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+--- Thread: forgetting stories (/thread-7884.html)
forgetting stories - jordan3311 - 2011-05-27
Is it weird that I forget the stories but I remember how to write the kanji? Sometimes I have no idea of what the story is. This happens to the kanji that I have been studying for a while. For example, the kanji for "nine" I forgot my story, but i can write it just fine.
forgetting stories - astendra - 2011-05-27
Not really; that's pretty much the point of the system. As you grow more familiar with kanji, the necessary steps for recall will decrease. Eventually, the keywords will fade as well, and it will just come across as "Japanese".
forgetting stories - ta12121 - 2011-05-27
happened to me as well. Over time it will just be the kanji/keyword. The stories fade but some will last
forgetting stories - momokun - 2011-05-28
I agree with the other posters, that this is what if the final goal (you shouldn't be writing complete Japanese sentences later in life and have to remember your Heisig stories). But you should be careful of this happening too early on.
For simple kanji like 九 it's completely fine, but if you're still relatively early in your Heisig kanji studying (say, less than 3/4 in my opinion) you should be weary of forgetting your stories for the more complicated ones. Kanji that you knew before Heisig are also a bit of an exception to this, if you're pretty confident in your knowledge, but other kanji… at least for me, it tripped me up when I started forgetting my stories too early, and so I had to fail kanji that I really shouldn't have forgotten in the first place.
forgetting stories - jankensan - 2011-05-28
Sometimes if i try to think of the story i forget how to write it, especially with characters I use regularly. 'hold', 'time' and 'write' are 3 examples of this. If I try to remember the story they just escape me. So my approach is to always try to write it automatically first, and think of the story if I need to. So far, this has worked great for me, just reached 680 though so it may not work later on...
forgetting stories - Nagareboshi - 2011-05-28
jankensan Wrote:Sometimes if i try to think of the story i forget how to write it, especially with characters I use regularly. 'hold', 'time' and 'write' are 3 examples of this. If I try to remember the story they just escape me. So my approach is to always try to write it automatically first, and think of the story if I need to. So far, this has worked great for me, just reached 680 though so it may not work later on...Never solve a non-problem. The story is there for you, in case you forget how to write a kanji. But it is only a crutch and nothing more. If you don't need it to go straight from keyword to kanji, take it for granted, and don't try to fix something that isn't broken.
forgetting stories - nest0r - 2011-05-28
This is only mildly relevant but it occurred to me as I read the thread. I often struggle with describing my process for RTK, especially as time passes since I completed it (early 2008) and moved on to word/sentence focus.
But this recently popped into my head as a good way to phrase it:
The most visual aspect of RTK, I think, should be the kanji visualization, not the stories. For me, the stories weren't really very visual at all, they were primarily conceptual/structural.
In effect, the stories were descriptive captions for photographs (kanji). Conceptual frameworks to scaffold the visualizing and reconstructing of radicals and their placement in the mind into an iconic whole. Augmenting this is writing, so that as you ‘recite’ the descriptive caption you're aiding the kanji visualization and building extra sensorimotor links to aid recognition by writing the kanji as you recall it, which since it's an icon/morphograph rather than a photograph, is doable in this analogy.