So let's take a look at Heisig's claims in the foreword of his RTK1 book.
To start, most of the claims he makes in the forward, having to do with different types of memory, I feel are correct. Here are the ones that are not:

The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.
I can imagine learning the kanji in a different order than the Heisig order would be less efficient. However, I don't think it would be an order of magnitude less efficient. Would there be anything wrong with completing lessons 1 and 2 (to get a feel for the method), then learning 300 primitive elements, and then learning Kanji as they are encountered in reading material or a Japanese textbook? I have not personally tried this method, but it seems plausible. To do it this way I think it would only be a little less efficient, and would be more interesting for the student.

...using [my book] to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse infuence of the learning process.
This quote is actually part of the "note to the fourth edition." This is the worst one of all. Let's get some facts out there:
It takes 200 hours to complete the Heisig course. Heisig says you can complete it in four weeks (if you're dedicated) and he's right. Studying 7 hours per day for 28 days straight (very plausible), you can complete the Heisig RTK1 course using my 200 hours number. So 200 hours it is.

So now the main problem is, you have only 50 class hours not counting exams (in a typical three credit class) for instruction. I'm not a teacher; I don't know how many hours of homework you can or should assign per hour of class time. Heisig could be assigned as homework and quizzed in class, but surely 200 hours of homework just for Heisig is excessive. However, there's also no need to complete the whole Heisig course, or even half of it, in a single semester. The Heisig book is inexpensive. Most students could afford it... Someone please tell me...WHY does using the Heisig course in conjunction with a typical one have an adverse effect on the learning process as Heisig claims? He doesn't explain it in the foreword, he just states it.

One more thing I forgot to mention: The kanji introduced in lesson 1 are some of the most common kanji out there...all are ones introduced in a typical introductory Japanese course. From there the Heisig order takes over, learning extremely rare kanji first (i.e., in order by primitive and complexity - simplest first regardless of frequency).

As for when to begin the Heisig lessons... It should be assigned after the students have completed the "how to read Japanese" lesson, after students have learned hiragana, and are shown real Japanese text (w/ furigana) for the first time. In this lesson, students learn about the roles of hiragana, katakana, and kanji in Japanese text. It is one of the first lessons in any course. Quizzes are simple - students are given Heisig keywords (perhaps randomly selected from those they have already learned) and asked to write the kanji.

To conclude this section, I'll claim the Heisig method is useful regardless of other learning methods in use.

[Japanese teachers] would agree with me that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese...
Isn't learning the readings an equally great, if not greater obstacle?

...one needs to know ALL the general use kanji for them to be of any use to the literate adult....is is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them.
This seems a little controversial to me so I'm putting it here. However, I personally believe it is more or less correct.

I wouldn't obsess too much over the foreword... I never read it, myself. I skimmed a few parts, though, late in RTK and after I finished...

So did you want to try and use it with a classroom or something? I'm sure we could help you if you wanted to try.

Lets say you decide to learn 100 kanji a day. You could do it in 21 days. 3 weeks.

Lets say you learn 50 kanji a day. Now it takes 42 days. 6 weeks

Lets go for 25 kanji a day. That is 84 days. 12 weeks or appox 3 months.

The big question then is how long it takes you to learn each kanji to decide how many hours you will dedicated a day.

And everyday? Even Sunday?

Theorectically it is possible and apparently, it has been done in 4 weeks.

The whole book is base on one primative leading to the other and then using what you have already learned to combine them and learn bigger ones. Sometime, the logic is not always a neat little straight line, which is way you have some simple (3-4 stroke) kanji towards the end.

Is there a better way, maybe, but this way makes sense.

Classroom learning will teach the tradtional way which is not necessarily the best way for non-native Japanese people to learn. We dont have the benifit of being around the language 24/ 7.

Heisig method will not work in the classroom because the induvidual stories are unique to yourself. And, people learn at a different rate. I learn 100 Kanji in a day once. It was long and tedious and my retenion was not great. Then I kicked it down to 50 which was better. How does one come out with an average for the general population?

"Isn't learning the readings an equally great, if not greater obstacle?"

No. In fact, reading is easier.
Its like the second generation kids who dont like to speak a lot of Spanish. They say, "I could understand what they are saying better than I could speak it."

When the information is given to you, like in reading, you have something to work with. When you have to come up with the info yourself, you only have what you can remember and have nothing to trigger the memory.

In fact, a lot of people take the Heisig method to learn how to write, even though they can read just find. Its the old, "I know it when I see it but I just cant picture it right now."

"...one needs to know ALL the general use kanji for them to be of any use to the literate adult....is is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them."

Some of the more frequently used kanji are towards the end. They are there because that is the best time to learn them relative to the whole in the Heisig method.

jcdietz03 Wrote:Someone please tell me...WHY does using the Heisig course in conjunction with a typical one have an adverse effect on the learning process as Heisig claims? He doesn't explain it in the foreword, he just states it.

Well, you sort of answered your own question up top. If you're taking a Japanese class in college, and it's taking up a fixed amount of your time (along with other classes on your schedule), deciding to add another 200 hours of time outside of class *just* to devote to Heisig *might* be detrimental to your studies.

Naturally, this will vary depending on the person.

I don't necessarily agree with his contention. You can do RTK vol1 (I'll just call it RTK1) and take a regular class if you keep them compartmentalized and make sure to stay on top of your class.

As long as you understand *exactly* what RTK1 does, and more importantly does *not* do, you'll be fine.

jcdietz03 Wrote:One more thing I forgot to mention: The kanji introduced in lesson 1 are some of the most common kanji out there...all are ones introduced in a typical introductory Japanese course. From there the Heisig order takes over, learning extremely rare kanji first (i.e., in order by primitive and complexity - simplest first regardless of frequency).

The reason why the kanji in lesson 1 are easy is probably because he doesn't want to scare people away. Also, it's good to start with basics, and those are all basic components of other kanji down the road. Lesson 1 is more illustrative than substantive, though.

The reason why the kanji in lesson 2 (and further lessons) get all weird -- with common as dirt ones mixed in with obscure ones, is simple. He's grouping them by the elements that make up the individual kanji. So he chunks them in groups that share similar radicals. That's how he learned them, and it's a fast way to memorize them, because they all share one component. The downside is that weak visualizations or stories will get bolstered by this proximity, and it can lead to grief on later reviews.

The chief downside is one of those things you have to be aware of: You need to finish the book in order to get any benefit from it. There is an exception-- someone on the forums has come up with an RTK Lite version that only uses the first 1000 or so kanji. BUT, if your ultimate goal is literacy at a high school level, you might as well do RTK1 and just get it over with.

jcdietz03 Wrote:Isn't learning the readings an equally great, if not greater obstacle?

Yes and no. Once you do RTK1, it's MUCH easier to "get" kanji readings, because you've already created a concept and a slot for the kanji in your brain. For me, it was the difference between night and day. I already had some Japanese under my belt, though, so I could tell right away that this was a very nice cheat/hack/whatever you want to call it.

Naturally, it will take you much longer to get the readings, but you will spend a LOT less time struggling to "recognize" kanji. Even if you don't know a kanji's reading, when you see it, you'll think, "Oh yeah, that one." It knocks out one big chunk of the workload.

After you finish RTK1, you will NOT know any Japanese kanji readings. You won't know any Japanese at all. But you WILL be able to learn the readings much faster than you could before. (Unless you already have a firm grasp of all 218+ graphemes...)

Also, to learn kanji readings after RTK1, you're going to have a lot of options. You can go ahead with RTK volume 2... some people like it. Some don't. RTK2 focuses almost exclusively on on-yomi (Chinese-origin readings for kanji), and tends to skip over kun-yomi (Japanese-origin readings for kanji). You tend to see on-yomi readings in words with 2 or more kanji, and kun-yomi readings when kanji stand alone. (Not always.)

There are many other ways to tackle learning readings, and the biggest variable attached to them is going to be your proficiency in Japanese when you finish RTK1. If you can't read kana and don't know any grammar, you're going to have to go back to square one and learn some grammar.

Japanese is not just kanji. It's an integrated language of many parts that all work together.

jcdietz03 Wrote:...one needs to know ALL the general use kanji for them to be of any use to the literate adult....it is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them.
This seems a little controversial to me so I'm putting it here. However, I personally believe it is more or less correct.

If you can't read, you're illiterate. We've hashed this out in other threads before. If you want to be literate in Japanese to any appreciable level, you have your work cut out for you, and you're going to need any shortcut you can get your hands on. This is a great shortcut for some people.

Kanji are important to get under control, but there are many other important aspects to the language to study as well. Grammar, listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension, etc.

Most important is having fun. If it's not fun, you won't stick with it.

My advice: if you can, try to get done with RTK1 as fast as you can. The sooner you're done with it, the better. There's a TON of advice on this board, if you take the time to search through it. Whatever you do, don't lose momentum, don't stop.

jcdietz03 Wrote:The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.

With respect to RTK, yes it is, there wouldn't be the RTK book without this statement.

jcdietz03 Wrote:...using [my book] to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse infuence of the learning process.

True, focusing on RTK alone helps push you along to the end of the book without distractions. In my experience, (I finished RTK), this is how it should be done, imo good advice from Heisig.

jcdietz03 Wrote:[Japanese teachers] would agree with me that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese...
Isn't learning the readings an equally great, if not greater obstacle?

No kidding.

But how can you learn readings without knowing the kanji first ?

The "readings" are essentially words, in most cases it is assumed that learning words is difficult but not impossible, learning all the kanji on the other hand.... claimed to be near impossible (by many). Doing RTK, we come to realize that learning the meaning and writing of a Kanji is far more easy than learning all the readings, however it is still assumed to be harder to learn the Kanji. 2000 kanji vs. 80,000 or so words in the Japanese language, which one's really more difficult?

stehr Wrote:

jcdietz03 Wrote:The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.

With respect to RTK, yes it is, there wouldn't be the RTK book without this statement.

Actually, no. I learned the kanji completely out of Heisig's order in the same time frame as a normal RTKer with above average retention. So I say no, the order doesn't matter, it's the ability to break down the kanji to familiar components.

alyks Wrote:

stehr Wrote:

jcdietz03 Wrote:The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.

With respect to RTK, yes it is, there wouldn't be the RTK book without this statement.

Actually, no. I learned the kanji completely out of Heisig's order in the same time frame as a normal RTKer with above average retention. So I say no, the order doesn't matter, it's the ability to break down the kanji to familiar components.

You are not normal. Not to say you are not a normal human being, just, you used a different method. Order is important while using Heisig's method, and it is also a factor in helping maintain sanity.

I'm curious now. How did you manage to break the kanji into components outside of the Heisig order?

jcdietz03 Wrote:...one needs to know ALL the general use kanji for them to be of any use to the literate adult....is is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them.

Yes and no. You need most of them, but some of them are more or less completely useless, while you will need many characters that are not considered general use kanji, if you actually want to be considered literate. It is an old list and in my opinion pretty flawed.

kazelee Wrote:

alyks Wrote:

stehr Wrote:With respect to RTK, yes it is, there wouldn't be the RTK book without this statement.

Actually, no. I learned the kanji completely out of Heisig's order in the same time frame as a normal RTKer with above average retention. So I say no, the order doesn't matter, it's the ability to break down the kanji to familiar components.

You are not normal. Not to say you are not a normal human being, just, you used a different method. Order is important while using Heisig's method, and it is also a factor in helping maintain sanity.

I'm curious now. How did you manage to break the kanji into components outside of the Heisig order?

I downloaded the pangolin font, removed everything that could be made up of smaller components then memorized it over the weekend. Very simple and easy. While I still don't think order is necessary, it would be hard to make stories for all the broken down components. I consider visual imagery a superior mnemonic to stories partially because of this.

Alyks did what Heisig did, he bunched similar kanji and used visual memory. However, instead of bunching by radicals/primitives, Alyks bunched them by On-yomi groups.

I wouldn't be so dogmatic about the particular order, so long as a reasonable grouping occurs to help with systematic learning. Akin to how KO groups their vocabulary by kanji then themes helps get faster learning.

Hiya

Learning all of the primitives first would be useful if you are also getting kanji coming in from other means because you could learn a kanji out of order and already know the primitives. I also found a couple of kanji where I didn't agree with the primitive list, he did it on how they looked and I did it on stroke order which gave slightly different primitives. I also think that the primitives can be quite hard to learn as they cannot be broken down much further and so are quite frequently abstract ideas and the sooner they are in your head and being used/reviewed the better.

I am on my second year of a course based on Japanese for busy people (crap book I know but there are few courses here in the UK except London) and each time I come home with a list of vocab to learn I look them all up and check if there are any with kanji I know. If there are I write in the kanji I know. Sometimes it helps alot with remembering words and sometimes I find it too easy to use the kanji and so months later forget the reading. I think knowing the kanji helps me break down the words and can help with some of the scarier long words.

amber

I don't think order is important AS LONG AS YOU KNOW EVERY SINGLE PRIMITIVE USED. With Heisig, that's automatic, he has already ordered them so you learn the primitives before you they are used. If you want a different order, you have to make it yourself, find everytime a new primitive is introduced and make sure you learn it first. Basically, you have to do all the work which Heisig already did for you and for what? You're still going to want to learn them all, does it really matter in which order?

stehr Wrote:But how can you learn readings without knowing the kanji first ?

You can get an awfully long way with a bit of the 'traditional' kanji learning method plus a big pile of exposure to written Japanese. The result is a lot of kanji you can read when you see them but don't have a hope of writing correctly. I'd speculate that a lot of upper level learners of Japanese are in this category (assuming their first language wasn't Chinese). Certainly I was before I came back and had another go at RTK...

jcdietz03 Wrote:The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.
I can imagine learning the kanji in a different order than the Heisig order would be less efficient.

We need to define the goal before we can speak of "efficiency". Using an intuitive approach, though, I see no reason to believe a different order would be less efficient; I actually briefly started a project to make a directed acyclic graph from a set of all primitives to a set of all kanji in Heisig plus a few others; any topological ordering of that DAG should perform reasonably well. Improvements can be made by doing things like gathering similar characters, but that's a more involved analysis, and I'm not at all certain that Heisig's is a particularly good one.

Quote:...using [my book] to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse infuence of the learning process.
This quote is actually part of the "note to the fourth edition." This is the worst one of all. […] Someone please tell me...WHY does using the Heisig course in conjunction with a typical one have an adverse effect on the learning process as Heisig claims? He doesn't explain it in the foreword, he just states it.

My understanding of his statement is that he's assuming a standard lesson plan; that is, one that presents kanji in an order that is not Heisig Order. In this case, a student is either required to maintain two widely divergent paths of study or to modify the Heisig system beyond all recognition.

Quote:[Japanese teachers] would agree with me that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese...
Isn't learning the readings an equally great, if not greater obstacle?

My anecdote says no. I was happily reading (simple) books back before I discovered Heisig, but could only write without assistance maybe about a hundred characters.

Quote:...one needs to know ALL the general use kanji for them to be of any use to the literate adult....is is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them.
This seems a little controversial to me so I'm putting it here. However, I personally believe it is more or less correct.

Actually, this is the most laughable of them all. Even if what he meant is correct, he destroys its usefulness with the vague "use to the literate adult"; a mastery of a thousand kanji is sufficient to permit a significant amount of reading, while five hundred is enough to survive day-to-day life apart from legal documents. One can argue that that isn't a "literate adult", but with the utter lack of a definition Heisig presents this easily becomes a No True Scotsman fallacy. Using established definitions of literacy makes it even more absurd: the UN definition is "can read and write a simple sentence".

Wherever the point of sharply diminishing returns is, I would certainly argue that RTK contains a number of kanji that are beyond it and lacks a number of characters that are not.

~J

alyks Wrote:

stehr Wrote:

jcdietz03 Wrote:The most critical factor is the order of learning the kanji.

With respect to RTK, yes it is, there wouldn't be the RTK book without this statement.

Actually, no. I learned the kanji completely out of Heisig's order in the same time frame as a normal RTKer with above average retention. So I say no, the order doesn't matter, it's the ability to break down the kanji to familiar components.

I'm not saying that order matters with respect to the student, I'm saying that with respect to the identity of RTK it does matter. The idea of mnemonic learning of Kanji by primitive elements did not originate from Heisig, but his ordering of the Kanji is unique. If Heisig had said that order did not matter in the introduction, he would be undermining his entire method.

alyks Wrote:So did you want to try and use it with a classroom or something? I'm sure we could help you if you wanted to try.

(Sorry a bit off topic)
Help?
Maybe I could use some help... Im trying to learn Kanji and still follow my course (My kinda bad course is still around Nr.120 Kanji). So I have to know all 120 for the test... And I cant study the old way anymore without feeling its a big WASTE OF TIME.
Suppose I just look at the primitives I dont know for the unknown kanji?

lanval Wrote:

alyks Wrote:So did you want to try and use it with a classroom or something? I'm sure we could help you if you wanted to try.

(Sorry a bit off topic)
Help?
Maybe I could use some help... Im trying to learn Kanji and still follow my course (My kinda bad course is still around Nr.120 Kanji). So I have to know all 120 for the test... And I cant study the old way anymore without feeling its a big WASTE OF TIME.
Suppose I just look at the primitives I dont know for the unknown kanji?

Shouldn't be a problem. I would however recommend you to have a separate Anki deck for characters you learn "ahead of time" so as to not interfere with your normal RtK studies.

lanval Wrote:Suppose I just look at the primitives I dont know for the unknown kanji?

Sounds like a plan. Just don't try and learn the readings at the same time, do it separately after you've got the kanji down.

alyks Wrote:

lanval Wrote:Suppose I just look at the primitives I dont know for the unknown kanji?

Sounds like a plan. Just don't try and learn the readings at the same time, do it separately after you've got the kanji down.

Hm, dunno why. I used to put some kanji combinations in the 2nd card. Not too many though. Just got to "paper" - urgh. Why do they all have to be in the back of the book -.-
Stupid Genki. Can it be any less systematic...Well: it could be worse - have to keep thinking of the old times of learning.

What you did sounds really interesting Alyks. I think of doing RTK much as learning the alphabet. The most important thing I gained from the book is an understanding of how to break up the kanji. I guess that you could gain more or less the same benefit just by memorizing the various primitives. Though the primitives don't cover everything. You would need to add the kanji that are used as parts of other kanji, like 火　or 水.

So what did you do after memorizing the primitives?

Transparent_Aluminium Wrote:What you did sounds really interesting Alyks. I think of doing RTK much as learning the alphabet. The most important thing I gained from the book is an understanding of how to break up the kanji. I guess that you could gain more or less the same benefit just by memorizing the various primitives. Though the primitives don't cover everything. You would need to add the kanji that are used as parts of other kanji, like 火　or 水.

So what did you do after memorizing the primitives?

I learned those kanji too, then I learned the onyomi + kanji at the same time:
Movie method

Quote:Wherever the point of sharply diminishing returns is, I would certainly argue that RTK contains a number of kanji that are beyond it and lacks a number of characters that are not.

RtK is primarily composed of General Use Characters present in the list derived by the Ministry of Education along with a number of common characters present in names. If you're talking about things like 誰 being missing from RtK 1 and whatnot, I suggest you take your qualms up with the Japanese Ministry of Education, rather than Heisig.

can't say i'm an expert.. i'm only up to 1000ish, but i find that i don't really need the readings. I'm learning to be able to read the meanings of the kanji, and seperately i'm learning to speak japanese... and the two are naturally intersecting.

I'm not good enough to know, but knowing individual kanji readings seems reasonably useless, its knowing the words they are used in thats useful... using RtK i can already recognise a lot of kanji. And I know a lot of spoken vocab.. so as i learn all the kanji in a word I can say, it all comes together.

But i know very little, so listen to the other guys more..

[edit]
but i can say that the disadvantage of using it alongside other study is that you are constantly splitting your attention. When i focus on RTK regularly I can get through it at a decent pace... but overall its taken me ages to get to the point i'm at. This is because I get distracted with other parts of study (vocab, conversation, etc..) and then i don't do it for ages... so when i go back i have to repeat a lot of the newer kanji (because the book builds on itself, but the newer ones haven't had that yet).

Its generally more efficient to focus on one thing at a time.. so i kind of wish i'd focused just on RTK for a month or two and blitzed through it, and then moved on...

soulgrind Wrote:knowing individual kanji readings seems reasonably useless

Says someone who clearly isn't planning on appearing on any game shows!

~J