Hello,

I have a question about using the RTK method. Basically do you HAVE to recall the story every single time you write the kanji. For example I studied lots of Kanji before I started the RTK book so could write lots without even thinking about it, I have assigned stories to these kanjis now, but if I'm honest I don't use them when writing them down as they are firmly imprinted in my memory. This is the same for some Kanji that I have learnt through RTK also as from studying them again and again they just stick.

So is it OK to write the Kanji straight away for the Kanji we already 'know' or do we have to run through the story every-time in our minds? Obviously I do this for the Kanji I can't recall straight away but sometimes it feels a bit tedious running through a story in my mind when I could write it straight away.

Any thoughts and answers on this question would be great.

Thanks

On one hand, the ultimate goal is to bypass the stories and simply know the characters. On the other hand, making stories even for characters you know will allow you to practice making effective stories, which may be to your advantage later on.

In your case I guess it will be alittle fine. Sometimes for me though if a kanji is fresh in my mind from review or from previously seeing it, don't laugh, I find myself bashing or shaking my head to prevent or slow down the image of the kanji popping up just so I can get the story out first to convince myself I still knew the story.

But you find that after a while with really really easy kanji that are basically either primitives or used frequently you skip the whole story business and yes it before even thinking about what the kanji even looks like.

So if they're common common things like 'day' or 'now', then don't worry about it, but if they are common things that don't occur so common like 'cold' or 'warm' then I'd recommend allowing the story to come out first.

Thanks for your quick replies!

liosama: Oh no I'm the same! When I was reviewing kanji that I had previously studied I had to often force myself from seeing the kanji image first. I few times I even had to use the Kanji image to remember the story, how ironic eh!

True, for kanji like read, tale etc. ones I've written 100s of times in the past I do try to always at least think/imagine 'say/sounds waves mouth, sell/samurai crown legs' or 'say/sound waves mouth, tongue/thousands mouths' but generally not a full blown story.

hknamida: I did assume the goal was in the end to by pass the story and just know the kanji, I doubt even Heisig goes though every one of his stories when writing kanji down.

I'm always careful to make sure that I do assign a story to a kanji and make it as vivid as possible, so I can always picture it if need be.

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My greatest concern was because he says in the book not to use his method as a 'crutch' for kanji you find difficult and that his method is a 'new way of walking'. So I was worried I was falling into the crutch group as often I would bypass his method and simply just write the kanji, but for more difficult ones recall the story image in my mind. I agree with the method by often the kanji just comes naturally after a while...

"My greatest concern was because he says in the book not to use his method as a 'crutch' for kanji you find difficult and that his method is a 'new way of walking'. So I was worried I was falling into the crutch group as often I would bypass his method and simply just write the kanji, but for more difficult ones recall the story image in my mind. I agree with the method by often the kanji just comes naturally after a while..."

There's only one way to find out, right? I'd say from my own experience (where I knew quite a lot of kanji quite well) that those learned by rote were interfered with by new Heisig-learned kanji, and it wasn't until I came across them in Heisig that I could write them again.

Try not making up stories for them and see. If you do start to forget them, you can always go back and make up stories later; if not, you just saved yourself an awful lot of time

I have several Japanese friends who have lived abroad for a decade or more who have forgotten how to write many kanji. They find Heisig's method intriguing. One has started her pre-teen daughter on RtK 1.

I'm guessing that this is an example of what Heisig means: it will be interesting to see if my friend's daughter remembers how to write kanji longer than her mom.

The whole idea of RTK is to make remembering the kanji easier.
The stories act like a sort of safety net.
Eventually you will write the kanji without thinking of the story, else you will take ages going through just a single line of text.

However if you come across a kanji you DONT know, you can always look at the primitives and recall the story you had for it.

RTK isn't about remembering stories, you don't need to remember them word for word. However, Heisig's theory is that your imaginative memory is stronger than your visual memory. Aka his theory is that the stories you make will stick better (longer?) than the image of the kanji. (thats why it works good as a safety net)

Based on this, it seems like a good idea to make stories for the kanji you already know, I did so at least. If you ever forget them visually, you will most likely still have your story to back it up.

(besides the remembering part, it also makes the writing part easier - since you know what primitives its build out and what order it should be written. I used to have no idea how to write 気 correctly, now its easy )

I never focus on trying to recall the story when I do my flash card reps here; often the correct answer pops into my head before I start even thinking about stories. But sometimes I get stuck, and, naturally, the story often helps in that case.

I currently have 1,985 cards in the "4+ reviews" pile, so I'd say this has worked out perfectly fine for me.

- Kef

Thanks a load guys and girls! I think I have a much better understand about what the overall aim/point of following the RTK method is.

Cheers,

Kuma

kilioopu Wrote:I have several Japanese friends who have lived abroad for a decade or more who have forgotten how to write many kanji. They find Heisig's method intriguing. One has started her pre-teen daughter on RtK 1.

I'm guessing that this is an example of what Heisig means: it will be interesting to see if my friend's daughter remembers how to write kanji longer than her mom.

You must also take into account there that your friend is an adult and her daughter is a child, pre-teen even, so she is in that age where kids can still acquire a language, rather than learn it. So she will probably remember them longer than her mother, just because she is still so young.

Koos83 Wrote:

kilioopu Wrote:it will be interesting to see if my friend's daughter remembers how to write kanji longer than her mom.

You must also take into account there that your friend is an adult and her daughter is a child, pre-teen even, so she is in that age where kids can still acquire a language, rather than learn it. So she will probably remember them longer than her mother, just because she is still so young.

As far as I'm aware, the special language-acquisition abilities that kids have apply only to spoken language. Written language just hasn't been around long enough for us to evolve brains designed to learn kanji, which is why Japanese schoolchildren spend so much time on rote study of them. So I don't think age matters in this comparison.

I would advise being very careful making statements that assume that the critical period hypothesis is true. It's a hypothesis that certainly hasn't been disproven, but the actual evidence in favour of it is very limited and open to challenge/alternate interpretation.

~J

Note that there are two aspects to the theory. The basic critical period theory, that children who are not exposed to language before a certain age can never learn language, is more or less beyond dispute. However, the extension of this theory to second language acquisition is a little more controversial (although as far as I know, not among actual linguistic researchers -- there are debates over the particulars, but not the general idea.)

I don't think the evidence is "very limited"; the critical period hypothesis has been the subject of study for over 50 years now and there are many papers and studies devoted to it. From what I've seen, a lot of the supposed objection to it comes from non-specialists who oppose it primarily on emotional ground -- they don't like the idea that people are inherently limited in how well they can learn a second language completely irrespective of effort and motivation.

Just anecdotal observation supports a good part of the theory. Japanese kids learn to pronounce Japanese perfectly without spending any conscious effort on it, whereas most second-language learners will never learn to pronounce Japanese perfectly no matter how much work they put into it. A child's ability to acquire the grammar of their first language defies explanation aside from some inherent biological ability. And when you have a case where 100% of (non disabled) native speakers acquire the grammar of their language automatically, without any conscious effort, and very few non-native speakers can acquire the grammar of a foreign language without any conscious effort, I don't see any other valid alternate hypothesis other than critical period.

What you say doesn't reflect the state of research as I know it, but as I lack the time to find citations I'll withdraw from the debate for now.

~J

It's true that many aspects of this are under debate, but what is not under debate is that after a certain age (most of the research shows it's 12) children will never be as fluent in a language as they could be before that age.

Moreover, if children haven't learnt any language before the age of 12 (feral children), their brain loses the ability to acquire/learn a language fluently ever again. The brains of this type of children show that they have less neural connections and cannot make these connections anymore either.

I'd like to see you dispute any of these facts, woodwojr, as that is what they are: facts. So you can deduce critical period is a fact as well. (I'm sure you will go against me on this, but so be it. )

It's hard to research, though; scientists can't just kidnap someone's baby and raise it without ever talking to it to see if it can acquire a language after 12. It's been done in the past, but it was soon considered immoral (and rightly so).

Koos83 Wrote:It's true that many aspects of this are under debate, but what is not under debate is that after a certain age (most of the research shows it's 12) children will never be as fluent in a language as they could be before that age.

Moreover, if children haven't learnt any language before the age of 12 (feral children), their brain loses the ability to acquire/learn a language fluently ever again. The brains of this type of children show that they have less neural connections and cannot make these connections anymore either.

I'd like to see you dispute any of these facts, woodwojr, as that is what they are: facts. So you can deduce critical period is a fact as well. (I'm sure you will go against me on this, but so be it. )

It's hard to research, though; scientists can't just kidnap someone's baby and raise it without ever talking to it to see if it can acquire a language after 12. It's been done in the past, but it was soon considered immoral (and rightly so).

I love how people can take whatever theory is in vogue at the moment and state it as fact. The "fact" is, the "critical period" cannot be proven nor disproven (with current methods, at least). The feral kids? Well, how did they try to teach them? Could the failure have been because of the method of teaching instead of the kid's brain?

This is somewhat anecdotal perhaps but some kids are born deaf and grow up in some sort of a void of language (except for, sometimes, a grammar-deficient home-sign system and pantomime) yet, when they enter school (or are exposed regularly to a language model), they are able to learn a sign language to full fluency.

btw... unless you live in a dictatorship... there is no such thing as "not under debate". I mean, the mere existence of a physical world is debatable...

dbh2ppa Wrote:I love how people can take whatever theory is in vogue at the moment and state it as fact. The "fact" is, the "critical period" cannot be proven nor disproven (with current methods, at least).

The critical period is in the same boat as other scientific theories that cannot literally be disproven or proven -- it's the best theory that fits the available evidence, and there are no alternate theories that work as well. The facts are that every non-disabled child learns to speak their language (or multiple languages) automatically, with no instruction or conscious effort, and that almost no adults can do that with a second language.

As I said, there are parts of the theory that are disputed. For instance, the application of the critical period theory to language pedagogy is an open question.

Quote:The feral kids? Well, how did they try to teach them? Could the failure have been because of the method of teaching instead of the kid's brain?

That's irrelevant because if there's no critical period, a "method of teaching" shouldn't even be necessary -- the person should be able to learn the language automatically, without effort or instruction, like a child.

Quote:This is somewhat anecdotal perhaps but some kids are born deaf and grow up in some sort of a void of language (except for, sometimes, a grammar-deficient home-sign system and pantomime) yet, when they enter school (or are exposed regularly to a language model), they are able to learn a sign language to full fluency.

What sometimes happens here is that few people are literally born deaf; deafness most often appears when the children are 2-3, so they've had enough experience with spoken language to allow them to learn sign language later. There are cases where deaf people who were literally deaf from birth were not able to learn language.

(Breaking my own rule, though in my defense it's because some things came up that don't require me to dig for citations to argue)

Koos83 Wrote:It's true that many aspects of this are under debate, but what is not under debate is that after a certain age (most of the research shows it's 12) children will never be as fluent in a language as they could be before that age.

Full fluency has been developed after this age; that's really all there is to say about it. Everything else is, unless you've got a citation hiding up your sleeve just unscientific speculation speculation about how fluent "they could [have] been before that age".

Quote:Moreover, if children haven't learnt any language before the age of 12 (feral children), their brain loses the ability to acquire/learn a language fluently ever again. The brains of this type of children show that they have less neural connections and cannot make these connections anymore either.

Are you aware of any studies of feral children that isolate or account for the confounding factor of profound abuse, which has well-documented detrimental effects on learning among other factors? If so, could you please provide some citations?

Quote:I'd like to see you dispute any of these facts, woodwojr, as that is what they are: facts.

This day, you get your wish.

Quote:It's hard to research, though; scientists can't just kidnap someone's baby and raise it without ever talking to it to see if it can acquire a language after 12. It's been done in the past, but it was soon considered immoral (and rightly so).

It is indeed, but "it's hard" doesn't mean "this is the way it works". This is why I describe the hypothesis as poorly-supported based on my review of the literature rather than something like "demonstrably wrong"—my claim is that the current evidence is weak, not that there is strong counterevidence.

~J

dbh2ppa Wrote:there is no such thing as "not under debate". I mean, the mere existence of a physical world is debatable...

Actually that is something that cannot be debated. I mean, if the physical world does not exist... then neither does the possibility to debate it!

woodwojr Wrote:Are you aware of any studies of feral children that isolate or account for the confounding factor of profound abuse, which has well-documented detrimental effects on learning among other factors?

Rather, I would like to see your citations for the idea that abuse can harm a child's ability to acquire language. I've seen links between abuse and ability to use language effectively (which is different from acquisition) or to learn things beyond the acquisition phase, but that's different.

(Obviously there would be a few exceptions to this -- severe abuse consisting of isolation, or physical abuse resulting in brain damage; both of these could cause problems in language development, as could malnutrition.)

EDIT: I guess it's not really that important if the theory is believed or not; it's not like anyone is recommending learning Japanese the same way a child acquires language, so it's not very important.

SammyB Wrote:

dbh2ppa Wrote:there is no such thing as "not under debate". I mean, the mere existence of a physical world is debatable...

Actually that is something that cannot be debated. I mean, if the physical world does not exist... then neither does the possibility to debate it!

Who says debates have to occur in a physical space???

IceCream Wrote:although there probably are differences in the capabilities of adults and children, the research just isnt there to proove it.

How much of the literature in the field have you actually read?

Incidentally, I'm not sure if woodwojr's initial comment here was aimed at me or Koos83, but my (rather ill-phrased) argument was that, regardless of the status of the critical period theory, it pretty clearly doesn't apply to the writing system, so in this particular case it's a bit of a red herring...

All the above makes very interesting reading, but if anyone can post a solution/information as to how to learn a second language more efficiently when you are older, i would be greatly interested (and appreciative).

Make the most of your young "empty" minds now is all i can say. As you get older I've found it gets exponentially tougher. It's made worse by the fact that the resources many of you find fun to learn by start to lose their appeal as you get older (eg. manga, RPGs, inane Jdramas, 2chan). The stuff I would find "fun" is just not accessible with my level of japanese.

It's not all bad being an oldie though - buying a book does not seem to be the burden that it is for some on here. If someone mentions an interesting book I just have a quick look on amazon and if it seems 1/2 decent it's just "one click" and it's delivered within the week. It's also a case of when shall I go to japan again rather than "can I?"

To get back on topic - surely it's about exposure? (i think there's a 50 page thread on this somewhere). If you took a 12 year old kid and put him in a new language environment where he had no exposure to his original language I'm pretty sure you would not be able to tell the difference between him and a native speaker when they are 24. I've seen/know orpahans in Australia from the Vietnam war that sound more australian than me (i have British parents). Yes it gets tougher the older you get but for me at least, foreign languages did not become "tough" until i was 30+.

Rooboy Wrote:To get back on topic - surely it's about exposure? (i think there's a 50 page thread on this somewhere).

There's more to it than just exposure (and actually AJATT isn't really mimicking child language acquisition because for child language acquisition you're obviously not using SRS or any sort of translations or dictionaries, and most children learn to speak before they start learning to read.) Child language acquisition defies complete explanation -- there has been a lot of energy and a lot of research in the field over the past century and they've really only scratched the surface. Most of the certain things that can be said are very broad statements (like the fact that a child must hear language to be able to learn to speak it) or statements about what *can't* be true about language acquisition (e.g. it's not true that mothers help their children learn by speaking in simple language).

A lot of the research has to do with looking at children with certain disabilities and extrapolating hypotheses from that. For instance, it's known that mute (but not deaf) children who have their muteness corrected are very quickly able to speak language like any other child around their age -- from that fact, it suggests that speaking is not necessarily important to language acquisition.

One important thing to understand is the difference between language acquisition and language learning. Language acquisition refers to the process by which a child goes from being unable to say anything to being able to speak their native language(s). Studies done on this do not necessarily have anything to do with second language learning, and there's a tendency for people to confuse language acquisition with language learning that even children do (e.g. learning to conform their speech to the educated dialect).

Quote:If you took a 12 year old kid and put him in a new language environment where he had no exposure to his original language I'm pretty sure you would not be able to tell the difference between him and a native speaker when they are 24.

This is what the core debate is; the critical period hypothesis would say that there would be a difference (although 12 is right on the cusp so it's a bit hard to say for that case).

As for learning a second language efficiently when older, there's no "solution" to that; it's a combination of motivation and good resources and methods.