Mighty_Matt Wrote:I'll admit that I didn't really 'get' Hesig until I was several hundred kanji in. It's at this point that you really see if you're using the method correctly. If you are, you just keep going. If not, you'll start to get confused easily. This leads to frustration and causes people to give up, branding the book as 'useless' etc. The thing is that Heisig even says in one of the chapters to go back and really make sure you've made stories correctly, and not just used your visual memory etc.

I'm sure if the people that had reached that point, but then given up, looked at the kanji that they did remember, they'd find strange stories in their heads that they just can't forget...

I agree with Mighty Matt. I made it through 700 kanji my first time through RTK1 and I finally realized that I wasn't properly visualizing my stories and they weren't sticking.

When I restarted, I focused more on good stories and I was able to make it through RTK 1 in 3 months.

I think that some people don't give RTK a good chance. There are also probably other people for whom RTK1 doesn't work, and that's fine too.

To be fair, some constructive criticism of the method is possible, 'cause obviously it's not perfect. When that is done, some mature discussion can arise. I'm referring, for example, to this thread started by Magnadoodle.

EDIT: typos

I agree that constructive criticism is possible, but I believe that destructive criticism (and outright telling new students not to use a particular method) isn't fair to a new student who is trying to learn something as complicated as the kanji. Let's face it. Those who have finished RTK 1 can agree that the process is not very difficult so much as the stamina required to make it all the way; however, it is a very effective method to learn the kanji with minimal pain.

Nukemarine Wrote:There are legitimate complaints against Heisig. Here are some that I think have validity

1. Heisig insists on you learning the entire Jouyou list. Unfortunately, you cannot use RTK if you want to do it by grade. Now, you can apply the Heisig method by grade and it will still work.

Why would you insist on doing it by grade? What possible benefit or purpose could that have? Incidentally, the Japanese government insists on you learning the entire Jouyou list as well. If you plan to pass their exams and get a job in their country, not to mention ever be able to read anything, you'll not only have to learn all Jouyou characters but several hundred more as well.

Nukemarine Wrote:For example, you'll present the first 40 grade 1 kanji in the Heisig order and also introduce the primitives and primitive kanji that make up that list. I can see the person that produces a book in that manner having a best seller on his hands.

The order in which Heisig introduces kanji is an extremely important part of why his method works. To miss this point is to fail to understand the method as a whole.

Nukemarine Wrote:2, Keyword choices: It's legitimate to say not all keywords chosen are the best. I cannot fathom why he used Private for Watashi.

While I would agree that some of the keywords seem incorrect, I think the keyword is appropriate for the particular example you chose. The important point here is that he did NOT choose "private" for "watashi". He chose private for the character which represents not only the word "watashi" (私) but also is used in the compounds for "private matter" (私設), "private property" (私物), "private residence" (私邸) etc. Spending a few seconds looking up the character in any Japanese-English dictionary would have answered your question in this case.

Japanese characters represent *meanings*, not *words*.

Nukemarine Wrote:3. Defining kanji and the keyword: A failing here is that you may not know what that keyword really meant. Heisig did not offer any definition of the word or of the kanji in many cases to ensure your story elicits the correct idea.

Yes, I can think of several examples of keywords which are ambiguous, such as "spring" (which ALWAYS makes me think of the season, but in Heisig's system means "spring of water", and somehow I am supposed to also remember that there is another one with the keyword "springtime" -- I got that one "wrong" a half dozen times despite knowing and remembering both characters). However, off the top of my head, I can't think of any keywords presented in the book for which I could not determine the correct meaning, because simply looking up the character in a J-E dictionary cleared it up.

Other than your first point (which I believe cannot be reconciled without destroying his method -- and you haven't really given a valid reason for doing so), these are not really issues with the Heisig *method*, but rather are just areas in which it could perhaps be refined.

Thanks Stormchild, that's basically what I was going to say.
Is it RtK1 or 2 where Heisig says just because that's how the Japanese learn kanji doesn't mean that is how someone not born and raised in Japan should learn them.

And it's true.

You're not Japanese, you'll never be Japanese and your childhood ain't coming back, so why go about a method that took roughly anywhere from 18 years for a child and apply it to an adult?

Oh, and about the keywords, once you start going into reading, they matter less and less. Sure, I still occasionally confuse some kanji keywords in my kanji review, but I don't confuse them when reading Japanese.

Guess what's more important.

revenantkioku Wrote:Oh, and about the keywords, once you start going into reading, they matter less and less. Sure, I still occasionally confuse some kanji keywords in my kanji review, but I don't confuse them when reading Japanese.

Guess what's more important.

You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that.

dingomick Wrote:You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that.

If I had to wager a guess, I'd place it in the ballpark around the same size of folk who hate on Heisig.

I convinced a 1kyuu totting man to use Heisig's methods to improve his kanji writing. He's loving it!

How's that for a recommendation?

Stormchild Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:There are legitimate complaints against Heisig. Here are some that I think have validity

1. Heisig insists on you learning the entire Jouyou list. Unfortunately, you cannot use RTK if you want to do it by grade. Now, you can apply the Heisig method by grade and it will still work.

Why would you insist on doing it by grade? What possible benefit or purpose could that have? Incidentally, the Japanese government insists on you learning the entire Jouyou list as well. If you plan to pass their exams and get a job in their country, not to mention ever be able to read anything, you'll not only have to learn all Jouyou characters but several hundred more as well.

I did not insist on anything. I said that was a legitimate complaint. Should I choose to learn less Kanji (say, those for passing JLPT 2), I could not do so with Heisig's RTK as designed. Whatever reasons one would have is their own. Heisig uses his reasoning (you should know this Jouyou list, fairly valid imho) and designs RTK from there.

Note the second part of my statement is that the method works whether you do the Jouyou list, combine RTK1 and RTK3 into a 3,000 kanji list or just go off grade order. The METHOD is in part that you introduce primitives of a kanji prior to the kanji itself. That's why this method works with the Hanzi which you would want to know for Chinese.

Stormchild Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:For example, you'll present the first 40 grade 1 kanji in the Heisig order and also introduce the primitives and primitive kanji that make up that list. I can see the person that produces a book in that manner having a best seller on his hands.

The order in which Heisig introduces kanji is an extremely important part of why his method works. To miss this point is to fail to understand the method as a whole.

Aye, the order is important. I was talking quantity, which even Heisig addresses by introducing more Kanji with RTK3. The idea being is you're not fully literate even with the Jouyou list. Depending on what you're reading, there's kanji that will relevant to that area that's not on the Jouyou list. Even the jouyou list itself gets updated now and again.

Stormchild Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:3. Defining kanji and the keyword: A failing here is that you may not know what that keyword really meant. Heisig did not offer any definition of the word or of the kanji in many cases to ensure your story elicits the correct idea.

Yes, I can think of several examples of keywords which are ambiguous, such as "spring" (which ALWAYS makes me think of the season, but in Heisig's system means "spring of water", and somehow I am supposed to also remember that there is another one with the keyword "springtime" -- I got that one "wrong" a half dozen times despite knowing and remembering both characters). However, off the top of my head, I can't think of any keywords presented in the book for which I could not determine the correct meaning, because simply looking up the character in a J-E dictionary cleared it up.

Other than your first point (which I believe cannot be reconciled without destroying his method -- and you haven't really given a valid reason for doing so), these are not really issues with the Heisig *method*, but rather are just areas in which it could perhaps be refined.

Hence you have to seperate the presentation of the method (RTK keyword list in our case) with the method itself (which you could say were the introductory paragraphs to most of the chapters).

I'm still not following how the "not in grade order" is a legitimate complaint. It's legitimate because Heisig's order "isn't how the Japanese do it?" Or, what? There's really nothing to it considering the order doesn't matter in the end 'cause you'll need at the bare minimum the Jouyou.
And uh, how much time are you dedicating to studying for JLPT2 if you've gotta cut out the rest of the kanji on a relatively fast method? My money would be on "not enough anyway" so good luck with that!

The issue is not whether Japanese learn in a different order, but rather that with Heisig we learn many uncommon kanji before the more commonly used ones. Yes, for a good reason but that's not the point. Those who can't dedicate enough time to complete the RtK1 in a "reasonable" amount of time should consider that before choosing how they are going to study.

Actually, that's entirely the point, if I'm not mistaken.

I think that the "not in grade order" issue that we're talking about is more about having to complete RTK1 first before doing anything else. Some people completed the book in under 3 months, so for them it seems certain to be a worthwhile investment. However, depending on several factors, it could take you a lot longer. If you were thinking of starting your kanji studies and someone recommended the Heisig method to you, telling you that you'd be required to pay up front an average of say 6 months before doing anything else then it's pretty plain that this is a drawback. Most traditional "grade order" approaches have the property that they can be incrementally integrated into other Japanese studies.

Another point to note is how few the people are who finish RTK1. Even dukelexon, who felt compelled to start this thread, hasn't even come half way. I remember being at around the 700 mark, and I reckon this is the honeymoon period. You've covered a fantastic amount of kanji with relatively little time and effort and you think that the other two thirds will be more of the same. My experience was that there were several extremely tough patches after this, which really test your determination. You have to take these experiences in to account when assessing the method.

My view is that the Heisig method has some absolutely wonderful properties. The main ones being the use of imagination and imagery in helping you to remember the writing of the characters and the approach of splitting your kanji studies into different parts (writing first, other stuff later). However, I do think that the method could be greatly improved. I think it could be split up into manageable chunks rather than giving you the marathon task of 2000 kanji straight up. I also think that more needs to be done in order to integrate Heisig's method with the other aspects of Japanese study.

Nukemarine Wrote:However, what we REALLY need are those that used Heisig's methods then went on to become reasonably fluent in Japanese.

Yeah, you learn the basic meaning and writing of 2000 kanji. However, are you now able to apply that to learning Japanese. If not, you've just spent alot of time learning a parlour trick that few outside of Japan will really care about.

For the detractors in the other forums, not too much you can do with them. There's some heavy hatred of RTK on TJP for example. However, I did get the above criticism from there. It's even gotten me from saying I learned 2000 kanji to saying I learned a basic meaning of 2000 Kanji and how to write them.

I did check out TJP, which was a riot. I had no idea how evil Heisig is regarded as in some circles. Asking for people who have used it successfully to reach fluency is a reasonable request. Unfortunately, when people bring up examples of people who used the method successfully like Khatzumoto, T. Gonzalez (first comment in http://www.amazon.com/review/RUE9LYGALEE2J), or Heisig himself, these examples are always rejected for reasons that seem incomprehensible to me (e.g., Khatzumoto uses too much kanji in his writing. What's up with that?).

Both wrightak and Nukemarine made logical points. I would add that the Japanese learning environment to which Heisig contributed RTK1 has changed dramatically. I studied Japanese briefly a few years after his book came out and have taken it up again recently.

Internet sites such as Rikai, handwriting recognition software and the big online kanji databases have transformed kanji learning. It used to be that one looked things up by stroke count or radical. The very few lucky students with access to Japanese classes hauled huge kanji dictionaries around. Everything took a long time, so starting your Japanese studies by investing six months to attach a key word to each of 2000+ kanji did not seem insane.

As an aside, I asked a friend who is a historian with a specialty in Japanese history to ask his students, colleagues etc if any of them had used Heisig to learn kanji. Heisig is not controversial among this group; they have their own controversies. The answer at a large gathering was no, no one had, for the reasons that wrightak outlined above. Many of them were familiar with the book. They simply never had the time and moved along using traditional methods. They are all far above the 1kyuu level. This speaks to the reason that despite many pleas, few have stepped forward to say they started with RTK 1, followed the method faithfully, and are now truly literate.

Laura, that's a great point. I can't imagine studying without denshi jishos and word processors. Many current detractors say (perhaps rightly) there is no reason to learn to write kanji nowadays. Also, as to the RTK-to-literacy leap, I would just note that since this is a kanji-learning forum, most literate people have little to gain from joining the discussion.

And more generally: remember is that it's A method and not THE method. Some people just don't need it. You can learn kanji lots of ways-- your method is legitimate if it teaches you kanji, period. The ONLY benchmark for your progress is your own satisfaction with it. Be careful not to turn into an RTK fanatic who's just as unobjective as these anti-RTKers!

Finally, the reasons Nukemarine mentioned-- without claiming they were his own reasons-- are quite legitimate. I personally set aside RevTK to hammer for 2kyuu, because 2kyuu could get me a job. RTK can't get me anything but (much) closer to a distant goal. I still think it's the best way to get there, but there are meaningful steps along the way that matter not only to me, but schools, institutions, and governments. RTK will always be a self-study thing, and therefore always on the outside, looking in.

billyclyde Wrote:Many current detractors say (perhaps rightly) there is no reason to learn to write kanji nowadays.

I strongly object to that idea. You can't really learn to read a kanji without learning to write it. Yes, it's possible to learn to usually recognize it in the right context but that's not enough to differentiate it from similar kanji when a doubt is possible.

I don't think that people with that attitude are going to get very far in their kanji study.

Codexus, I've heard this from people in Japan who live their lives entirely in Japanese, so they most certainly can get far in their study. Besides, the cost-benefit of spending time learning to write, rather than just recognize Kanji, is somewhat dubious now that you can have a computer do the work. Likely the only time you'll need to differentiate kanji with no context is on kanji tests. Saying you can't recognize a kanji without knowing how to write it is kind of like saying you can't know how to understand & pronounce an English word without also knowing how to spell it.

For what it's worth, my goal is to learn the whole language, writing included-- but I can certainly see the counterargument's validity, esp. in the context of J-learning without computers 20 and 30 years ago. What was once a big hurdle is now an afterthought for many learners.

If you're constantly immersed in a Japanese environment, maybe. But they probably didn't plan to do things this way. Anyway, if they really got that far it's a shame they are not willing to do that relatively little extra effort.

But I don't think that applies to your usual, relatively beginner, not-living-in-japan student. Planning from the start to not study how to write is just really dumb, in my opinion.

Your analogy isn't that far from the truth. It's the same attitude as those kids who say that learning spelling isn't necessary anymore since there are spell checkers to do it for you.

Stormchild Wrote:Spending a few seconds looking up the character in any Japanese-English dictionary would have answered your question in this case.

Japanese characters represent *meanings*, not *words*.

Nukemarine Wrote:3. Defining kanji and the keyword: A failing here is that you may not know what that keyword really meant. Heisig did not offer any definition of the word or of the kanji in many cases to ensure your story elicits the correct idea.

Yes, I can think of several examples of keywords which are ambiguous, such as "spring" (which ALWAYS makes me think of the season, but in Heisig's system means "spring of water", and somehow I am supposed to also remember that there is another one with the keyword "springtime" -- I got that one "wrong" a half dozen times despite knowing and remembering both characters). However, off the top of my head, I can't think of any keywords presented in the book for which I could not determine the correct meaning, because simply looking up the character in a J-E dictionary cleared it up.

I feel that you trivialize a legitimate complaint by saying that it only takes "a few seconds" to look up characters.

Even a person with internet access, an electronic dictionary, or a newer paper dictionary with one of the easier and faster lookup systems, will still take at least a good 30 secs to stop what they are doing, access the character resource they have, and then to glance through the vocab listed for the kanji. Sure 30 seconds isn't long, but I have a feeling that many people will often need to spend significantly more time. (And not everyone can be at the computer when they study or lug around reference materials.)

Heisig himself stressed the importance of getting the correct connotation of the keyword when learning a kanji (read the intro to Lesson 11, "Step 1" again) but he doesn't always note the correct connotations/meanings of the keywords in RTK. Unfortunately there are a fair number of ambiguous keywords in RTK.

As it stands now, much of the burden is on the RTK user to determine the correct connotation for each keyword. But how many people spend the time to do this? I would guess very few. In fact, they may not even realize that there are several possible connotations/meanings because they go with the first one that pops into their heads.

For example, in "Favorite stories...by yourself" (a great thread, BTW) someone came up with a wonderful story for SEPARATE which, unfortunately, was based on the wrong connotation of the keyword. In reading the shared stories in the study section I have often come across stories based on the wrong meaning/connotation of the keyword.

Now perhaps the authors knew the connotation/meaning was wrong but chose to use the stories anyway. If so, they are flying in the face of the advice given by Heisig in the intro to Lesson 11, Step 1. (Very important advice imho.) If you link the writing of the kanji to the wrong meaning how well will it serve you? As you point out "Japanese characters represent *meanings*, not *words*", so you better have a correct meaning attached to them.

How can you say that Nukemarine's third point is not a valid one? (He/she's not saying the method itself is flawed because of this, he/she's just offering one area where the ambiguous presentation of info detracts from the learner's experience with the method.) When I looked at the example pdf for "Remembering the Hanzi" the first thing that I noticed was the additional info given for keywords (parts of speech, meaning nuance, etc.) and I thought this was a terrific addition that should be included in revisions of RTK as well.

Because in the great end, the keyword is thrown away, so it's not entirely relevant. Heisig weans you to the point where you're doing things yourself instead of relying upon him the whole time. It can be painful, but it's for the best, I'd say.

I find the "not enough time to do Heisig" argument one of the most common, but also the most laughable. It's a classic case of lack of perspective. Time invested in RTK saves time in the future. It is the foundation on which everything else stands, or the framework into which everything else fits.

I have seen this in my own Japanese studies. I trudged along for almost a couple years before RTK. Yes, I was learning, but slowly and painfully. I don't remember how I first heard about RTK, but reading his intro was a revelation of how I could logically, efficiently, and easily structure my Japanese learning. And I was right: my Japanese has exploded since finishing RTK. Vocab, readings, grammar, scanning, daily necessities, etc. while impenetrable before are now infinitely easier.

Besides the methodology of his learning, Heisig's main point is that learning can be tackled systematically for a much greater sum than by trying to learn everything at the same time. Language seems to be one of the only areas where most people refuse to believe this is true, but Japanese especially is perfectly suited for it.

Dingomick, while I agree it's a wise investment, I can see not doing it if you have other more urgent Japanese-related tasks. For instance, if you've just moved to Japan, learning 300-400 common kanji fast is a much better investment of time. (But if you have a few months off before moving there, by all means try to get stories for each kanji before you go.)

The method assumes you can devote to it fully-- I tried it with full-time Japanese study in Japan and failed. I even had 700 stories done, but couldn't shift gears from class to RTK. I would suggest students wait until school's out; but others may have had different experiences.

I agree that each user has to make the decision about where they want to go and how valuable their current time and future time is. But for myself, in hindsight, I wish I would have dedicated 3 months to basic Japanese study (phrases and daily use language) and then tackled RTK. (see Essential Resources thread for more). It would have saved me ~16months of inefficient studying.

Edit to note that I think 300-400 kanji, including readings, "quickly" is a year or more realistically. I myself was in that boat. And I confused them every time I saw something similar, which is often.

I agree with everything that is being said here. I've been on both sides of the fence but am now a firm believer in Heisig. One thing I think that is also be left out, at least in my experience, is that until RevTK there wasn't really a quick easy clean to way review the book. Paper flash cards are a hassel to make (2042 of them! Are you crazy!) let alone the time requirement to shuffle, reorder, separate out the ones you missed, etc. I think that this site really complements the book by adding a solid foundation to practice. Without that I remember becoming very frustrated in wanting to practice but not having a good method to do it with.

I would have to say that if it wasn't for RevTK I wouldn't have come back and given the book a second shot. For all thsoe Heisig neh sayeres who never have tried the book coupled with the RevTK site should give it another shot I think. Anyway just my 2 cents.

Sorry Codexus, Billyclyde is correct.
Yes, umm, you can learn to read a kanji without learning to write it. The largest Japanese language school catering to adults in my area started to deemphasize the writing of kanji a few years ago at the request of students. Now students proceed to the next class level without being able to write the kanji covered during the class, but reading the kanji is required. The writing, stroke order, etc is not taught as part of the regular series of courses. Special classes for people who want more detailed kanji instruction were created. Most of the adults I know who are studying Japanese are middle-aged, busy professionals and are studying Japanese because they travel to Japan regularly or semi-regularly to visit family members or because they are Japanophiles of one stripe or another, Japan Foundation, Pacific Film Archive, Asian Art Museum etc. etc.