So, I've just finished chapter 5 of RTK1 but I find that the only kanji I remember are the ones I already knew. None of the new ones are sticking with me at all. I've even made my own modified stories and flash cards (both here on koohii and physical ones on paper) based off of Heisig+koohii users for a bunch of them to try and get them to stick better.

Does it get better the further you go along in the book?

Before using Heisig I was using Kanji Damage until I became uneasy about how many kanji were missing and how some things were too simplified (making two different radicals/primitives the same which sometimes suggested incorrect stroke order to me...). I got through about 550 of them before taking a break for a few months. Now I'm starting up with Heisig again. I find myself too annoyed though with the single keyword system or no further info. With KD there were helpful words or combos and more explanation of the possible nuances of the keyword.

Since I've been living in Japan for a few years my vocab far outpaces my kanji ability so seeing a kanji to a word I already know/use often often helps make that connection in my brain which really sticks. With Heisig there's nothing to make a connection with so it's hard to remember.

Is this how it should be? Tips/advice from people who had the same uneasiness as me but stuck it out? Does it start slow and then pick up later?

I'm almost considering going back to KD (with constant referencing of koohii stories as I was doing before) finishing that up, and then coming back to Heisig to pick up what I missed. But I'm not sure if that would just mess up my brain more.

Thanks!

Hi cubbybunny

I never did RTK but from what i understand u have to really visualize the stories for this method to be better than raw memorization. Watch this video(It has nothing to do with RTK but i think it might be worth a watch):

Since u already have good vocab, i think it might be better for you do do core. You might know alot of the vocab already, but atleast for me Core was more fun than RTK. I actually did 240 kanji in RTK before doing Core. But I found myself picking up kanji just as fast doing Core, simply because i was using rote memorization both ways.

EDIT:

Im very biased towards Core. I just finished Core2k a while back, so im still only a beginner. But Core have accelerated my progress faster than anything. After core2k you will know 975 kanji(See this: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11301).

IMO, I would use anki for rtk reviews. You have more options for modifying the settings than on the koohii flashcard system. For example )if you download an RTK deck) I would recommend changing "Steps (in minutes)" for new cards. Set it to something like "1 5 30 60". What this means is that new cards will appear in steps of 1,5,30 and 60 minutes.

Also make sure you are harsh on your grading - if you don't know it perfectly, fail it. At the end of the day do a custom study session and review all failed cards - do not pass them until you are 100% comfortable with them.

Thanks for the responses!

What is core?

Forgot to mention I am using Anki as well (very useful for my daily vocab quizzes)! Just can't make any sort of brain connection to the Heisig stuff...

cubbybunny Wrote:Thanks for the responses!

What is core?

Forgot to mention I am using Anki as well (very useful for my daily vocab quizzes)! Just can't make any sort of brain connection to the Heisig stuff...

Core is a vocabulary deck for Anki, for example Core6k contains 6000 unique words.

This is a screenshot of Nukemarines Core6k deck: http://postimg.org/image/6tk6776wn/92b308ba/

Everything above the grey line is the front of my card, and below the line is the back of the card. I've set mine up so that furigana will hover above the kanji when I mouse over it.
Whenever I get a card I write down the word, then either say it out load(or inside my head). Then I flip the card and choose either Again, Hard og Good.

So in this case I would write 預ける on some paper infront of me, then say it out loud, then check to see if i was right. Rinse and repeat. Some cards I find trickier than others, and it might take many times before I remember both the kanji, and pronunciation.

Would you mind sharing a story you've used?

TheViking Wrote:

cubbybunny Wrote:Thanks for the responses!

What is core?

Forgot to mention I am using Anki as well (very useful for my daily vocab quizzes)! Just can't make any sort of brain connection to the Heisig stuff...

Core is a vocabulary deck for Anki, for example Core6k contains 6000 unique words.

This is a screenshot of Nukemarines Core6k deck: http://postimg.org/image/6tk6776wn/92b308ba/

Everything above the grey line is the front of my card, and below the line is the back of the card. I've set mine up so that furigana will hover above the kanji when I mouse over it.
Whenever I get a card I write down the word, then either say it out load(or inside my head). Then I flip the card and choose either Again, Hard og Good.

So in this case I would write 預ける on some paper infront of me, then say it out loud, then check to see if i was right. Rinse and repeat. Some cards I find trickier than others, and it might take many times before I remember both the kanji, and pronunciation.

I used to do your method. However it took me about 10-15 seconds per card to do that. 7-10 seconds on good days. It's about 6 cards a minute, or about 360-400 cards for me an hour. So instead I just switched to recognition and saying it out loud, takes about 2-3 seconds per card. About 18 cards a minute, and 1000 an hour. However, I usually don't have 1000 a day, usually about 300. So as you can tell, that leaves a lot of time for watching dramas, learning new material, etc. I figure that I'll just learn writing like two or more years from now.

@cubbybunny

I had very much the same experience with the first 10-15 chapters of Heisig, even without the benefit of living in Japan. The combination of too many fairly outlandish key meanings and quite a few (to my mind) far-fetched stories did not work at all for me. Eventually, I discovered my own taste in Kanji stories and developed a way of producing these that suited me. And then I inputted these into this website's SRS-module and the process of further ingraining the stories and their links to the Kanji in my memory started.

So, in my experience, the key thing about Heisig is discovering what kind of story works best for you and then coming up with the way for producing these that best suits you. For example:
1. Weird stories that are memorable for the crazy way they link the primitives (or the whole Kanji if it's a simple one) to the meaning. Judging by the first part of his book, this seems to be the method Heisig favours. The problem with these is that their sheer weirdness may mean that they do not come to mind easily when trying to work back from the meaning to the Kanji. An example is the Kanji for Confucianism, for which the weird story "Mr. T. demands to know what Confucianism means!" seems to be quite popular. Although this story does incorporate the primitive "demand" and uses "Mr. T." to denote the "person" primitive, I found it did not stick in my memory very well. And even if it did, then I highly doubt that it is possible to learn the key meaning of all 2,200 basic Kanji by making up 2,200 weird stories. I mean, how much weirdness will the average brain store before the weirdness itself has become standard and is therefore no longer memorable? Some people like to shock their memories by creating stories with a strong sexual element, but even then it is doubtful that 2,200 sufficiently different stories can be built around this theme. I've included a few (fairly tame ones) when these seemed like the obvious way to go.

2. Logical stories that manage to link the meaning of the primitives to the meaning of the whole Kanji. The most obvious early example is the Kanji for old that gives the easy association with "cross on a grave". Another one is "solution" which reads as "fitting together two pieces of bamboo". Or take the symbol for "melt" which reads as "water coming out os something contained in a valley", which to me immediately invokes the concept of a melting glacier.
Heisig supplies a number of these, but falls back on the "weird" approach a little too easily, in my opinion. Since logical stories can be tough to come up with this is a more time-consuming approach than going for an obvious weird story. Still, I have found the pay-off to be absolutely worthwhile. To me, a logical story feels like making use of the existing infrastructure of concepts and symbols that was already present in my mind.

3. Popular culture references (including movies, songs, books and public figures) as well as fixed expressions that are somehow invoked by the combination of the Kanji and its meaning. An example of a pop culture reference is the song "All along the Watchtower" for "watchtower". Both the song and the Kanji refer to women, whereas the remaining primitive "rice" can be supplied by the fact that "All along the Watchtower" was a fairly central song for the "Battlestar Galactica 2004" remake and since "rice" sometimes stands for "stars", that ties it all together. For me, at least, because I am quite familiar with that series.

4. Bigger stories that encompass a number of Kanji containing the same primitives. These can make it easier to keep the differences in meaning neatly organized. Even slightly weird stories aren't much of a problem then, I have found. For example you can look up the stories centering around a turkey-farmer I came up with that bind together some of the Kanji containing the "turkey" primitive.

So, does it get better after the first 5-10 chapters? Well, that really depends on whether you can discover your own taste in stories and can get into a rhythm that alternates the phase of creativity for making the stories and doggedly applying yourself for the phase of reviewing and restudying.

Well, that makes for a pretty long post. I hope it will help you!

Thanks for all the advice everyone. For core, I'll probably have to check that out later! Still not quite sure what it is, but I guess after I finish the kanji it will be very useful to me.

Yes, Heisig surely has an interesting way of thinking. And some things just won't do for me. 九 = baseball? I don't like baseball! I didn't know it has 9 players. I want something more interesting to me than baseball! Pop culture works best for me (particularly enjoying some of the Star Trek stories I see on koohii). I also don't understand why sometimes when a simple kanji (自 for example) is an element in a bigger kanji, the name has to change entirely. That's more confusing to me than just keeping it the same. His stories are also so long!

What I'm doing for now is going back over my ~500 flashcards I made with KanjiDamage and comparing the stories/primitives/radicals both with Heisig book in hand and the stories of koohii users. Then I put my own story (keeping some the same as I had them before, making small changes to others) in koohii and downloading then all later into Anki. I've changed the keywords for a few primitive elements since sometimes I find I agree with Heisig's idea more than KD and vice versa and keeping a record of these changes in a big note.

So, I guess you could say I'm blending 4 sources: Heisig, Koohii users, KD, and my own ideas. It's much slower than I had hoped (I have 3 weeks off which I have from sunup to sundown to dedicate to kanji study and kanji study only... so I had hoped to get at least 3/4 of the way through Heisig), but the time I have to spend with each individual kanji to thoroughly read through several sets of ideas while developing my own (and the bonus info of readings and useful Jukugo) is what's helping burn it into my memory. That's probably more important than speed? I don't know... that's why I was wondering if Heisig starts off slow but then takes off.


The reason I'm concerned with speed is that so far I've been able to keep up with (and even out score) my Chinese classmates at language school, but if I don't get into high gear it won't last too long! That and... you know... it's super interesting

I'm just copy pasting stories from here into srs, I don't even bother with Heisig's or making my own. It seems to work just fine for me.

I like to work the readings into my stories if possible (KD style) so modifying/making my own is often a must .
That and I don't think I've ever seen anything with Mr T in it....

cuddybunny Wrote:I also don't understand why sometimes when a simple kanji (自 for example) is an element in a bigger kanji, the name has to change entirely. That's more confusing to me than just keeping it the same. His stories are also so long!

Just remember that Heisig's method was designed for a time when SRS programs didn't exist, and you had to rely on physical flashcard, hence the importance of spending more time on each stories to really make them stick.

But nowadays with programs such as Anki and websites such as this one, the whole process is much easier to work with, and much much much more efficient to boot - so you should just focus on producing memorable stories. Remember also that you're pretty much free of naming the primitives however you like. In the long run, they are only here to help you remember the kanji, so choose ones you'll have pleasure and ease working with. I myself modified lots of primitive's names, and I'm not the only one, far from it. Heisig himself recommends it if you find it easier.

My advice would be not to overthink it. Take it easy, take it at your own pace, do your reviews every day, cram a bit if you feel like it, but stop worrying so much. There are no ideal methods, no ideal stories, just find the way you're comfortable with and work with it, tweaking it as you go if need be. In the end, just doing it is a lot better than constantly worrying about it.

Good luck !

edit : typo & a few adjustments.

I'm currently on lesson 18. I just finished my ninth day doing this. My average a day so far is 49.33, and I did 70 today so my average a day continues to go up. My best advice right now would be to review the Kanji you learned so far everyday until they start to stick. I was also using the default settings with Anki, but I found it gave me too much time in between cards so that I was forgetting the Kanji I already learned. I found that spending time relearning Kanji was a big waste of time. And it was slowing me down. So I think reviewing the Kanji cards more often actually saves time because I don't have to spend time relearning Kanji cards. Using this strategy now I am able to see the word for the Kanji in anki and instantly have a picture in my mind of how the kanji is written.

I also think it helps to do new all the new cards first, and then all the review cards next the same day. I like learning the new cards early in the day when my mind in fresh. Later at night I can just go through the motions and do the review cards.

It also helps me a lot to close my eyes and visualize the story. It sounds silly, but it will works. Don't worry too much about the stories. Eventually you will just see a word for the Kanji (in Anki) and immediatly know how the kanji should be written without even thinking about the story.

So try reviewing the kanji you already learned everyday and see how that works for you.

Japisfun25 Wrote:I'm currently on lesson 18. I just finished my ninth day doing this. My average a day so far is 49.33, and I did 70 today so my average a day continues to go up.

I know you weren't responding to me, but.... your pace is really amazing! Nine days and already on lesson 18...

I've been at this for about 2.5 months and have just finished chapter 36, while I am redoing chapters 12-20 because the stories weren't working out too well for me. And frankly, almost the only kind of story that works for me is the strictly logical one (with the occasional weird one and some pop culture references where I can think of them).

I've tried "seeing" the stories the way Heisig recommends and saying the story out loud as I write down the Kanji once or twice, but to no avail if the logical link isn't there. So for me, the quality of the stories has been absolutely crucial. Even reviewing so-so stories time and again has only led to limited stickiness in my memory. On the other hand, a decent logical story will stick in my memory pretty well even without using the Heisig routine of picturing the story before the mind's eye and saying it out loud as I practice writing the Kanji.

Adding to this the sheer number of weird/wacky stories I've seen many people post on the SRS part of this site (and that apparently work for them...) makes me feel like some sort of Vulcan on Star Trek always going on about logic as the be-all, end-all. This is really making me wonder if I might not be autistic to some degree. Well, so much for a personal tangent. Hope I didn't bore anyone!

Japisfun25 Wrote:So I think reviewing the Kanji cards more often actually saves time because I don't have to spend time relearning Kanji cards. Using this strategy now I am able to see the word for the Kanji in anki and instantly have a picture in my mind of how the kanji is written.

I do agree with that. I did some cramming with the lessons I had trouble with (particularly the one with all the "threads / spiderman"), and it really helped. Anki has a great option for that - on [custom study session] decks, you can make it so that it doesn't reschedule cards based on your answer, effectively getitng all the benefits from cramming while keeping the repetition order and schedule intact. I would definitely recommend that if you're having trouble.

Eminem2 Wrote:Adding to this the sheer number of weird/wacky stories I've seen many people post on the SRS part of this site (and that apparently work for them...) makes me feel like some sort of Vulcan on Star Trek always going on about logic as the be-all, end-all. This is really making me wonder if I might not be autistic to some degree. Well, so much for a personal tangent. Hope I didn't bore anyone!

Whatever works for you is fine, everyone's memory is stimulated in different ways. I love absurd stories wheras logical stories tend not to stick so well with me ...

... feeling like a Vulcan sounds pretty cool ;p