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What's the best time to start Heisig? - darg_sama - 2006-07-03
I brought this up in another thread, but thought it was worth it's own discussion and didn't want to make the discussion wander any further.
So when did you start Heisig and when do you think you should have started it? Would you change your timing?
I started it pretty late as I didn't hear about it until a year or 2 ago... I've been studying Japanese for something like 7 years now, including 4 years in uni, 1 of which was in Japan. I had already passed 2-kyuu of the JLPT and wanted a faster way to remember the other half of the normal-use kanji. I don't really feel bad about going back and "relearning" stuff though, as it's still very useful to actually know how to write everything from memory and it does help you distinguish between similar looking characters.
Looking back on things, I think the best time to start would have been after my 2nd year in school - I knew about 400-500 kanji or so at that point and had a decent base of grammar, so I knew enough to make use of knowing all those characters and knew a little bit about how the radicals with kanji worked already.
To me, if you do it too much earlier than that, you're just making more work for yourself... you won't be able to get practical use of kanji until you work on your grammar a bunch. If you start Heisig before you even start everything else then you'll most likely overwhelm yourself and give up halfway just because of what a mammoth undertaking it would be at that point - I'd think starting with one of the hardest parts of the language would be very frustrating. If you do finish, you'll still have to wait until you get enough grammar to work your way through a sentence, and all that great knowledge will basically have to be put on the shelf until you sort out all the other stuff going on with Japanese.
So when did you start and how did it (or is it) work(ing) out for you?
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Immacolata - 2006-07-03
I think this is a good case of one fitting ones conclusions to the situation one is in. I began the same time as my formal japanese course. I say that is working well too, because the sheer morale boost of getting this heisig thing DONE convinces you that there is some sanity in this language that the devil invented to halt the spread of christianity [tongue in cheek]. Now Im busy digging into Kanjitowning my way through onyomi, and I am more encouraged than ever because I both have kanji shapes and keywords NAILED, in addition to my beginner's course grammar. So I can read japanese now. Slowly, and just canned texts from easy sources, but I can read and understand. Major milestone for me.
To me, literacy is the holy grail with my japanese study, therefore I see it as a good thing to get kanjis "down" early rather than late. My situation sort of makes it smart to do Heisig early. Different approaches leads to different conclusions.
PErhaps we can reach a compromise: Do heisig WITH a japanese course if you can, rather than start it early and have a lot of kanji you can't use for anything at all for a long time.
As for your argument about more work: I am not so sure about it is bad. If you mix Heisig with reading practice, you are bound to go up in kanji proficiency on two levels. Thats what I did. When I read, kanjis became less of a source of agony compared to my co-students. A guy named Jakob literally despaired because of what he called the lego brick, 日 because it had all those readings. To me it was much less of a hassle, since I was so intimately familiar with this kanji from its numerous exposures with Heisig.
And on the humurous side. You study japanese and you worry about creating more work for yourself? LOL :-D
So, what other opinions do we have? I know we have a couple of advanced students here as well, when did you start heisig?
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Pauline - 2006-07-03
I'm have only taken classes for one term, but I actually started with RTK before that. I didn't get very far, but it kept me interested until I could take the course this January. I can't work very well with RTK1 in parallell to the course as I also have my university studies. That leaves only the holidays, but I intend to finish Heisig this year.
For a long time, I thought about learning Japanese, but never considered how or when so I kind of forgot about. Then last year I heard that some in the same year as me at the university was going to take an evening course in Japanese and my interest returned. Unfortunately, I had missed the application deadline for that year.
So, what to do until next time. There's kana to learn, but that wouldn't take me an entire year. I also didn't know which textbook they use (Genki) and learning only vocabulary is pointless without context (I didn't consider grammar because I've had trouble with other languages and that's why I wanted to take classes). So, that left the kanji. I had heard people found it difficult and somewhere I had read about Heisig's method. Exactly what I was looking for.
I noticed when the course started that I had easier to learn vocabulary (mostly single kanji words) that has kanji I know the meaning of.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - synewave - 2006-07-03
Heisig is the bomb! I wish I'd known about it before I even came to Japan. It's a fair point that without a certain exposure to the language, we're unlikely to be able to use the kanji we are learning. However, imagine being able to come to Japan and actually understand street signs, billboards, menus, flyers, etc. Even better, be able to read them!
I have finally found out about this method after 3 years of living in Japan. Previously I had heard about it but it sounded too much like a 'learn Japanese in 30 days' kind of thing so I didn't investigate the method properly.
Now that I'm studying with Heisig (RTK1, 508 and counting) I think there are definite benefits to knowing some Japanese before starting with the approach. For example, having those 'aaahaaa' sort of moments learning a kanji that I've seen loads but never quite 'got' before. Having studied kanji the traditional way, I feel at ease writing them, e.g. stroke order, proportion. Also in daily life, just being exposed to kanji constantly and already recognising more only 1/4 of the way through the first book is really motivating. Some kanji, I just know, things like numbers, 人 to name a few. So even though I still go through the process of making stories, perhaps it is a bit quicker for people with more exposure to the language.
Finally, I think that motivation (for me anyway) is the key to Heisig. This site really helps on that frontier. Thanks all!
Despite the advantages that I believe there are from starting Heisig after you have some experience with Japanese, I don't think it's ever too early to start Heisig. The sooner the better I say!!!!
What's the best time to start Heisig? - CharleyGarrett - 2006-07-03
I think, the sooner you get started with kanji the better. But I do think you should do the kana first. I've been studying Japanese off and on for about 30 years? More off than on, I guess. I've tried lots of different approaches to kanji literacy, and have never made it out of grammar school levels. With Heisig's method you don't actually need any Japanese to learn the characters, how to write them, and what they mean. That seems very cool to me. I wish I'd had the method all the way back when I first started. I know more kanji now after a month and a half of RTK1 than I had mastered in all this time. There are still some kanji that I know from before that I haven't gotten to in the RTK path. This order of studying the characters is tremendously more effective for adults learning Japanese as a 2nd language, than the other courses, I've tried. Manga, and other magazines were just too tough, too haphazard (at least the way I did it).
What's the best time to start Heisig? - krusher - 2006-07-03
Immacolata Wrote:PErhaps we can reach a compromise: Do heisig WITH a japanese course if you can, rather than start it early and have a lot of kanji you can't use for anything at all for a long time.I was going to start a topic about this, I'm a 2nd year Japanese student at University now and we have to learn about 20 Kanji a week, all readings, writing and maybe 40 compounds, I try and seperate my Heisig / non-Heisig study but I keep worring that I'm somehow invalidating the Heisig method by doing this - has anyone else mixed Heisig with rote learning? (it says in not to do this in the introduction, but the wording is weird, seems like he's refering to looking up RTK frames in random order as you meet them in other texts) I don't really have a choice though, apart from putting Heisig on hold until summer holidays, which I don't want to do.
I think if you had finished Heisig before learning anything else you would be miles ahead, as was pretty much stated as the goal in the introduction.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - darg_sama - 2006-07-03
Immacolata Wrote:And on the humurous side. You study japanese and you worry about creating more work for yourself? LOL :-DWork smart, not hard.
I started studying Japanese for the challenge, but there's no sense in working harder than you have to. Anyone who's ever studied Japanese knows that most of the people who start studying don't make it through the 1st year of classes because it's so difficult - why make more work for yourself?
I still think that knowing some Japanese makes Heisig easier, just like knowing Heisig makes Japanese easier! In my eyes, the key is to try and strike a balance there.
Quote:PErhaps we can reach a compromise: Do heisig WITH a japanese course if you can, rather than start it early and have a lot of kanji you can't use for anything at all for a long time.Yeah, that sounds about right. And I wouldn't think that doing RTK while doing other kanji study would hurt anything krusher: I even did something like this, except I'm studying for 1kyuu. I kept studying the readings/grammar along side with Heisig.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Matthew - 2006-07-03
I think any time is pretty much fine; however, the caveat is that you have to be committed to mastering the entire jouyou kanji set. If you're just taking 1-2 years at college to fulfill a language requirement and you're not planning to go any further, then it's probably a waste of time.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - jamboh - 2006-07-04
I started with RTK1 almost exactly as I finished Genki 1.. not planned but just happened that way. Someone mentioned that around this level is a good time to start.. I think I'd concur with that for the most part, however as I didn't start learning any Japanese until I came to Japan, I'm now thinking how sweet it would have been to get all the kanji out the way before I came. I think you would be making slightly more work for yourself this way.. cos you wouldn't understand any Japanese or how the kanji work at all in the language.. but the heisig method cuts out so much work anyway that it's a small price to pay for being able to use my time in Japan more productively than bashing away at the kanji. I've working at them pretty hard.. been studying a month and nearly at 1000.. because I've had to sacrifice so much time away from my study of genki 2 that i just wanna get them out the way! I think especially if you're have some kind of time agenda then getting a lot of the kanji done earlier rather than later is advantageous..
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Immacolata - 2006-07-04
Yes Jamboh, it cuts out work. Darg, I believe it is actually smart working this. Do it early. Perhaps not in complete isolation to japanese, but early. It is kind of frontloading your efforts. I don't think any harm is done by waiting a few years, but the earlier you get it out of the way, the better IMO.
To the person doing 2 year university study. If you are worried about their rote memorization technique, I suggest you try and accomplish RTK1 and 2 in one calendar year. It is possible if you got an hour per day for it + repetitions.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - ivoSF - 2006-07-04
before i discovered heisig, mine japanese knowledge consisted of words learned from anime and igo, and mine total knowledge covered about 250 words i could reconize upon hearing and 100 words i could pronounce when asked what an english word means in japanese plus about 100 kanji.
in short a bunch of random things with no correlation and system.
after i learned hiragana in januari 2005 and later some katakana(but forgot most again by now) i did nothing becouse i did not know how to start and did not feel like investing mine time and effort in a grossly inefective way
of course after januari 2005 i still had the intrest in japanese and i kept searching for methods that i liked and in that manner i ran into heisig.
heisig is great becouse it alows you to totaly learn one aspect wholly.
where i felt other methods where just alowing me to increase mine already excisting random mix of knowledge until after a long long way i would pass a thresshold where all would start to fit together and i would "know" japanese
to me hesig was what i was seeking, a foundation that can be used to atach other knowledge, like "on" and "kun" readings and grammar.
i wish i would found it 2 years ago when i started to have intrest in learning japanese.
i cant stress enough what i feel is the main difrerence between heisig and most other methods, most other methods seem to work on the
"teach a bit of everything and after a while it should add up to something"
while hesig method is "a clear cut deal, this is what you get, while its incomplete the thing it covers is covered perfectly."
What's the best time to start Heisig? - astridtops - 2006-07-04
krusher Wrote:I was going to start a topic about this, I'm a 2nd year Japanese student at University now and we have to learn about 20 Kanji a week, all readings, writing and maybe 40 compounds, I try and seperate my Heisig / non-Heisig study but I keep worring that I'm somehow invalidating the Heisig method by doing this - has anyone else mixed Heisig with rote learning?I have to catch up to a higher group that is on average more than 1 year ahead of me. It will require me to do about half of Japanese for Busy People II the Kana version on my own. That's about 150-200 kanji. The catching up group of 3 people spends now one evening every week together to read through the chapters of JBP, and look at the presented grammer ("did we see that before? Check.") Luckily, we were rather ahead with grammar, as our teacher didn't stick to the book.
We agreed to do the Kanji on our own. However, I find I can't combine studying Heisig and studying the kanji in JBP very well. So, I took up Heisig again due to this site in early June. At that point I had done about 950, of which the latter 200 very sketchy. Now, 3 weeks later, I'm around 1350. So, I've decided I can go fast enough to have finished Heisig I before the new course in september begins. Late august, I intend to come back to the 200 kanji of the book, and study their readings separately (and do a bit of kanji town meanwhile. It sounds like fun).
But every week, when we read through the dialogue, even without studying them from the book, I will recognize kanji, and go like "oh, that word is actually that kanji!". It really helps to know that an ordinary first year word for office is really a 'meeting-company' written in kanji.
However, I think I'm lucky as there is enough time to do Heisig first, and then the other stuff later. Requiring to do it at the same time would be very unpleasant. One reason why I'm very motivated to finish the first book around early august.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Ricardo - 2006-07-04
darg_sama Wrote:So when did you start Heisig and when do you think you should have started it? Would you change your timing?I started Heisig a couple of months ago, as soon as I found out about it. I started learning japanese about 5 years ago with the Kumon course... it was great, and I only had problems with the kanjis. For several reasons I couldn't continue my studies, and recently was looking for a way to go back, but now on my own. If I had started earlier, I could probably be ahead of when I stopped the Kumon course, but OTOH, I could find Heisig much harder... so all in all, I don't know if I would "change my timing".
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Trustnduzt - 2006-07-10
For me, I started the Kanji after my first semester of college-level Japanese, so I had the base of grammar, kana, sentence structure, etc. The main problem for me was just finding time at school to do RTK along with all of the other stuff I had to do. Now that its the summer, however, I'm moving a lot faster which is quite nice. I wish I could just devote a year just to Japanese, but unfortunately that's a bit out of the question right now.
Personally, I think the earlier the better, but you really don't start seeing the hidden benefits of RTk until you actually delve into the language and start connecting kanji you have learned with words you just learned the kana for before.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - leosmith - 2006-07-27
I agree with Darg that it's good to have some vocabulary under your belt before you finish RTK1. That way you can immediately use what you've learned. On the other hand, if you use a fancy flashcard program, then the daily review time required to maintain your knowledge after RTK1 is very little. I review about 2250 characters in the RTK1 way, and my review is only 5 minutes per day.
I also agree that it's not good to drop everything you're doing to focus only on RTK1. Spreading it out over 6 months or a year, while you study other aspects of the language, may be a better option.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - cjon256 - 2006-07-30
I think that it is an impossible question. "It depends on who you are," being the only real answer... What works for one person might not for another.
However, another way of looking at it gives a clear answer to this question is: Anytime after Fuaburisu-san set up this website.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - scottamus - 2006-08-01
The only answer is 今!
My real answer is as soon as you start wanting to learn kanji. I started by using henshall's book and never got past a couple hundred after years off and on of which I only vaguely remember. Compare that to when I downloaded the free part 1 pdf of heisig and learned 276 in just a fortnight. Then prancing around like a schoolgirl waiting to go to the bathroom while my book was being shipped from Amazon so I could learn the rest.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - ivoSF - 2006-08-03
a bit off-topic, but this seemed the best topic to fent mine irritation....
is anyone else wondering why hesig uses on some occasions expensive words? i`m not a native english speaker and i often have to look up words in english, finding out there are simpler words with the same meaning
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Matthew - 2006-08-03
ivoSF Wrote:a bit off-topic, but this seemed the best topic to fent mine irritation....Being that the intended audience is fluent/native English speakers, I don't think expecting people to know words that appear in an abridged dictionary is all that unreasonable.
is anyone else wondering why hesig uses on some occasions expensive words? i`m not a native english speaker and i often have to look up words in english, finding out there are simpler words with the same meaning
Anyway, sometimes a slightly less common word is used because it has a nuance in meaning that better fits the character. Other times, there are two or more characters with basically the same meaning, so one of them will get the most common word; the others will get less common synonyms.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - jhuijts2 - 2006-08-03
Hi, ivoSF. I'm Dutch too. I also have to occasionally look up words, but like Matthew said I don't think there are any ridiculously uncommon (key)words, only some less everyday ones. By learning the English words you don't know you'll brush up your English vocabulary while you're at it!
I've already learned some interesting things, like the fact that cattail is not the same as "kattestaart", but is actually "lisdodde".I'm curious what you do with the keywords and stories language-wise. I like to be able to say what a character means in my native tongue, so I translate all keywords. I also make Dutch stories, but I do stick to the English keywords for review and some phrases are more memorable in English, like "ivy-clad cliffs" ("met klimop begroeide klif" just doesn't have the same ring to it). So all in all I guess I'm using an interesting combination of Dutch and English.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Pangolin - 2006-08-04
I do agree with leosmith on this one. I've been studying Japanese for a number of years with no emphasis on kanji at all, over that time I've probably only picked up a few 100 (outside of the RTK system) although I do read kana fairly fluently.
Because I ultimately want to be able to read and write kanji, and realising I was getting nowhere, I decided to embark on the RTK method. However, on finding that RTK studies did not harmonise well with my Japanese language lessons I decided to treat the two studies separately, or at least until I had completed RTK1.
I don't know if this seems odd or not, but I think this is the only way I can manage it at this stage. What occurs to me, doing it this way, is that it's perfectly possible to learn kanji the RTK way without knowing any Japanese at all, and certainly at the RTK1 level I don't find that knowing Japanese (at least at the level I'm at) helps to a great extent. In that respect, I don't think it matters when you start, as long as your are motivated, in some way, to see it through.
As to the slightly off-topic discussion, I don't think Heisig had any intention to make his books "international". He is writing for an audience of his own culture, specifically, American (USA). It's not only the sometimes colourful vocabulary (which gives me not trouble personally) but the many cultural references which are only really ingrained in the minds of readers from USA, and there's a fair amount of Christian imagery, too. I have difficulty with both of these, and have to change stories and sometimes keywords because they do not register.
I'm not criticising Heisig for this in the least, I would have done it the same way (obviously from the point of view of my culture). Better to do a good job based on what you know than to try and please everyone. You are likely to end up failing, both to please and to do a good job.
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Serge - 2006-08-04
Too much importance is being assigned to individual WORDS whereas it's more important to grasp CONCEPTS, in whichever language - het maakt toch helemaal niets uit of het Nederlands is of Engels...
The much more irritating feature of Heisig is lack of context for some of the words - one has to look up examples of usage to actually understand what is behind the character. Plenty of examples as I was making my way through the book; the only one that immediately comes to mind is 'poles' which I in my limited command of the English languague took for something completely different. I only became aware of my mistake when I saw this character on a sign in Tokyo...
What's the best time to start Heisig? - Piitaa - 2006-08-04
I agree with the above. I ran into the same issue, finding out sometimes that I had a wrong connotation for a certain keyword. Some people may say that this doesn't matter, as long as you have a 'hook', but I prefer the keyword to be as close to the kanji's connotation as possible. Thus, I soon entered every new kanji/keyword into the edict dictionary to quickly glance over its connotations, so that I was sure to use the proper one when using the keyword in my stories.
Now that I am actively studying vocabulary, I find it much easier to remember words where the keywords are closely related to the meaning of the kanji than those that are seemingly unrelated. One notorious offender is 条 "twig", but it's meaning is closer to "article" or "clause", as seen in the word 条件 (conditions, terms.)
Also, although I am Dutch, I do not translate anything (keywords, stories) into Dutch while studying. Since all the study material is in English already, I just prefer to work and indeed think in English. Translating would just be distracting for me. Though at the moment, I'm working/thinking in English for actual Japanese reading, this is because I'm not at a level yet where I can "fluently" think in Japanese. So for now I'm just doing everything in English because, again, all the study materials are in English and translating to Dutch would be inconvenient. This includes the flashcards I'm making, Japanese on one side, English the other (often definitions taken from edict).
What's the best time to start Heisig? - scottamus - 2006-08-04
ivoSF Wrote:a bit off-topic, but this seemed the best topic to fent mine irritation....He's just trying to be sagacious.
is anyone else wondering why hesig uses on some occasions expensive words? i`m not a native english speaker and i often have to look up words in english, finding out there are simpler words with the same meaning
What's the best time to start Heisig? - astridtops - 2006-08-04
I'm also Dutch, and like Piitaa, I don't translate anything. As far as I know, no Dutch source for studying Japanese exists. All the books and websites I've ever found and used are in English. A native Dutch speaker who doesn't speak English would have a tough time studying Japanese I guess...
But I agree with IvoSF that some keywords are trying my patience. To give some indication where I'm coming from, I studied English at an academic level. I consider myself fluent and near-native in that language. I watch anime with English subtitles. I buy all my books, including fiction, philosophy and sciene in English. I never use a dictionary. When I go to a UK or US convention, I can fluently game in English. I even have a pretty good ear for specific UK or US slang.
95% of the keywords are not a problem at all. Yet, Heisig made me look up words like quandary, awl, funnel, promontory, etc. Do native speakers actually know all these words? Or do you people have to look a few up as well?