adam_invers Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:People *need* it to break through the fear barrier of Kanji. That's it. Everything later gets constantly reinforced anyway as they learn thousands and thousands of words and keep seeing the same characters over and over again. That constant reinforcement still happens when you don't do Heisig with the same result - you get a stronger familiarity whilst learning all the readings. Many people would realise here that they aren't getting a huge benefit from Heisig anymore, they learn new words faster and faster based upon the knowledge they gained through learning lots and lots of words.

That is an example of using rote memorization. Having something constantly reinforced through seeing the same characters and words over and over until the mind can (might) adapt to them. Same concept for flashcards essentially.

Colour me confused then. I was under the impression that Heisig himself said that a person following his system should be using flashcards. It seems that people who use Heisig are using a flashcard system in conjunction with his book, whether it's paper cards, this website, or Anki.
You say that seeing the same characters over and over again to reinforce them is rote memorization. Heisig recommends using flashcards with RTK. So...does that not mean that RTK uses rote memorization as well?

quark Wrote:

adam_invers Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:People *need* it to break through the fear barrier of Kanji. That's it. Everything later gets constantly reinforced anyway as they learn thousands and thousands of words and keep seeing the same characters over and over again. That constant reinforcement still happens when you don't do Heisig with the same result - you get a stronger familiarity whilst learning all the readings. Many people would realise here that they aren't getting a huge benefit from Heisig anymore, they learn new words faster and faster based upon the knowledge they gained through learning lots and lots of words.

That is an example of using rote memorization. Having something constantly reinforced through seeing the same characters and words over and over until the mind can (might) adapt to them. Same concept for flashcards essentially.

Colour me confused then. I was under the impression that Heisig himself said that a person following his system should be using flashcards. It seems that people who use Heisig are using a flashcard system in conjunction with his book, whether it's paper cards, this website, or Anki.
You say that seeing the same characters over and over again to reinforce them is rote memorization. Heisig recommends using flashcards with RTK. So...does that not mean that RTK uses rote memorization as well?

Heisig talks about creating flashcards for the process of review. It's how you find out which stories are great, and which ones need tweaking, I guess. But to actually learn the kanji, he advocates using your imaginative memory to devise a story in which the images associated with particular primitives in the kanji play a part. I think there is a bit of a difference between using flashcards to review what you have learnt elsewhere, and using them for the process of learning the item itself.
But maybe I've got it wrong too?

quark Wrote:

adam_invers Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:People *need* it to break through the fear barrier of Kanji. That's it. Everything later gets constantly reinforced anyway as they learn thousands and thousands of words and keep seeing the same characters over and over again. That constant reinforcement still happens when you don't do Heisig with the same result - you get a stronger familiarity whilst learning all the readings. Many people would realise here that they aren't getting a huge benefit from Heisig anymore, they learn new words faster and faster based upon the knowledge they gained through learning lots and lots of words.

That is an example of using rote memorization. Having something constantly reinforced through seeing the same characters and words over and over until the mind can (might) adapt to them. Same concept for flashcards essentially.

Colour me confused then. I was under the impression that Heisig himself said that a person following his system should be using flashcards. It seems that people who use Heisig are using a flashcard system in conjunction with his book, whether it's paper cards, this website, or Anki.
You say that seeing the same characters over and over again to reinforce them is rote memorization. Heisig recommends using flashcards with RTK. So...does that not mean that RTK uses rote memorization as well?

Heisig does employ rote memorization as well. It is a great way to memorize, in the long term, what one has learned. That isn't necessarily what I was debating against, though, since someone could use rote memorization and repetition by itself and easily forget what they learned, while using Heisig's method allows a person to employ associative learning alongside rote learning, which could be more beneficial to someone who has tried rote learning and repetition.

That way if a person forgets a piece of what they were learning, the elements that are used to comprise a particular Japanese character, in addition to the key word and mnemonic device that Heisig's method applies to the Japanese character, allows that person to access parts of the brain that are tied to the five senses and which are tied to association, and that can make it easier to remember something.

I have nothing against rote learning as it is a great companion to other learning methods. It was just difficult to read someone bashing Heisig as not being a legit way to learn Japanese, when many people have invested time and energy into learning Kanji that way with successful results, only to be told that it was time wasted.

uisukii Wrote:For someone who has read about RTK for seven years (sorry, this might be misquoting), it seems strange that you don't know much about RTK2. Would it be unfair to assume that RTK is something you've read a lot about but maybe have less actual comprehension of?

Only putting it this way as there are things I've read about for years, but have very little practical understand of. It's easy to read the opinions of people for a long time and judge something without ever really looking into ti. People do it all the time. Very few people are honest about it, though.

Not trying to be rude. It's just that after you insinuated that ktcgx's experience with kanji being borderline comparable to retardation, I'd kind of assume by your own standards that after reading about RTK for years, and knowing exactly what it is (isn't this what you said?), that you would in fact know what it is.

It would be like someone saying they know everything about the first Star Wars trilogy but only really knowing much about the first and third movie...

This is poor even by your standards.

Okay let me take the blame for this misunderstanding. Pretty much everything I have written has been in relation to RTK1 and I suppose RTK3. Those books are the source of every Heisig debate ever and my opinion has all been about those. I tend to say "Heisig" when speaking about them when clearly you would prefer me to say "RTK1". Apologies for that, even though I've already written at least twice in this thread I'm talking about the RTK1/3 method and not about RTKana or RTK2.

So put another way, I'm read plenty of things about RTK1, and I actually started RTK1 once out of curiosity too so have read the beginning of the book and know what Heisig is trying to achieve with it. But that again only applies to RTK1 and not to the others, because even RTK1 fanatics don't tend to care about RTK2 or the Kana book.

But you know that already and were just looking for irrelevant ways to attack my position.

Guoguodi - fantastic post and basically is exactly what I've been saying. Only you write better than me and your viewpoints are more clear.

Particularly this:

Quote:Looking back, I was incredibly naive in viewing RTK as some kind of magic bullet on the path to Japanese fluency. It's understandable, considering that as a beginner, you don't necessarily have a good reference point to judge how useful something like RTK will be in the long run. I absolutely believe that learners should study the writing system, and that they should understand that characters are composed of radicals and other sub-units with specific stroke order -- but on the other hand, I believe that familiarising oneself with the characters in isolation without any context or other information than a keyword might not be that helpful in the real world, even if it's just to familiarise themselves with what random characters look like. I feel that it's a kind of theoretical book knowledge, that just isn't as useful as getting actual exposure to the language and learning words and phrases. I feel the considerable time spent on RTK could be better directed towards learning to read the more common characters out there.

Excellent point and yes it is very understandable. That is why the big Heisig debate (oh sorry, I mean RTK1 debate) is almost always between the Heisig (RTK1!) disciple who is right at the beginning of his path to learning Japanese, and others who tend to have walked that path already and have a far better frame of reference.

Isn't it funny that the two people mainly arguing in favour of the system are both self confessed beginners who don't know any Japanese? (OP and adam_invers).

But then that's always the way.

NightSky Wrote:Isn't it funny that the two people mainly arguing in favour of the system are both self confessed beginners who don't know any Japanese? (OP and adam_invers).

But then that's always the way.

Pretty sure uisukii and I are not beginners... And I'm pretty sure both of us have a pretty decent level of Japanese...

adam_invers Wrote:I have nothing against rote learning as it is a great companion to other learning methods. It was just difficult to read someone bashing Heisig as not being a legit way to learn Japanese, when many people have invested time and energy into learning Kanji that way with successful results, only to be told that it was time wasted.

Seriously, how much Japanese do you actually know and how far through RTK1 or RTK2 have you actually got? I really want to know.

RTK1 is not a legit way to learn Japanese. At all. That said, it may benefit you later due to a better familiarity with the characters so can retain vocabulary a little quicker. So its not a total waste of time.

uisukii - forgot to mention, completing RTK in 14 days is impressive but makes you a massive outlier. If everyone could complete RTK in 14 days I wouldn't really care about it, but its not unusual for people to spend up to 6 months or more on it. Look at the success thread, opinions of "well I've spent 8 months doing this and now I can tackle real Japanese" are not uncommon.

Doing RTK1 alongside regular Japanese study seems quite reasonable too, except that Heisig himself recommends against that in his book:

Quote:The reader will not have to finish more than a few lessons to realize that this book was designed for self-learning. What may not be so apparent is that using it to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse influence on the learning process. The more you try to combine the study of the written kanji through the method outlined in these pages with traditional study of the kanji, the less good this book will do you. I know of no exceptions.

NightSky Wrote:Doing RTK1 alongside regular Japanese study seems quite reasonable too, except that Heisig himself recommends against that in his book:

Quote:The reader will not have to finish more than a few lessons to realize that this book was designed for self-learning. What may not be so apparent is that using it to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse influence on the learning process. The more you try to combine the study of the written kanji through the method outlined in these pages with traditional study of the kanji, the less good this book will do you. I know of no exceptions.

There is more to the study of Japanese than the study of kanji, Heisig simply says not to combine his method of kanji study with traditional methods of kanji study. I'm sure you can easily all you can vocab, talk, and listen while completing RTK1

NightSky Wrote:uisukii - forgot to mention, completing RTK in 14 days is impressive but makes you a massive outlier.

Successfully learning Japanese makes you a massive outlier. Most learners suck, irrespective of RTK.

ktcgx Wrote:There is more to the study of Japanese than the study of kanji, Heisig simply says not to combine his method of kanji study with traditional methods of kanji study. I'm sure you can easily all you can vocab, talk, and listen while completing RTK1

You left out reading and grammar.

Okay so I've just spent a very very pathetic few hours going through that "I finished RTK thread" and tallying up how long it took people to get through it. Going backwards from page 69 I eventually got fed up by page 16 when I have a decent enough sample now (400 people!!).

I'm not sure how to do images, but copying and pasting it into here gives:

Time (months) Number % Cumulative %
<1 11 2.8 2.8
1 21 5.3 8.0
2 58 14.5 22.5
3 59 14.8 37.3
4 42 10.5 47.8
5 31 7.8 55.5
6 33 8.3 63.8
7 19 4.8 68.5
8 12 3.0 71.5
9 11 2.8 74.3
10 8 2.0 76.3
11 8 2.0 78.3
12+ 87 21.8 100

Obviously there are quite a few caveats to this:

1) Sometimes people would say 2.5 months, I tried to just split these roughly half and half between 2 and 3 months as I went along.
2) I mostly ignored people who were giving times for a second run through, as that's obviously going to be faster.
3) I wasn't super thorough and probably made mistakes here and there, but I did my best not to double count people or be bias in any way.
4) Some people didn't give times for completion and were ignored, even if they gave an indication (saying something like "ah it took so long..." etc, I couldn't guess for them what they considered a long time).
5) Anyone completing RTK without using this website probably would take much more time, whereas its reasonable assumption everyone who posted used the website here.
6) Its self selected, as some people might take ages and not want to admit how long it took.
7) Obviously doesn't include people who simply gave up part way through.
8) Some people may want to lie or stretch the truth about how fast they were, but I think most were fairly honest though.
9) Other caveats I thought of earlier but can't remember now.

So if anything I suspect this data is skewed towards faster results than usual, but for now its the best we have so probably not worth worrying about that potential skew.

Interesting things:

1) Only 2.8% of people could complete within a few weeks, although a further 5% did manage within 6 weeks or so.
2) The 3 month recommendation / standard (that I think Heisig's book also mentions) was only achieved by a little over 1/3 of people (37%)
3) Nearly two thirds of people did manage to complete it within 6 months (64%)
4) People who took over a year were a suprisingly large 22%. In hindsight I should have broken down that group into smaller ones, but no way am I going back to waste this much time on this again!
5) Seems for the average person they would finish somewhere between 4-5 months.

Obviously for people who took longer it could be they were doing other things at the same time, but definitely not always. Looking at quotes from that thread like:

Quote:Oh my gosh. I'm in a daze that I've finally finished it. I've been at this for almost a year (since January) and, due to procrastinating, I never thought I'd get it done! I'm soooo happy!!! Yay!!! On to sentences!!

Almost a year on this before doing sentences, so they really held back on any other study to spend a FULL YEAR on RTK1. This person isn't the most common case but not rare either.

So my whole question from the beginning is about whether its worth the time investment. I really do think if you can power through RTK1 in a single month, it may give enough benefits later making it worthwhile to you, and certainly give the student confidence they can overcome Kanji and really become literate one day.

But the average is to take 4-5 months, and in my opinion its just not worth that much time. You can learn a lot of a language in that amount of time, but spending close to half a year doing that just to give confidence about Kanji ... well its just too much. I just don't believe it can really be worthwhile.

And that more than 1 in 5 go on to require a full year to get through RTK1 just strikes me as a complete waste of time. Sorry.

Lets also remember that the months given above to "complete" RTK1 are only the time required to get everything put into an SRS, it doesn't include review time which continues for months and months afterwards and will for a very long time affect the amount of time people can invest into more important things (grammar, vocab etc).

A couple of posts from people in this thread I found interesting:

ktcgx - You wrote in that thread it took you 2 years to get through RTK1. So first its 13 years to learn to recognise 50 characters, and then even with an amazing method (according to you), required 2 years? It sounds to me like you just don't really put the time in relative to other people...?

uisukii - You finished RTK1 in 14 days then in that thread claimed you wanted to do it again (but with Japanese keywords). Did you do it again? Why did you think it would be a good idea to do it again? What problem were you trying to resolve? It looks more like you just really enjoy writing characters, enjoy the Heisig system and are a Kanji fanatic. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it shouldn't convince you it really helps everyone else who wants to actually learn the Japanese language.

Anyway I'll try and mostly stay away from this thread from now on, there isn't much more I can say and my position should be quite clear now. I've already wasted enough time on this thread as evidenced by this post alone ...

Cheers!

IMO there are two things that would hugely benefit a future edition of RTK, both based on this forum's ideas:

1. Put "RTK Lite" officially into the book; just mark the Lite ones with a star or something. Learning 1000 kanji with Heisig should be more than enough foundation, and you can always go back and learn the rest later. He claims in the introduction that kanji are of no use unless you know the entire Joyo list, which is a ridiculous statement, but it is the basis of the organization of the kanji in his method.

2. Someone other than Heisig needs to write an introduction -- he's not a pedagogist, he just wrote up the method that worked for him, and the introduction to both books contains some pretty nonsensical stuff. Specifically he needs to be clearer about where you are going after this book and how the material of the book fits in to the larger goal of learning Japanese. He just seems to take it for granted that writing 2000 kanji by hand is something that every learner is going to need/want to do eventually and he seems to assume that once you get that down you know where to go from there. The goals of the book are sometimes contradictory -- in some places he seems to say that the keywords are unimportant, but then elsewhere he suggests that RTK 1 teaches you what the kanji "mean". Heisig probably understands himself how the English keywords work, but vague references to kanji "meanings" fuel the assumption many beginners have that learning English keywords of kanji is a vitally important key to learning to read Japanese.

NightSky Wrote:Do I? What methods? I'm only really discussing Heisig, I don't think I've gone into much detail at all, if any, into other methods.

You seem to really be very agitated about bashing Heisig's method, because you saw in my post what YOU saw in my post, not what I wrote. Because I posted mostly about Kanji learning order, NOT about Heisig's method.

Heisig's method does not at all equal to "learn kanji in this order". Heisig method includes:
- unique learning order, of course, but also numerous other differences from typical learning methods
- using "primitives" in addition to "radicals" to "partition" the kanji
- using a story to remember the kanji (instead of, for example, trying to use a picture that resembles the kanji, like in Genki's kanji book)
- learning one meaning and no pronounciation first, then adding pronounciation and more meanings later
- never "writing it X times"
- using flashcards as the way to expose yourself to kanji and keep remembering them
- and more.

Of course I mentioned "Heisig method ..." because, well, this is THE method that showed me a different order to learn kanji, and I mentioned it as the method that helped me get into learning kanji, because this is the first method I met that offered me a different kanji learning order!

But overall, if you take the question part of my post (the one that was there to inspire discussion), I was talking about kanji learning order, and why do they learn kanji in (in my opinion) illogical order, first learning composite kanji and only then learning primitives they consist of. I didn't talk about "why don't they use stories and instead try to find pictorial resemblence and write it down X times", I didn't talk about "why don't they use flashcards", I didn't talk about "why do they teach readings immediately" - I focused on the learning order. Hey, even the topic name is "I wonder, how are they actually learning Kanji in a different order?", not "I wonder, how are they actually learning Kanji with a different method than Heisig's?".

Really, your personal grudge with Heisig method derailed this thread into arguments about stuff that sometimes isn't at all related to my OP.

I made effort to read every post of yours and I must say, I agree with a lot of what you say.

Focusing ONLY on RTK in hopes to achieve some skill in japanese language, or thinking that RTK is a book about learning japanese is both incorrect, but some people may be misleaded into thinking so. But doesn't Heisig state that himself? I mean, the title again - it's not "Learning Japanese language", its "Remembering the Kanji". This book does that it says in the title it does - it helps you remember the kanji! Not speak japanese, not read japanese - remember the kanji! If some people try to think they are the same - well... I mean, what do you call a person who says that "Knowing how to write and read Cyrillic Letters" = "Knowing Russian"? Idiot? Moron? Silly person? Can't think of anything which would not be an insult.

Aside from theese points I agree with you upon, but consider kinda common sense, or just obvious, you make a point to repeatedly state that you do not consider time spent on doing RTK a time well spent. Here, I have no way of agreeing with you because you (but rather, we) don't have statistics! What you made an effort to produce, unfortunately, does not help your point. What we need is a statistic that we will hardly ever get - because, how do you gauge a teaching method's effectiveness? Any educated person knows that effectiveness of a process of learning depends on many ways - motivation, health, prior knowledge, way of life, self-control and discipline, relative skills - too many different parameters we just cannot control - meaning, we cannot select a group of, say, 100 people who are similar all thses parameters. And thus, our only hope is to take a huge amount of people and hope that every kind of person is represented equally - but then, where do you get so many people willing to undergo your research?

I mean, if you'd just go in and say "Heisig method didn't work for me, looking back at my japanese learning experience I consider it a waste of time" then fine! But you insist, you keep arguing, which means you are very sure of your opinion. But you have nothing to base it on! And it's not your fault - we just have no way of knowing, wether or not spending time on RTK really helps in learning japanese (as a whole) or not.

And finally, another thing I cannot agree with you on is that you keep insisting that any (...how should I say, "non-intended"?) benefit from Heisig's method is not to be credited to his method, but any even arguable flaw should, and thus his method is crap. What I'm trying to say is, for example, that you say people use Heisig to "stop fearing the kanji" and you say it in a way meant to say that the fact that Heisig method helps people to "stop fearing the kanji" is not enough to varrant the use of the method. But why? For example, after reading all the posts in this thread that criticize the method (majority of them yours), I started seeing the arguable flaws of the method - but at the same time, THIS is the method that, as you say, made me "stop fearing the kanji". So even if it has flaws - it is still useful! If someone would tell me "I just can't get on with learning kanji, they feel so stupid and complex and I can't remember even a small bunch of them" I'd recommend this method because this method helped me get through that problem. So, why not focus on the USEFULLNESS of the method, rather than on it's flaws? I mean, it's like, saying that a taxi driver that took you to your work in a pinch through traffic jams in miraculous time is a bad taxi driver because he wasn't shaved properly, or had an ugly unpleasant face... shouldn't you rather compliment his driving skills?

I mean, take me for example. If I wouldn't find this method, I would probably give up again, just because I would try to go with Genki's kanji order again and get disheartened again when I would not be able to remember past several dozen of them, and I'll just get increasing feeling of "I can't do this I'm too old/stupid/unmotivated" and give up. But because of that I found this method, I am now encouraged - I'm learning new kanji every day, I am already at ~150 I can remember without fault and another ~100 I can sometimes forget, and going forward strong. This method motivated me, it showed me that "I can!". Its like, you know, a season to get into watching a show (like, TNG for Star Trek or dont-remember-whch-one for Dr. Who). Sure, maybe some other method could do that for me, or maybe if I'd independantly find out about using-stories-to-memorise-stuff, flash cards, different learning orders for kanji, and all the other useful-to-me components of Heisig's method, then I wouldn't need Heisig's method, but does this mean he should not be given credit? I mean, it's like "Leonardo only used parchment, frame, paint and drawing techniques very common to his age, why do we credit him for creating the Monna Lisa?"

Finally, THIS IS NOT THE POINT OF THE THREAD! I was really stating the question (in a form of myself wondering how on earth can it be done in the way it is done) about kanji learning order. I wasn't saying "Heisig's method is the best how come people learn kanji other way", I was saying "official japanese kanji learning order makes no sense, how come people are learning kanji that way and not in a natural order like one that Heisig uses".

Quote:and why do they learn kanji in (in my opinion) illogical order

The answer to that is pretty simple -- learning them in the "illogical" order lets you actually use the kanji much more quickly.

Istrebitel Wrote:and why do they learn kanji in (in my opinion) illogical order

Your logic seems to be my logic's greatest enemy.
The first kanji I've ever learned was 終 おわり, because I liked the いとへん in it and 冬子 in 男はつらいよ was Warmth personified.
The next four were 春夏秋冬 しゅんかしゅうとう - because the name of a movie character played by 三船敏郎 みふねとしろう appealed to my common sense.

NightSky Wrote:ktcgx - You wrote in that thread it took you 2 years to get through RTK1. So first its 13 years to learn to recognise 50 characters, and then even with an amazing method (according to you), required 2 years? It sounds to me like you just don't really put the time in relative to other people...?

I took two years if I include the time from when I got the book and flashcard set, if we include the time from when I found this site, it was more like 4-5 months (I started from scratch again).

I have a very busy teaching schedule teaching elementary students only here in Japan, and that doesn't leave me a lot of energy left at the end of the day for studying, so that has affected my studies. There was also a period of about 3-4 months when I was very affected by the disaster, and subsequently did almost no study for about 6 months. Throughout this time, however, I have been speaking and listening to Japanese all day almost every day. So I've been picking up a bit of vocab and grammar here and there without sitting down with a textbook or computer to study.

NightSky Wrote:Isn't it funny that the two people mainly arguing in favour of the system are both self confessed beginners who don't know any Japanese? (OP and adam_invers).

But then that's always the way.

Darn. You mean knowing Hiragana, Katakana, having intermediate listening skills, and a hodgepodge mixture of vocabulary, sentences, and phrases isn't knowing any Japanese? I guess I must be learning Russian or Greek then. I'll just have to go study up on my German and Australian then in order to get some knowledge in Japanese.

That's an ad hominem and a red herring anyway. I may have basic skills in Japanese, but I've used Heisig's system with successful results, I've researched the system prior to deciding to go that route before studying Japanese like I am now, and I've studied language in a school setting and I tried to study Japanese using another method that didn't work that well for me... which is why I searched for alternatives and found one.

If the system has satisfactory results thus far, not just for me but more advanced learners of Japanese as well, then I don't see what the issue is with me personally finding favor with it, since discovering a method usually involves reading about it, reading about other people's experiences with it, and then trying it yourself and comparing it to another system.

NightSky Wrote:Seriously, how much Japanese do you actually know and how far through RTK1 or RTK2 have you actually got? I really want to know.

RTK1 is not a legit way to learn Japanese. At all. That said, it may benefit you later due to a better familiarity with the characters so can retain vocabulary a little quicker. So its not a total waste of time.

I was speaking on the overall method, not just one section of it. I mentioned how I thought it was silly to bash an entire system based solely upon one aspect of it, as the system teaches how to read and write, even though Remembering the Kanji book 1 just teaches how to write.

And deciding on what is a legit way to learn Japanese is subjective to the learner. I would assume that the benefits are immediate as well if I make a comparison. When I read English words, there's a part of my mind that already knows how to write them. So as I'm reading these words in English I can trace them out in my mind in print and in cursive since I was taught how to read and write at the same time. The recognition of reading and writing is a single thing in that regard, because the two have been paired throughout my English learning.

I'm applying this same logic and these same principles to learning Japanese. I'm not sure how that's not legit, as I can already read and write Kana fairly well. And yes, while I know kana isn't kanji, it's still one of the Japanese writings systems, as is kanji (with kanji being more advanced). And I intend to learn them both through the same method since I've already learned one with good results.

And using your recommendation of reading a lot and learning a lot of vocabulary in order to reinforce what has been learned, as I'm doing that I'm going to forecast that I'll be able to read kanji, as I do kana already, as a written form and not just as a single character that I can read but don't know how to write.