I'm interested about the response that people using the heisig method have got from Japanese people or other Japanese learners? For me, most Japanese people seem to be interested in the technique but fairly (to higly) cynical about the results.. i think it's very true what heisig said about people sticking to an outdated method just cos it's what they've always known.. so many Japanese have pointed out that "it's better to learn by repetition".. or "you should learn the simple/commonly-used ones first".. or "you're only learning one meaning/this is not the common meaning"; but seem completely incapable of understanding the logic when I explain it..! I mean if you're going to learn any language you need the alphabet, right? not just half, or the common symbols.. what use would learning A-R be in English? or just learning the common letters like E,T,S,A,R etc..

Also other Japanese learners seem resistant to any method which doesn't involve pictures.. or where you're not learning the most common kanji.. even though they seem to want to be able to read japanese properly. I guess the heisig system is still not very well known.. and requires a considerable amount of extended effort. What effects have other people noticed when talking about this method???

Yes, the heisig system isn't that well known and also seems to cause controversy among Japanese teachers. The fact that it's totally different from traditional learning and doesn't lend itself to classroom study adds to this. I also definitely believe that the method won't work for everybody. It requires a lot of creative effort and some people will have an easier time simply memorizing the traditional way. But for those for whom it does work, it really is an invaluable way to get a handle on the Kanji.

I don't know any Japanese personally, but many of the people I've told about this method seem to think it of a sort of 'toy' method, that is, not a serious way to study. I guess traditional views on what 'learning' should look like are similar everywhere. Learning Japanese in itself is rather rare over here though, so most of them are just impressed I'm trying such a thing at all.

Students of japanese at Copenhagen University mimics the old one : it is a waste because you do not learn the reading at the same time. However, they all readily admit they struggle with them and use flash cards like crazy.

Funny is, Copenhagen University does not have a formal kanji learning course. You are introduced to it and sort of left to do it yourself, doing it the old fashioned way (wax on, wax off 1000 times). So the argument that heisig requires an extended effort is kind of funny, becaue thats what japanese requires anyways. Difference is, that Heisig makes one systematic approach to a language thats kind of like putting up a huge tent on your own. Having to get all the poles, the canvas and the ropes standing up all at once is almost impossible, it has to happen almost simultanelously. Japanese requires that you learn strange grammar, 2 alphabets, a sign language, umpteen readings of each kanji, and on top of that, several modes of speech depending on the formality of the situation you are in.

Ive spoken with a few teachers who were genuinely interested, but they could not see how it would help them teach their own students. They admit their track record on kanji is horrible, and many students run away from the course. Im sure the trouble with kanji is one of the reasons.

But I do actually believe you can use Heisig in education. The idea is that you do not TEACH the students the kanjis, but you have workshops where you help the students building stories and excercise their imagination. Sort of like how this site has helped people by sharing stories. Perhaps once a week, heisig time. Each student present a kanji they struggle with, and they present a story to the rest that they are particular fond of. Throw into that a bit of mnemonic teaching, introduce them to proper flash card and reviewing disciplines. Perhaps teach them to use a computer program like supermemo.

I will be so bold as to claim that Heisig would work for anyone, given that they actually allow them selves to use the system. When heisig fails you it is because you do not believe it works, or does not put into the system the work it requires. You HAVE to review rigoriously. You MUST make stories for every kanji, or you will not remember them. You MUST be ready to release reality a bit to make some really ridiculous and vivid stories now and then. More than often, actually.

The problem with introducing Heisig to people is, that often they are left to their own devices and cannot easily get help or do comparissons. I bet that you could coax students through Heisig I and Heisig II in a year, perhaps three semesters, if you had the right tools for teaching them. That would mean the books plus a story sharing system like this one for use by the students in class and in their private homes.

I was actually advised to try Heisig I in a Japanese language forum of an anime site, but the responses were about 50% for and 50% against. The majority against says they want to learn the kanji as a whole, including readings, and see doing it twice as a waste of time. Others whose ambitions don't go much further than LPT4/LPT3 complain that Heisig has too many rare kanji at the beginning of the book.

I'm very happy I started Heisig well before I was required to start learning Kanji in my Japanese language courses (the first 3 years we stayed away from it and did hiragana, katakana and romaji instead). Well, time has caught up with me and now I'm doing Heisig and the LPT4/LPT3 kanji at the same time, which is very difficult, because I have to divide my study time. But I have a flying start with Kanji if I compare myself to the other students.

In "Japanese for busy people II", our current study book, each lesson introduces about 10 kanji from the LPT4 or LPT3 list. While none of these kanji are extremely complex, they introduce kanji from a story/language perspective only. So, you'll get 語　in lesson 1, and you'll get 言　in lesson 8. From a radical perspective, it makes absolutely no sense. I prefer very logical and analytical approaches, so Heisig works well for me. I've seen other kanji learning books that have a difficult to write kanji like 曜　included in their first 20 kanji. That would never work for me...

My husband, who is doing the same course, doesn't want to spend the extra time to do Heisig, so he merely looks at the kanji in the book. But I see him struggling because he has a hard time recognizing the radicals. For him, it's all a meaningless jumble of lines, and he forgets them if he doesn't practise them every week.

Also, I notice when reading that I have no trouble recognizing kanji, even if I haven't studied them in Heisig yet. If I see 北海道 (Hokkaido) at the start somewhere, I don't need to flip back in text later when the furigana have disappeared. Having basic meanings for surnames and place names helps to remember their kanji as well. Knowing that Hokkaido means 'Northen Sea Roadway' helps to recall both the name and the kanji, and later on the kun or on readings as well.

Anyway, because I know about 70% of the kanji introduced in the book already, I can concentrate on remembering their on/kun readings now.

I've given Heisig to a lot of people as an alternative method if they're serious about wanting to learn all the kanji. Some have picked it up, some say they prefer the alternative methods. But regardless of the method, I think in the end there is only one thing that really makes the difference - effort. You either put the time in to do it well, or you do it half-heartedly and it won't work. If you want to do it well, any method that suits someone may work.

I think Jamboh hit the nail on the head when he/she said that Heisig is basically the same as learning an alphabet. However, there are a few important differences with the latin alphabet. Firstly, if you learn 26 letters then you really have learnt them all. However with the kanji, even after completing RTK 3, there are still thousands more. Secondly, the latin alphabet is usually linked with various sounds but Heisig's method involves linking with meanings instead.

The huge advantage for me is that the kanji I learn through Heisig become things that I am familiar with and I can write them by myself. When I first arrived in Japan the kanji on all of the signs and placards were utterly incomprehensible. With Heisig, I might not fully understand, but they are no longer alien to me.

Although I haven't started it yet, I have serious doubts about RTK 2. The problem is that it doesn't teach you how to use the words that you learn. Sure 中国 and other nouns are simple enough, but what about Eastern concepts like 縁　（縁がわるい),　or what about other words that don't translate directly into English like 素直. After completing RTK 2, I think that you'll be able to give the reading for words like 素直 or 正直, and you would also be able to give English translations for these words. But what's the point if you can't use them?

When learning a word, I think the first thing is to learn is how it sounds, then what it means, then how to use it and finally how to write it (and automatically how to read it). Thankfully, this last step becomes easy with Heisig and that's why I'm persisting with the method.

From RTK 2, it's certainly nice to know that almost all characters with the primitive 中 in them have a pronunciation of ちゅう when combined with other kanji. However, I'm uncertain about the value of drilling flashcards of examples of these words if you've never seen the words before and are uncertain about how to use them in a sentence. I believe in learning words when you meet them in context. If I don't have context, like an example sentence from an article or something that my friend said, then I won't learn the word.

PS. Jamboh, are you a hearts supporter?

in my opinion, i think that effectiveness of this method depends on how fast you finish the book. If your working at a really slow pace and it takes you, for example, a year to finish the entire book, you'd be better off just learning the kanji the traditional way. By doing it the traditional way as opposed to the helsig method at a rate of about 2 kanji per day, you would know about 600 kanji entirely by the end of a year instead of just 2000 kanji but none of the pronunciations. personally, i would rather know 600 kanji and their pronunciations instead of 2000 and just their meanings

However, for the people who have lots of free time and study 3 hours a day to finish the entire RTK I in a month or so, then alot would have been accomplished in a short amount of time

I personnaly don't think I'll be able to do the whole book in a mouth, even if I were given 5h a day. I now some ppl manage to do so, but personnaly I get everything mixed up if I study too much kanji at the same time.
I definitly agree with the risk of takubg too much time to finish the book through. I personnaly have been working on the book for nearly a year and I am at 1600 now.
That's with some lack of dicipline and time... and kanji represent about 80% of my time studying japanese if I were to count all the review I do everyday ont the bus(...), which I could have used to vocabulary of grammar for instance. So that's kind a danger.

Anyway I have doubt I would have learned 600kanji with a traditionnal method, what I like about heisig is that you really have a method and the story make studying the kanji kind of fun to some extend. Sometime I really wish I were finished with them through.

It's hard to remember all the kanji when you can't/don't use them. And I don't like trying to read something when I can't pronounce it... >.<;

wrightak Wrote:However, I'm uncertain about the value of drilling flashcards of examples of these words if you've never seen the words before and are uncertain about how to use them in a sentence. I believe in learning words when you meet them in context. If I don't have context, like an example sentence from an article or something that my friend said, then I won't learn the word.

You can look for examples on the internet... WWWJDIC has lots of examples for words when you look them up.

[ファブリス]

DurablePants Wrote:However, for the people who have lots of free time and study 3 hours a day to finish the entire RTK I in a month or so, then alot would have been accomplished in a short amount of time

I'm willing to bet that James W. Heisig had already a good experience with mnemonics and other memory aids, to have had the confidence to pursue that method through 2000 Japanese kanji. He says he did it in a month or so in the introduction of the book, but I'm pretty sure for most people, anywhere from 3 to 9 months is more realisitc.

In a month, I would think you need to study 8 hours a day if not more, that is unless like maybe Heisig himself your mind is already proficient at working with mnemonics and mental images.

after 7 months of study i am now at kanji 800, the last month alone i learned about 15-200 kanji so this means i was rather slow before.
this has various reasons like having more hobbies and sometimes just slacking.
thinking its a long term thing to learn often i did not study for a week.

when i saw i had like 500 kanji in the last box and only a few in the other boxes i decided to step on it!
it realy helps that at mine workplace we now do boring production work you only use your hands for and not your brains, so i always have a few copies of some pages with me, i can just gaze at those and then think of stories while doing the work.
when i get home i test myself and those kanji i do wrong i go check up stories of other people, then the next day i repeat this, so far i learned ~200 in a month this way!

on a sidenote i had enormous trouble with melancholy and skipped it for the time being, but then i learned the kanji for love and sudenly those 2 realy worked well together.

well, I averaged about 3-4 hours a day of study and it took me 5 weeks to complete the entire book. The way I did it was I would make up stories for about 100-150 kanji in one day (i go through about 40 kanji an hour). I do this for about 3 days until I have stories for about 300 kanji. I just write my stories in the book with pencil next to the kanji, i dont type them in the computer or anything.

After that, I dedicate an entire day to review. I go through all of my stories 100 at a time by just reading through the stuff ive written in the book. Right after i go through them, i take like a 30 minute break and then use my kanji blue box flashcards to review. Usually i remember 90% of the kanji right after reviewing the stories. I do this 3 times for a total of 300 kanji reviewed. This usually takes between 3-5 hours. Actaully, if im still motivated at the end of the day, i might make up stories for another 50 kanji or so. Then whenever I had free time, i would just review as many kanji as possible on this site.

I have to admit that without this site I probably would have given up a long time ago because using the kanji box to review was very frustrating.

Right after i finished the entire book, my success rate when reviewing on this site was only like 85% because i had finished the entire book so fast without much review. But its been about 2 weeks since ive finished the entire book and i review between 100-500 cards a day and now im about 98% on the first 1000 kanji of the book and 95% on the harder last 1000 kanji.

Impressive... 98% and 95% are really high.

I am just wandering, did you know some kanji before starting with the book ?
I think you create the story really fast (40kanji on hour is 90s per kanji... I need way more time) and it is interesting that you do so much story before reviewing.
Did you also sometimes use the shared story on the site ?

I have been using the book for almost 1 year and I usualy did not have the time/motivation to go through so much kanji at a time. I think I also lack some discipline but then japanese learning is an hobby (which I take quite seriously through).
Anyway now I am not far for the end of the book (around 1800) and want to finish it pretty fast... recently I manage to do around 85kanji story in a day (took quite a few hours), the day after I went through all the story to get it a bit sorted out and reviewing the new kanji a bit on the palm. The next morning I got more than 80% right on the website.
If you're able to do good story and trust them it seems like can create a lot of story before reviewing. That was definitly not something I was able to do at first. I added very litle new kanji and lot of review... probably too much, somtimes it might be better to leave some failed kanji and go back to them latter.

i probably knew about 200-300 of the kanji before i started. Basically, once youve mastered the primitives, the kanji are pretty easy to remember because most the kanji are just 2 primitives joined left to right or top to bottom. About 99.5% of the stories i made myself, i might have used 10 or so of the stories on the site. when i make up my stories, im not anywhere near the computer.

Also, the portion of the story that i write down is maybe at most one or two sentences. I tried to focus more on the imagery in my mind rather than a long paragraph of words for a story. The short one or two sentence stories that i wrote for each kanji were basically just cues that allowed me to recall the vivid imagery/story that i was thinking of when i first encountered the kanji.

Ok, my case is probably going to differ significantly from a lot of the people here - I had JLPT2Q before I started the book and am going for 1Q this year (last year I barely failed). Because of that, I have a different view on the whole Heisig thing as well. I think that doing Heisig before you know enough to actually use it is sort of a waste, so I'd recommend starting after a year or two of Japanese, or at about the 3Q (at least 4Q) level. My reasoning in that is along the lines of what some others have said, in that you need to know enough to correctly decipher some of the keywords and how to put them together and use them in a sentence. If you can't immediately decode the basic grammar of a sentence then you won't understand an example with words/kanji in context even if you see it. The other stuff will become a bottleneck in your studies, which means that not only will you be held back until you bring your other knowledge up to snuff with the kanji knowledge, but will also keep you away from the opportunity to practice all the new harder kanji you know and learn correct usage (you're not going to run across words like 隔日 or 飢餓 in simple contexts for the most part).

Heisig is great as a way to keep similar kanji distinct and learn how to write, which is what you miss out on studying kanji the normal way. You ask about responses I've heard from people - some are skeptical, but most of the people I've talked to are pretty receptive to it on the surface. The Japanese I talk to are impressed that I say I can write around 2000 characters since most of them can't say the same, and those studying Japanese get frustrated with kanji and are usually interested to hear that there's another possibility besides writing the character 10,000 times. Most of the people I talk to say that they don't want to start over since they already know 500-1000 or so, but I say that still means that they have at least 1000 more to go and Heisig is a great way to fill that gap. As you all know, if your goal is fluency then halfway isn't good enough. And as an added bonus, if you've studied enough to know that many characters already then you also already know the basic makeup of radicals and combinations as well as the basics of how to put a sentence together and make immediate use of your new found knowledge.

ETA: Oh yeah, and I went through book 1 in about 4 months or so... I'd say Fabrice's about right with his guesstimate for most people.

Darg, I assume you didn't have to do RKT2? Because if you want to learn the onyomis on top of RTK1, I'd say you better not wait too long. Not knowing any japanese and doing Heisig might be a bit silly, I did it alongside a course I took and it went well for both parts. I finished RTK1 about the time I finished the course, and Im steaming ahead with RTK2 and the kanjitown project. I can't see how it is a problem with being advanced in Kanji unless you have some sort of time frame to stay within. The idea I had about RTK1+2 is to bring learning japanese a bit closer to learning another european language. Make reading of text it self a much more transparent effort. You need some basic grammar to be able to do that, but I'd say the point is exactly to bring your kanji knowledge AHEAD of the rest.

I still went through RTKII up until about halfway through the semi-pure groups - there's still atleast a good 500 or so that I don't know the onyomi for. The pure/semi-pure group sections are useful, but other than that it's pretty much the same as what I've been doing for years and years. It was fine for me, but some of their vocab choices were rather obscure, even when I could think of much more practical examples. I understand that he's trying to keep the words as close to the keywords, so I just see it as a good opportunity to pick up words I probably wouldn't run across in my studies elsewhere. Don't worry about me though, I have something else I'm using for readings, including kunyomi. I started reading a novel shortly after finishing RTKI and have a Leitner-based program I'm using/upgrading for [i]all[/] readings.

My only point in saying that it's nice to have a grammatical base beforehand is that the more you have to study grammar afterwards, the more time you'll have to forget everything before you actually have the chance to use it. Wouldn't it be better to immediately get your practice practically through reading as opposed to keeping up the flashcard review for a year or 2 until you get to that point? Wouldn't it be nice to know beforehand how to decipher some of the more ambiguous keywords? Wouldn't you like to know the properties of primitives enough to know which ones take precedence and belong on the left/on top/on bottom of the character... and why?

I think it's perfectly fine to do it alongside your normal studies - in fact, that's what I did and what I'd recommend. Don't drop everything for Heisig and don't start it first thing before you crack open a regular text as it'll be too overwhelming for most at that point. I'm just warning not to get ahead of yourself too much, as you're not going to be able to do much with at least half of those characters until you get up to the intermediate level in grammar, which will take you a while. If you're finishing up the book(s) while you're in the middle of Genki book 2 or something then that'd be fine, but that's about the earliest I'd suggest it. After Genki 2 would be even better.

I think we are on the same page, actually. I just misunderstood your advice to be something like: Don't touch heisig untill you know grammar.

For me, speaking Japanese is something that can happen while I'm learning the Kanji in a sort of disconnected Heisig approach. I'm not connecting vocab or grammar with kanji. I guess I'm thinking of it like a child learning to speak gramatically correct language without bothering with being concerned about reading. That sort of integration of reading with my language will come later. What "later" means for me is, after I've memorized a lot of the yomi for the characters. Naturally, you must take what I say with a grain of salt, since I'm only just barely 1/2 way thru the first 2000. If I happen to know the kanji for a word now, it's purely accidental. For example, if I happened to notice that 犬　is related to いぬ, then I'd just say "Oh? That's cool! The japanese word is the same as the keyword for that kanji." Do you see what I mean?

That's actually the best way to pick up the kunyomi for characters from what I've seen. You know that 犬 means dog and that the word for dog is pronounced いぬ, so you put them together. Knowing what the characters mean on sight makes it easier to make the attachment for sure.

If you're learning speaking and writing/reading seperately, I'd just warn you to stay away from romaji as it'll hold you back in your reading later if you get too used to it now. I used Jorden's JSL/JWL, which keeps the 2 seperate all the way through the 3rd book, and ran into this roadblock after a couple years.

Keeping things seperate to focus on one particular area makes sense from a Heisig point of view, but eventually you're going to have to put it all together or it's all a wash.

I couldn't agree more. The connection between pronunciation and hiragana/katakana is not a difficult leap, at least not so difficult as the one we must make to read/write kanji. Just, in order to develop a greater fluency with reading kana, we should practice it much more than we do.

Actually, I was wondering if some Japanese individuals might not have little plots or stories that helped them to remember the placement of the primatives in some characters? It would seem reasonable to me that some student, writing "kidnap" vs. "beckon" thousands of times just might come up with "the daggar goes under the mouth" sort of plot element.

It may be weird, but another point that I'd like to get to one day.... After I can speak Japanese without an American accent, perhaps. It's that I'd like to be able to write a note and not have the recipent look at it oddly and say "Was this written by a gaijin?" There's correct grammar, and the correct kanji, but then there's the correct formation of the hiragana, katakana and kanji. I'd like my handwriting, eventually, to be without a foreign accent too. I'm not completely deferring that effort to the end though.

As I review, I *do* _write_ the kanji before I ask to see the answer. Then it's right or wrong, yes, but I also try to compare the sizes and spacial relationships of the various primatives. Trying to get it as *right* as I can. I picked up a small book, intended for elementary school kids, which shows the stroke order, but it also includes pointers on the easy to make or common errors in forming the kanji. ("Make sure there is a hook here." "Make sure there is no hook here." "Make sure this doesn't touch this line." "Make sure this line does touch this one" "Don't make this gap too large." That sort of thing.) It also is more focused on the handwritten form (instead of the printed/published/font forms). Not the cursive, flowing form either, naturally. But it only covers *some* of the kanji (the ones for the elementary school grades) and the order is also by grade.

I don't live in Japan anymore, and I've been unable to find a more complete dictionary of forms. I've heard of a Santaijiten, but the one I'd heard of is permanently out of print. Are these common in Japan? I would think that they would be.

i showed a Japanese friend of mine the Heisig system just last friday. she wsa so impressed with the little stories that she kept drawing different and increasingly complex kanji for me to take apart and put a story too. She has a good imagination so we switched roles. by this i mean:

1. she would draw a kanji.
2. I would tell her what primitives it contained. (eg 後　- column, alien, walking legs)
3. She would then create a story for the keyword.

It really is a novel way to learn the kanji. i love the fact that i can remember what this many kanji means after only studying kanji for about 10 months now.

the responce i get in school is: "Wow, you can write that kanji...?!" but then i modestly tell them that i cant read them, but will be able too soon.

Well I'd have to agree with DurablePants here.. I personally think that, although there are numerous benifits to the heisig method, speed is one of the more important ones. I think the longer it takes a person to complete RTK1, the less benifit they will derive from this method over a more traditional approach. I'm personally hoping to complete RTK1 in just over 2 months. I'm learning about 30-40 kanji a day currently, but I may be able to increase this rate soon. I was creating all of my own stories before, but now I'm using the stories on this site for the majority of my kanji.. making up my own when there's no good stories for me or when something obvious springs to mind. I think it is probably slightly better for memory to make up your own, but having said that there are some stories which have really stuck in my mind which I wouldn't have thought of. Plus it allows a faster work rate, as I mentioned above. I've been working for just over a month and am about 1000.

I guess some would say that you will have a higher failure rate if you work fast and use others' stories; I guess that's true but I would personally rather push through the book and then spend a little extra time reviewing than draw out the process over a year or more. As heisig says himself, one of the points of the method is to get a large portion of your kanji study out the way in one hit allowing you time to concentrate on other aspects of japanese.. kanji related or not. It was interesting to see some the time some other people have been spending on this book... I realise that each individual's situation will vary greatly but, to me, spending too long on this method seems a little contrary to the intention of the author... and maybe even counter-productive. I'd be interested to know the opinion of those who are taking more time with the book??

Obviously this is just my theory from having worked with the book so far, so I could very well be wrong ;p

i cant affort traditional lessons, not to mention the places where i could learn them are not closeby.
for me the reason to use heisig is not to speed trough learning kanji, but to finish learning a basis framwork that is usefull and later can be build upon further.

mine goal is JUST to finish the hesig book 1.

as part of mine plan to be fluent enough to read manga/watch anime, play h-games/rpg`s and be able to read igo related study material before i turn 30.
that is 4 years ahead so taking 1.5 years untill i finish heisig 1 would be perfectly acceptable(im already working on it for 7 months now)

slow and steady wins the race

I work in a school in Kanazawa, and often study kanji in my free periods. My study has generated quite a lot of interest from my Japanese co-workers. Most of them are impressed by the number of "difficult" kanji that I know, although occasionally I do get comments like "that kanji isn't used" (with the inference, so why are you bothering to learn it?). However, some teachers have shown a real interest in the system and when I explain it, many of them comment"I need a book like this! Can you buy this book in Japanese?"

I agree with Immacolata that being relatively advanced in kanji compared with other aspects of my Japanese is not a problem. I'm often surprised when I understand newspaper headlines, school notices, movie subtitles, etc even if I haven't a clue how to say them. Just the fact that I'm not staring at a string of apparently meaningless symbols makes it more likely that I'll bother trying to read something. That's meant that I've just kind of accidentally put together a number of kanji compounds with words I'd heard around me a lot. I have put grammar on hold a little in order to study kanji, but given I was finding it a little overwhelming to study everything at once, I hope this means when I finally finish RTP1(!) that I'll find it quicker to progress in other ways as I'm not getting bogged down by the kanji I can't read.

As far as efficiency goes, I agree with ivoSF. I don't think it matters how long it takes you to complete the book, if you're happy with your own goals. I started learning Japanese just over 2 years ago. After 6 months I started learning kanji and when I moved to Japan last August, I knew around 200 kanji, including readings. Okay, I wasn't exactly slaving at it, but I definitely found the last 50 really slow going, and they just weren't sticking. I started Heisig last October, and I've had 2-3 weeks off every so often but have learnt around 1600 in 9 months. It is a little slower than some people, I admit! I still think it's a lot more efficient than my original method though.

By the way, does anyone know if there is a similar book for Japanese people?

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