Wow, I was just looking over the member list and noticed lots of people from Alaska and they're all at frame 160, perhaps they are a class working through the book with the website



I of course have my location set to the moon, although I particuarly like the member who has his/her location as "hell" maybe they're a little burned out from reviewing, get it

Huh ... they all joined within a couple days of each other, too. I'll bet you anything that you're right, Meolox -- it's a class, working together.

It's kind of nice to see a few "official" educators wisening up to the Heisig method. Learning to write and recognize 2,042 kanji in three months or so is definitely more helpful than being able to "pronounce" and write 200 at the end of two years (which is where a lot of college-level courses will leave you in four semesters).

Good luck, folks.

It's also curious to see what mitolog's location means in polish
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.ph...spierdalaj

I find such a large concentration of Alaskans on frame 160 oddly disconcerting.

(^_^;)

Yeah. They must be plotting something!

^^

Besides, that's about half of the population of Alaska
They'll be able to set Japanese as a second official language this way.

maybe it has something to do with global warming

Hi all, I am one of the alaskan's mentioned above! We are a class at the University of Alaska Anchorage

We are totally plotting against you! No, not really, are instructor urged us ( with points ) to register and use these resources. I, for one, have no regrets. This site is a delicious labor of love.

We are expected to learn around 1500 kanji this semester and we are doing them at a rate of 80 per week.

Ahaha, brilliant, Holmes!

Aye, we're going through the first book this semester; the site really helps.

As I suspected a class, good luck on your studies!

Welcome to the forum by the way, what does you instructor say of the wonderful Heisig method?

do you have weekly tests in class to check your progress on the 80 kanji per week?

Welcome classfellows!

I am not in the class being mentioned here, but I grew up in Fairbanks/North Pole! Glad to see I'm not alone. And that's great that your teacher is giving you credit for using this site. I use it on my own because it's awesome, but I wouldn't mind getting some college credit for my trouble, ne?

[ファブリス]

Welcome !

I'm not seeing you on the Google Analytics "Overlay Map" yet (it's like a simplified Google Maps with visits per country/city). It says 323 visits from Alaska (for January 2008), but by the time you get to a few hundred kanji, Anchorage will surely appear on there!

EDIT: My bad, you're in there! There's also 1 visit from "Fairbanks", 6 from "Juneau" and 25 from "Elmendorf Afb". Anchorage is the big spot, and "Elmendorf Afb" is the brighter spot in the middle of Anchorage :

fushiki Wrote:We are expected to learn around 1500 kanji this semester and we are doing them at a rate of 80 per week.

Great to hear of RtK being used in the classroom, kudos to your teacher, and to your class. 80 kanji a week is pretty good.

Let us know how well you are doing after the halfway mark. I would be interested to know of your experiences as a class, does everyone keep up to speed with everyone else, etc.

All the best!

Do you work on your stories in groups during classes? Or is it something you do individually at home? If so, what sort of lessons/activities do you do during classes? Just normal lessons?

ファブリス,
Is it possible to display the whole world map with that feature? I'm curious about the highest concentrations of RTKers around the globe!

[ファブリス]

Updated the picture, Google Analytics does indeed show cities regardless of number of visits. Although "cities" really mean the closest network center or something.

nac_est : I posted some stats and screenshots here.

Yes, We have a test every week. 80 of the newly learned Kanji plus 20 from anytime in the past! It's a very linear class.

Our instructor thinks Heisig is pretty amazing, he's a forgeiner who's passed the JLPT lvl 1 using the Heisig method. So I would say he's a pretty devout follower and an evil genius regarding the whole basing a class off of RtkV1!

We work on the tough stories together as a class, but after Heisig's stories stop we are expected to write our own in a group. For the 'person' radical we have to write stories about the same person as a class: Yoda. lol.

If you have any tips for a class setting, I'm curious. Our instructor is still working out how to even make time to test 1200 kanji for the final.....I suggested a full week of finals....But i'm a bid sadistic i guess.

Good luck to you and your instructor. It's good to see someone try something different in Japanese language education for a change.

Human memory is a funky black box, so whatever makes your funky black box work, go with it. Good-bad is only described in terms of "does it help me to remember this kanji?" More memorable > less memorable.

He might want to consider breaking that final up a bit... maybe just make it a mid-term+, and just test you guys a little more frequently. (Just think of it as another Leitner review.) You guys should have the early stuff down stone cold by then, anyway, so he won't need to test the first 400-500, at the very least.

Just to add to this discussion-- I'm the instructor of the course at UAA. As someone who owes his kanji knowledge to this method, I've wanted for some time to try and create a course around it, and this semester I got the chance. We have twenty students.

The main goal of the class, as has been explained already, is to master the meaning and writing of the first 1200 kanji. While that's happening, the class is working in groups to create a book of stories, not just for those first 1200, but for the whole book, so that students will leave in May with easy resources to finish the book over the summer.

Time in-class, when we're not taking long quizzes or writing stories, is spent on other aspects of kanji "fluency"--history, the skills necessary to use a kanji dictionary, recognition and writing of cursive, and so on. It's been fun--they're a dedicated group.

I'd be interested to hear if there are other university groups doing something similar, and how they're doing it. I'll report back later on the successes of this group.

--Thank you for creating this incredible resource. A number of students have chosen to barely glance at the book, then devote their time to this website as a study tool. I'm deeply impressed.

-koun franz
University of Alaska Anchorage

Koun,

That's pretty awesome, I think your course offers much more than a normal university level intro course, especially in the long run. These students are going to have an unfair advantage in their future Japanese studies!

koun,
Your course sounds great. Is this just purely a kanji course? Are there prerequisites for it, and what is the next class? I'm just curious about the UAA big picture for Japanese studies.

Koun,

Is your class using Heisig's keywords as is or have you made any modifications? I, myself, had a lot of problems with Heisig's keywords sticking around long after their initial usefulness when I first went through RTK1 years ago. And so this time around I made modifications. However, I'm not 100% certain this is necessary provided that the student of Japanese make a concerted and systematic effort of some sort to move towards kanji-based vocabulary so that these become the "hooks" from which kanji hang in memory.

Just wondering about your experience, what you chose to do with your class regarding the keywords, if you are keeping Heisig's keywords as is for the story assignments and test but broadening students' understanding with additional meaning info during class lectures, etc.

Thanks for any more info you can share on how you are using RTK1 with your class.

Hey again, and just for clarification, I grew up in Fairbanks/North Pole, but nowadays my Dad is the only person from my family who still lives there. I'm teaching English in Japan now myself.

It was minus 20 degrees today when I woke up to head to the university to study the kanji for this week. Frigid tempratures and freezing winds wont get in my way for the 1200 I need to know by May. Thank you Koun 先生, for making this class happen.

Hey there!

The class is purely a kanji class, in that all of what we're studying revolves around the recognition, writing, and history of kanji. We're not focusing on the Japanese pronunciation, even though all of us have a measure of exposure to the language, and the majority of us (from what I've seen) are Japanese language geeks.

The course that Kouun Sensei has put together is awesome. It's a 300-level course. However, some of us got permission from the Powers That Be to register in spite of the fact that we're not quite at 300-level yet. (The idea of this class is so... well, different... that I was afraid to miss out on this incredible opportunity!)

My not-so-subtle hint: I truly hope there is a second course to take us through the rest of the first book. Heh.