kanji. It takes all the fear out of them. The important kanji that I didn't learn through RtK, I eventually picked up. My brain had grown accustomed to picking apart primitives.

Learning vocabulary with lots of kanji compounds? Yeah, it's tough. But just like learning kanji with multiple primitives, it gets easier as you go. You just get the hang of it.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - poblequadrat - 2014-03-15

Thanks a lot for all your comments! Especially the tip about breaking long lessons by primitive, and the one about what to do when the keywords seem "off". I have to say, though, that after my first week the weird names have proven useful. What crayonmaster mentions about not finishing Heisig seems reasonable too - I guess once you know enough it's easier to learn by stumbling upon things.

As for vocabulary, I still believe that even if chikatetsu was blood-victory-philosophy it'd help more than three syllables with lots of homophones. I understand you learn words by using them, but in order to be fluent you need more vocabulary than the few words you come across everyday, and since I don't live in Japan and my level doesn't allow for much reading, I need something to hold on to.

By the way, how does this Core2K stuff work? You download the Anki deck, then what?

Today I've taken my seventh lesson. It's going well!

I'll keep working! I don't know where it'll get me, but RTK sure is a fun book.

Cheers,
pq.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-15

You download ANKI, then the shared deck (via option in ANKI, which opens a web page). There are many, find one you like. Just test a few until you're happy with your choice.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-16

andikaze Wrote:You download ANKI, then the shared deck (via option in ANKI, which opens a web page). There are many, find one you like. Just test a few until you're happy with your choice.

The option in Anki that Andikaze refers to is all the way at the bottom of your screen, slightly left of center. In my language version, the button is labelled something like "Download shared set", which will take you to the download screens Andikaze mentions.

(Many of the other buttons and options in Anki open rather technical screens that seem to be all about building your own deck. Those aren't as easy to use as one might hope, in my experience, and learning how to use those is not really necessary when you are simply looking for an existing deck to review, like Core2K).

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-16

poblequadrat Wrote:Thanks a lot for all your comments! Especially the tip about breaking long lessons by primitive, and the one about what to do when the keywords seem "off". I have to say, though, that after my first week the weird names have proven useful. pq.

Weird names do prove useful in the short term, like during the first few weeks after learning them. But they tend to fade fast in the medium to long term. At least, in my experience.

(And there is a certain logic to that, I feel. Because if the human brain would not discriminate between "weird" things happening and "normal" things happening in terms of memorization, then our memories would soon get flooded by all the "weird" and random things that happen in our dreams. The fact that our brains filter these out is probably a very important survival mechanism, since in evolutionary terms it only pays to have facts relating to the real word and the logical mechanisms we encounter therein present in our memories. Everything else is just useless clutter. Going against that primal mechanism is what I feel to be the second great weakness of the Heisig method, next to the often impractical key words.)

What is more, the "weird" approach is often unnecessary, since there is a lot more "method" to the seeming "madness" of Kanji than it may at first appear. Not all of that "method" is straightforward logic in the sense that we in the West are used to. Some of it seems to be almost poetic in nature, like illustrating the word "longing" with a lack the size of a valley. Or linking "sadness" to the undoing of the heart. Or defining a "route" as a road that gets some heavy usage. Those kinds of images may not be the first ones to appeal to the more literal Western mind, but they can work quite well, if you give them a chance...

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-16

Not that it'd really matter, but I think it's the strange primitives that make the stories memorable - because they become strange, too, and thus hard to forget. If it was "too normal", it probably wouldn't stick so well.

But that's a bit besides the point. The main part is "understanding how the Kanji are being built".

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-16

andikaze Wrote:Not that it'd really matter, but I think it's the strange primitives that make the stories memorable - because they become strange, too, and thus hard to forget. If it was "too normal", it probably wouldn't stick so well."

My point is that this is *not* the case, at least not in the long term, in my experience. If "weird" was memorable, then our memories would be clogged with all the "weird" things we see in our dreams. And thankfully, that is not the case. (Try writing down some fragments of what you can remember from your dreams in the morning and then come back to your notes after one or two months. Chances are, you won't be able to remember a thing about the dream fragments those notes refer to. And that's because they did not carry over into long term memory, as well they shouldn't. Why would it be any different for "weird" Kanji stories. Hell, why would reviewing even be necessary if "weird" stories worked so great, if at all?)

andikaze Wrote:But that's a bit besides the point. The main part is "understanding how the Kanji are being built."

For me, the main part is *remembering* the Kanji. Understanding how they were built is purely secondary, in as far as it aids memorization.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-16

Of course the goal is to remember the Kanji, to later (after Heisig) connect them with real vocabulary. What I mean is, that when you learn how to assemble them, you can produce them, which gives you the writing skill and makes it easier to memorize them properly. Learning them by parts and how they differ is the point of Heisig.

I can remember a few stories pretty well exactly because they're so weird (like, I failed 怪 repeatedly until I tried with a story with Mr. Data, from this site). Now, does that make me strange?

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-16

andikaze Wrote:Of course the goal is to remember the Kanji, to later (after Heisig) connect them with real vocabulary. What I mean is, that when you learn how to assemble them, you can produce them, which gives you the writing skill and makes it easier to memorize them properly. Learning them by parts and how they differ is the point of Heisig.

To me, assembling the Kanji is an integral part of memorizing them. I try to make the shape and sequence of the particles match the story or association as best I can. Assembling, producing, writing and memorizing are all just synonyms for that in my book. Certainly not separate phases or anything like that.

andikaze Wrote:I can remember a few stories pretty well exactly because they're so weird (like, I failed 怪 repeatedly until I tried with a story with Mr. Data, from this site). Now, does that make me strange?

If you remember only "a few stories" because of their weirdness, then aren't you more or less proving my point that weirdness isn't that great a way te memorize things? Because if it was, you would be remembering *all* the Kanji you have learned so far instead of just "a few" because of the brilliant weirdness of the stories you made up for them. And why would you even need to SRS them or be on this site if simple weirdness was the key to learning any Kanji?

(I didn't call anyone "strange", BTW. I was merely commenting how memory works in my experience and what evolutionary background I suspect is behind that).

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-16

I do remember all the Kanji, but only a few stories - the weird ones Smile

Some Kanji didn't stick due to their nature - the keywords were pretty similar and I couldn't make out the connotation due to English being my L2. I fixed that by looking up the Kanji and finding out which Japanese words use it.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-16

andikaze Wrote:I do remember all the Kanji, but only a few stories - the weird ones Some Kanji didn't stick due to their nature - the keywords were pretty similar and I couldn't make out the connotation due to English being my L2. I fixed that by looking up the Kanji and finding out which Japanese words use it.

Whichever way you put it, apparently "weird" stories haven't been the solution for learning every Kanji for you either.

In fact, the way you word it in the quote above you are in fact saying that you only remember a few stories, and those were the weird stories. Now, English may not be your native language (it isn't mine, either), but you are literally saying "the few weird stories I used are the ones I still remember". So that means you only ever used a few, but that seems to contradict the rest of your post...

Perhaps what you really meant to say is that you mostly used "weird" stories, and that you only remember a few of those. That still leaves open the possibility that far from all the stories you forgot were "weird" ones. Since you claim you don't remember them, how can you be sure what kind of stories they were?

And if you forgot the stories themselves (whichever kind they were) but somehow remembered the Kanji, then maybe the Kanji stuck in your memory for a different reason then using Heisig, perhaps by reading Japanese material from other textbooks?

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Aspiring - 2014-03-16

poblequadrat Wrote:[...]

However, there are things that worry me. I understand mnemonics are arbitrary, but I fear I might eventually get confused because of the use of a keyword for primitives that are slightly different from eachother. For example I fear I might forget that the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook, or that the "thousand" in "liquid-measurement box" has a curved stroke. I'm sure I won't forget Heisig's story about a tenth of a shaku being a droplet of a shaku, or about drinking a thousand needles, but his story doesn't account for the primitives actually being different.

Keywords being arbitrary, I don't get either why he would use unrelated keywords for kanji as stand-alones and kanji as primitives. You can make any story up! Now not only the "ten" in "measurement" has a hook and the "droplet" is mirrored, but I also have to attach the keyword "glue" to it, which hasn't got anything to do with the story about one tenth of a shaku. I guess this is something minor, though. So far I'm still keeping all this stuff in my head.

Don't get me wrong - I'm liking the book and I plan to go on with it. But I wonder if the same approach would work if it used the actual radicals and sensible keywords. Maybe I'll write that book when I'm done learning, heh, heh. I've read there's actually a book like that, but its name escapes me. Is it any good for beginners?

Also, what about the pacing? So far the 3 lessons have taken me 3 days, and I'm counting on koohii to put my memory to work. Is this the right way? I've seen later lessons have many more kanji, so maybe one a day won't be feasible. I also wonder if attempting to do one a day might scramble my memory. What do you think?

Thanks a lot for this site! I'm excited to be studying Japanese again!
Cheers,
pq.

(Immediate observations)

A meaningful cue allows you to produce the kanji, and thus physically understand the kanji through motor memory ( through its stroke order and radical composition )

Heisig's approach combines meaningful cues with a structured kanji order, thus connecting imaginary experience (stories and meaning or cues) to physical meaning (recreating the kanji and understanding its composition, visual/motor). Morphological awareness, understanding the composition of all kanji, or the proverbial 'remember all kanji', is more like understanding the kanji and reforming them as extensions of your past and future experiences ( through procedural/motor memory, declarative/semantic memory, and spaced repetition )

Tldr; use a meaningful cue as a reminder to write each kanji,
goal: understand how the kanji are formed

Pacing: do a lesson or two, do a few, adjust to it*

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-16

Eminem2 Wrote:Whichever way you put it, apparently "weird" stories haven't been the solution for learning every Kanji for you either.

In fact, the way you word it in the quote above you are in fact saying that you only remember a few stories, and those were the weird stories. Now, English may not be your native language (it isn't mine, either), but you are literally saying "the few weird stories I used are the ones I still remember". So that means you only ever used a few, but that seems to contradict the rest of your post...

Perhaps what you really meant to say is that you mostly used "weird" stories, and that you only remember a few of those. That still leaves open the possibility that far from all the stories you forgot were "weird" ones. Since you claim you don't remember them, how can you be sure what kind of stories they were?

And if you forgot the stories themselves (whichever kind they were) but somehow remembered the Kanji, then maybe the Kanji stuck in your memory for a different reason then using Heisig, perhaps by reading Japanese material from other textbooks?

I'm sorry to make you read a rather long reply, but take the time to read through it, as my thoughts on what's going on comes at the end. I know how tempting it is to reply before one has read through the complete posting, but try to resist. Maybe, by reading all of this and having a good idea of what I do, you might be able to identify a weakness and help me to weed it out.

Not trying to argue with you here, but I'd like to show what it is I actually do and leave the conclusions to you.

I used a lot of less weird stories and they worked normally - I forgot them a few times, but at some point I knew the Kanji. The story was gone again.
I know how the stories are because I didn't delete my RTK deck, you know. I can actually look through a bunch and see what I wrote there.
There are only a few really weird ones, maybe around 50, in the whole deck of 2200, and those are the ones that still stick, at least as plots, even after I replaced the English keyword with Japanese vocab. Like the one of the St. Bernard that hunts turkeys and spills their brain fluid on the field, for example.

My routine works like this: I actually write down before I flip the cards. This means, I write a Kanji again and again in some cases, and where the stories don't help, my muscle memory does the job.

I have all the keywords of the primitives in cursive and the keyword of the Kanji in bold, like this:

Quote:儒
Mt.T says "Stop with all that Confucian yadayada and tell me why it's raining combs, foo!"

(Thinking about this, "raining combs" could have been combined to "demand" and I could have made the story shorter, but this was totally bullshitty and I liked it this way)

This way, when I flip the card after writing what I thought it was that's supposed to pop up, I can see the keywords at a glance, without the need to re-read (or rather: parse the whole story with my eyes) again and again. I know it in a somewhat "raw" fashion well enough that it pops up when I see Kanji and keywords, but when I only see the Kanji, not the stories, but rather the list of components come to mind.

And then there are those like 怖、忘、彼 and so on I know so well, I can produce them while writing normal Japanese. 恐怖 however would be a combination of 2 Kanji I know, but didn't connect to a compound yet - even tho I know the word itself pretty well (because I watched the anime Monster a long time ago^^).

I do not think that you could do the Heisig process once and not forget the Kanji, because all your stories are that memorable.

It's 2200 Kanji in revision 6 of his book, which I'm currently doing. This is not the case, but it might not even be the point. After all, we all agree that Heisig is but a single step on the way, but you know what they say about the first step. And this one is very important to familiarize you with Kanji, their construction process and to give you a rough idea of what means what.
It might be a bit tiring to tell the difference between the two Kanji that make up 恐怖 for example, because both mean the same at first glance, but when you do Heisig, the stories are supposed to give you different context for all of them.

For me it is a combination of the stories, the SRS of ANKI and the handwriting that I do that does it for me. And it still takes longer than the amazingly short time it usually takes most people to "finish the book" (and I wonder if they actually "finished" it in the broad sense - and not just finished learning new Kanji from the pages of the book).
Things need their time, and then it's a slow process of assimilation, to make all those Kanji work within the context of Japanese, which in itself is already a pretty complete construct in my brain, as I use it on a daily basis.

With all this being said, why would it even MATTER how crazy the stories are? Whatever it takes to remember the Kanji, in preparation for further conversion into Japanese, when all is done, you won't remember anything from Heisig anymore after some time. When you then see a Kanji, it'll resound as a Japanese word, and when you want to express something, you'll identify the correct Kanji in the IME or write it down by hand spontaneously.

Since I could remember the whole stories in case they were totally weird, at least for ME, weird stories worked like a charm.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-17

andikaze Wrote:I'm sorry to make you read a rather long reply, but take the time to read through it, as my thoughts on what's going on comes at the end.

That's okay. You're not really "making" me do anything. I'm here because I want to share which learning methods worked for me and which didn't, in the hopes that this might help others.

andikaze Wrote:I used a lot of less weird stories and they worked normally - I forgot them a few times, but at some point I knew the Kanji. The story was gone again.
I know how the stories are because I didn't delete my RTK deck, you know. I can actually look through a bunch and see what I wrote there.
There are only a few really weird ones, maybe around 50, in the whole deck of 2200, and those are the ones that still stick, at least as plots, even after I replaced the English keyword with Japanese vocab.

Okay. So then the question becomes: could you have used 2,200 instead of just 50 really weird ones, or would that not have worked? (My experience, of course, is that a large number of really weird stories for mastering the major Kanji cannot work, because the human brain simply cannot work like that.)

andikaze Wrote:My routine works like this: I actually write down before I flip the cards. This means, I write a Kanji again and again in some cases, and where the stories don't help, my muscle memory does the job.

Interesting. I do virtually all of my reproducing before my mind's eye. Occasionally, I draw some Kanji on paper just to check if they were really as close to the real thing as I thought they were in my head. Generally, they are. BTW, you are aware that Heisig claims that it is _not_ necessary to draw the Kanji more than once when using his method?

andikaze Wrote:I do not think that you could do the Heisig process once and not forget the Kanji, because all your stories are that memorable.

Me neither. But if "really weird stories" were as effective as Heisig claims, should just doing them once not be enough, if they would stick as well as Heisig (and you) claim? :-)

andikaze Wrote:It's 2200 Kanji in revision 6 of his book, which I'm currently doing. This is not the case, but it might not even be the point.

What is "not the case"? Are you or aren't you doing the 2,200 RTK1 Kanji?

andikaze Wrote:After all, we all agree that Heisig is but a single step on the way, but you know what
they say about the first step.

That "it's a doozy"? (Which, incidentally, is the English saying I used to memorize the Kanji for "step" or 踏).

andikaze Wrote:It might be a bit tiring to tell the difference between the two Kanji that make up 恐怖 for example, because both mean the same at first glance, but when you do Heisig, the stories are supposed to give you different context for all of them.

恐怖 or "fear" and "dreadful", to use Heisig's keywords. Not really synonyms in English, but you're saying they are closer in Japanese?

andikaze Wrote:For me it is a combination of the stories, the SRS of ANKI and the handwriting that I do that does it for me. And it still takes longer than the amazingly short time it usually takes most people to "finish the book" (and I wonder if they actually "finished" it in the broad sense - and not just finished learning new Kanji from the pages of the book).

I have defined "finishing the book" as having stories/associations in place (in Kanji.Koohii's SRS system, although I have made a backup of all the stories I entered) and being fairly advanced in terms of the number of cards that are in the more mature Boxes (numbers four and higher). After 3.5 months of using this SRS system, I am roughly between 1,600-1,700 mature cards. Many of the ones that still go wrong a lot (and are therefore bouncing around Boxes 1-3) are Kanji for which I have not been able to come up with a solid logical story or association. I try to make do with "weird stories" (many of the top-rated ones on this site) for lack of something more effective, but these almost never lead to these Kanji being fixed in my long term memory, even if I use all the steps Heisig recommends. So I am speaking from a *lot* of personal experience when I doubt the effectiveness of weird stories. Your experience is different and I respect that.

andikaze Wrote:Things need their time, and then it's a slow process of assimilation, to make all those Kanji work within the context of Japanese, which in itself is already a pretty complete construct in my brain, as I use it on a daily basis.

My point is this: of course things need their time, but why should they take more time than necessary? And if it is going so slowly for you, then could it not be that your method is flawed?

But more importantly: if you do indeed use Japanese on a daily basis, then there are two possible reasons why Kanji stick in your long term memory:
1. Your Heisig learning method
2. Your experience with Kanji as a part of your using the Japanese language on a daily basis.

Many people would argue that you are probably getting the most benefit from #2. Whereas me, I am just a guy sitting behind a screen somewhere in Europe trying to make the most of my adaptation of the Heisig method and some other textbooks I have bought, plus what I can glean from watching anime and looking at manga in the original Japanese. And my experience is: "weird" does *not* equal being memorable in the long term for more than the occasional Kanji.

andikaze Wrote:With all this being said, why would it even MATTER how crazy the stories are?

It doesn't. It only matters how efficient they are in getting the job done. And for me, that efficiency is almost zero.

andikaze Wrote:Whatever it takes to remember the Kanji, in preparation for further conversion into Japanese, when all is done, you won't remember anything from Heisig anymore after some time. When you then see a Kanji, it'll resound as a Japanese word, and when you want to express something, you'll identify the correct Kanji in the IME or write it down by hand spontaneously.

How can you be sure that this kind of remembering will be due to using the Heisig method for you? As opposed to simply reaping the benefits from conversing (and probably reading) in Japanese on a daily basis?

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - poblequadrat - 2014-03-17

After a few lessons, I get the feeling Heisig goes out of his way to make the stories a bit weirder so that they're memorable. I don't know if this works well past the first few lessons, but I've come to the conclusion that Heisig's intention is in line with what andikaze is saying. My gripe was more with the fact that primitives get more than one keyword, and these secondary names are often completely unrelated to the kanji itself. But this might be OK since you're seeing these primitives all the time anyway.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-17

Eminem2 Wrote:Okay. So then the question becomes: could you have used 2,200 instead of just 50 really weird ones, or would that not have worked? (My experience, of course, is that a large number of really weird stories for mastering the major Kanji cannot work, because the human brain simply cannot work like that.)

The problem is I'm not creative enough to come up with really crazy stuff. I don't have experience with lots and lots of them, I just noticed that the ones I used were pretty effective.

Eminem2 Wrote:Interesting. I do virtually all of my reproducing before my mind's eye. Occasionally, I draw some Kanji on paper just to check if they were really as close to the real thing as I thought they were in my head. Generally, they are. BTW, you are aware that Heisig claims that it is _not_ necessary to draw the Kanji more than once when using his method?

While it might not be necessary for the memorization process, I found it helpful. I also aim to achieve native-like writing skills, because I'm living here and plan to open a clinic in a few years, and for that, penmanship is definitely worth it.

Eminem2 Wrote:Me neither. But if "really weird stories" were as effective as Heisig claims, should just doing them once not be enough, if they would stick as well as Heisig (and you) claim? :-)

Heisig doesn't exactly promote weird stories. He says the best stories produce a vivid image, which I found to be correct. I actually drew a picture of a St. Bernard returning home, saying "re" for the re-Kanji, and one with the dog's master saying "wb", with tears in his eyes. These two also stick, probably because I walked that extra mile. While this might be weird enough (but not that weird), it's what Heisig asks you to do (albeit not to actually draw those pictures).
I also have an image of Thulsa Doom, walking, wearing a pelt for the Kanji 彼, which also works well. These are vivis images and they work just as well as my weird stories.
Unfortunately, both are not possible for every Kanji.

Eminem2 Wrote:What is "not the case"? Are you or aren't you doing the 2,200 RTK1 Kanji?

I was referring to above "not possible to memorize them that way".

Eminem2 Wrote:That "it's a doozy"? (Which, incidentally, is the English saying I used to memorize the Kanji for "step" or 踏).

That it's "the hardest". I didn't even know what a "doozy" is ^^

Eminem2 Wrote:恐怖 or "fear" and "dreadful", to use Heisig's keywords. Not really synonyms in English, but you're saying they are closer in Japanese?

No, those are Heisigs definition. Look them up in various dictionaries and you get definitions that revolve around fear. Heisig tells them apart more clearly.

Eminem2 Wrote:I have defined "finishing the book" as having stories/associations in place (in Kanji.Koohii's SRS system, although I have made a backup of all the stories I entered) and being fairly advanced in terms of the number of cards that are in the more mature Boxes (numbers four and higher). After 3.5 months of using this SRS system, I am roughly between 1,600-1,700 mature cards. Many of the ones that still go wrong a lot (and are therefore bouncing around Boxes 1-3) are Kanji for which I have not been able to come up with a solid logical story or association. I try to make do with "weird stories" (many of the top-rated ones on this site) for lack of something more effective, but these almost never lead to these Kanji being fixed in my long term memory, even if I use all the steps Heisig recommends. So I am speaking from a *lot* of personal experience when I doubt the effectiveness of weird stories. Your experience is different and I respect that.

Logical, conclusion-like stories would probably be the best anyways, as no special imagination is required in those cases. But when those aren't possible due to a horror mix of radical keywords, it can't be helped. Stuff like "grope" and the "Japanese school girl primitive" worked pretty well tho, the same as the "French maid".

Eminem2 Wrote:My point is this: of course things need their time, but why should they take more time than necessary? And if it is going so slowly for you, then could it not be that your method is flawed?

I'm not sure if it is my method or the fact I lack time. I got school during the morning and night shift at work, but fortunately school is about to end. One more week. Exhaustion isn't exactly helpful, especially when you do it as rigidly as me, failing every Kanji that's even a little off. I don't cut myself some slack in any way.

Eminem2 Wrote:But more importantly: if you do indeed use Japanese on a daily basis, then there are two possible reasons why Kanji stick in your long term memory:
1. Your Heisig learning method
2. Your experience with Kanji as a part of your using the Japanese language on a daily basis.

Many people would argue that you are probably getting the most benefit from #2. Whereas me, I am just a guy sitting behind a screen somewhere in Europe trying to make the most of my adaptation of the Heisig method and some other textbooks I have bought, plus what I can glean from watching anime and looking at manga in the original Japanese. And my experience is: "weird" does *not* equal being memorable in the long term for more than the occasional Kanji.

Living in Japan does a lot for your speaking ability, and sure, you get reps for Kanji you already know. But during the Heisig phase, you usually don't remember Kanji -> keyword well (since you're training keyword -> Kanji, and rightfully, as the keywords are only placeholders anyways), you lack the readings and are not fit for compounds yet, unless you finished the book. As long as one Kanji in a compound is still unknown, immersion does Jack. As for reading, well, I'm pretty fast with Kana in extremely strange fonts now, as they're all over the place, and I can dissect Kanji I see easily. This also means I can see at a glance if it's one of those I didn't learn yet. But that's about it. The big boost will come at a higher level, just as your language abilities only profit from mass input after you reached a critical mass.

Eminem2 Wrote:It doesn't. It only matters how efficient they are in getting the job done. And for me, that efficiency is almost zero.

We agree in the only point that's important. Whether it be weird stories or logical stories or hentai stories or bunny stories one uses to achieve the goal doesn't matter so much for me.

Eminem2 Wrote:How can you be sure that this kind of remembering will be due to using the Heisig method for you? As opposed to simply reaping the benefits from conversing (and probably reading) in Japanese on a daily basis?

As a result of being familiar with the Kanji. I can disassemble it, come up with a story for it if need be, I don't confuse it with similar looking Kanji and I usually see it often enough. Also, when seeing a Kanji in context, knowing the English heisig keyword, you can guess the Japanese word in many cases.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - Eminem2 - 2014-03-17

Andikaze Wrote:Heisig doesn't exactly promote weird stories. He says the best stories produce a vivid image, which I found to be correct.

Heisig literally writes in his introduction to RTK1: "The aim is to shock the mind's eye, to disgust it, to enchant it, to tease it, or to entertain it in any way possible so as to brand it with an image intimately associated with the key word."

I sum this up with "weird", but perhaps "shocking" would be more accurate.

Andikaze Wrote:I actually drew a picture of a St. Bernard returning home, saying "re" for the re-Kanji, and one with the dog's master saying "wb", with tears in his eyes. These two also stick, probably because I walked that extra mile. While this might be weird enough (but not that weird), it's what Heisig asks you to do (albeit not to actually draw those pictures).

Like I wrote before, I _have_ followed Heisig's steps for constructing and then visualizing these images or stories. It just doesn't work for me, at least not beyond the short term.

Andikaze Wrote:Logical, conclusion-like stories would probably be the best anyways,

True. And those are possible in far more cases than one might suppose. I estimate about 70%. But Heisig virtually ignores that possibility, disdains studying etymological backgrounds as impractical and simply recommends that everyone follows his approach of "shocking" stories or images.

Andikaze Wrote:as no special imagination is required in those cases.

Let me just stop you there: it can take an *awful* lot of effort and imagination to find a logical story behind a Kanji, or even an illustrative one. Much more than simply visualizing a sequence of events that just randomly throws the primitives together, the way Heisig generally does (in my opinion). But once I found a good logical or illustrative story, that meant I more or less owned the Kanji from then on.

Andikaze Wrote:But when those aren't possible due to a horror mix of radical keywords, it can't be helped.

True, like I had to do for about 30% of the RTK1 Kanji. Unfortunately, no matter how much I run these through SRS, they never stay in my memory for very long.

Andikaze Wrote:Stuff like "grope" and the "Japanese school girl primitive" worked pretty well tho, the same as the "French maid".

Since none of those are in RTK1's index (not as primitives, at least), they support my advice to use your own primitives whenever Heisig's don't seem all that useful.

Andikaze Wrote:Living in Japan does a lot for your speaking ability, and sure, you get reps for Kanji you already know. But during the Heisig phase, you usually don't remember Kanji -> keyword well

Really? Heisig claims that it does and it generally works for me as well. Then again, being able to reconstruct the meaning through logical stories makes deciphering Kanji easier.

Andikaze Wrote:As a result of being familiar with the Kanji. I can disassemble it, come up with a story for it if need be, I don't confuse it with similar looking Kanji and I usually see it often enough. Also, when seeing a Kanji in context, knowing the English heisig keyword, you can guess the Japanese word in many cases.

I see. That makes sense.

First impressions. Give me some advice please! - andikaze - 2014-03-17

It's no problem for me to come up with whatever kind of story. Sometimes I have to think a little, but I'm using a pre-made deck that includes 2 stories from here, and when I don't find them inspiring, I rewrite them or think of something new. I can see however how it would be tough to come up with something that sounds logical in a completely "not weird" way.

What I meant with "not much imagination required" is to then memorize that story.

I noticed I had problems with "finger lickin delicious" and "floating rubber ducky", but I failed them often enough to somehow brute force them into my head with sheer rote. Are those weird? I'm not sure. They're not even stories, they're slogans.

Long stories also don't work with me. It has to be short, but it also has to produce some kind of image.