Hey everyone!

I didn't see an introduction topic so let me introduce myself a bit as it is my first post. I'm a college student and next year I have the good fortune of being able to do study abroad for the next two semesters. My Japanese experience formally began when I entered college so I only have 2 years of classes under my belt. Kanji has always been my weak point in my ongoing attempt to learn Japanese. Although I go to a pretty decent University, it was always enough to get by on the tests in class by just remembering the Kanji that were needed for the test. Soon after the test, however, the old Kanji would flow out with the new ones from the next chapter. Needless to say, after 2 years of studying Kanji - 4 college courses - I hardly remember much at all (which saddens me deeply).

I tested out RTK's method and found that it yielded pretty good results.I managed to remember most of them the next day and even though I discontinued use of the book due to school priorities taking up most of my time I was able to remember around half now. I am unsure if I was doing the "stories" right even though I read the introduction twice.

I would look at the kanji and try to imagine the story written for them in my head without writing anything. When I tried remembering the kanji I studied, there was variation in how I recalled them. Some I would just remember without recalling the story. Others I would have some sort of grasp for the story, like it would be similar to the story but not exactly what it was, others would be the exact story except I would miss one part. As of now, I even completely forget some.

The thing I wasn't too sure of doing back then was what I should write down. I should write down the stories, but not the Kanji right? I did right them down a couple times before imagining their stories, but I never once wrote (copied) a story for any of the Kanji's I studied since they were already written out by him. So what should I be writing down exactly? I was thinking about just writing down or reading the story a bunch of times until most of it stuck with me. I read from somebody's review of the book that they drew pictures of the scene in their mind so I didn't know if I should go that route or not. Also, this was floating into my head as an idea but would it be wrong to learn all the primitives he introduces first? As in memorize them completely first, then proceed with the book? It may seem like a silly question, but I just want to be sure of myself. Oh, and in addition to that question, what do you guys do when trying to remember stories? I'm guessing its easier to remember the ones you make up yourself right?

Anyway, now that I have an extra long summer vacation, I want to fully dedicate myself to this method and since I'm willing to dump entire days into this in the pursuit of fluency, I'm going to try to memorize some vocab while I'm at.

Thanks for the help everyone. It's much appreciated. If you can spare any other advice, please do.

Thanks again!

~ Arc

I think you should (re-)read lesson 11 if you are unsure of how the method works. The chapter describes the steps you should follow when learning a kanji and gives advice what to do if you have trouble remembering how to write a kanji.

(I added this since you didn't mention if/how you review)
One more thing, you need to review if you don't want to forget what you have learned. The book describes one possible way of using paper flash cards (lesson 5), but that text was written when most people didn't have computers. Paper flash cards can be useful, but they take time to create and you will end up with over 2000 cards. Instead, you should use an SRS (Spaced Repetion Software) such as the one on this website (designed for RTK) or one that is more general (Anki is very popular here). The SRS will keep track of how well you remember a kanji and when you need to review it next time.

I can tell you what I did - others will too, then you can find what works best for you -

I kept a notebook - drew the kanji and wrote a story down for it. I used my minds eye to visualize the story most of the time. The beauty of RTK is that the order and repetition of the primitives allows them to naturally become memorized, so I don't recommend learning them in isolation. Some people don't write the stories out - you could also use anki or this site, and put your stories there or copy stories from others. Just do whatever helps you learn them. I like writing them, because it helps me learn it (stories and kanji), and I want to be able to hand write in Japanese (kanji). I was also glad I had the notebooks later on, when I missed reviews for three plus months and redid RTK-> it went really fast because I just breezed through my notebooks. Also the stories are just mnemonic, only important in that they help you learn the kanji - same with key words. As you go, story's will be dropped and you'll just write them thinking of the primitives, then those go and you just know it when you are tested by the key word, and then you eventually might not use the key word. I don't do RTK myself anymore, just learn Japanese words, with the Kanji and all the primitives having formed a familiar pattern in my mind that makes Japanese couplets become memorized relatively quickly (it's the phonetics I struggle with).

Don't forget the Kanji -> use SRS to review them. This will fix that problem for you. If you are consistent, you will get into a rhythm with RTK after a while and have a better sense of what your method is. And don't be shy about changing the primitives to things that have stronger meaning for you -> I did this about 3/4 of the way through, and wished I had started it earlier. Remember, your RTK is just a mnemonic, using the associations in you mind to help you remember -> mold it to what works best for you.

I think it's important to write out the kanji, so you can be confident in the stroke order and the number of strokes. These are important if you will ever use an electronic dictionary with handwriting recognition.

Zarxrax Wrote:I think it's important to write out the kanji, so you can be confident in the stroke order and the number of strokes. These are important if you will ever use an electronic dictionary with handwriting recognition.

This and it makes your handwriting better.

Try going monolingual, trust me that will help you in ways you never imagined.
Use japanese to look up more japanese via a dictionary, example would be yahoo.jp.

Arc432 Wrote:I would look at the kanji and try to imagine the story written for them in my head

That's the method in a nutshell.

Quote:The thing I wasn't too sure of doing back then was what I should write down. I should write down the stories, but not the Kanji right?

Only the crazy zealots from this forum would ever reccomend something like that.

No, visualize the story, then the primitive elements, and write out the kanji. Be sure to get the stroke order right.
This site has been extremely useful: http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjid...3?OpenForm
Muscle memory can be very important; sometimes I cannot remember a character until I begin to write it out.

Don't forget that the stories are just a prop, and that the true genius of Heisig lays in the kanji framenumber--Learning characters by the primitive elements that they share saves a ton of effort no matter how you go about it.

hereticalrants Wrote:

Arc432 Wrote:I would look at the kanji and try to imagine the story written for them in my head

That's the method in a nutshell.

Quote:The thing I wasn't too sure of doing back then was what I should write down. I should write down the stories, but not the Kanji right?

Only the crazy zealots from this forum would ever reccomend something like that.

No, visualize the story, then the primitive elements, and write out the kanji. Be sure to get the stroke order right.

Are you saying not to write down the stories at all? Man, you people must have some
pretty powerful imaginative memory. Let me guess: astrophysicist, by trade, right?
And if poor hereticalrants forgets a story totally, he would have to re-invent one right on, or start searching for one on the study page? No.
First make your stories. Keep them in a steady format (electronically, on paper, or whatever), and start your anki reviews...
I must be pretty dumb or something, but there was no way I could keep 2042 stories in my head, even with an SRS, without having them somewhere saved in a file or something.
Funny thing is I never wrote down any kanji when studying them, I "wrote them down" only with my eyes, and that's it.
Isn't muscle memory = rote memorization in this context? Aren't we supposed to avoid that with Heisig?

Heisig suggests writing them once as you review, and once as you initially write the story, as I recall.

I save stories here, but I very, very rarely reference them for anything more than 200 kanji back. Once I see a kanji the story usually comes right back to me even if I didn't remember it from the keyword.

Write it out at least once, it helps a lot. In the beginning when starting out, write it 2-3 times. But after a while you should be able to write it flawlessly with one turn.

Raschaverak Wrote:

hereticalrants Wrote:

Arc432 Wrote:I would look at the kanji and try to imagine the story written for them in my head

That's the method in a nutshell.

Quote:The thing I wasn't too sure of doing back then was what I should write down. I should write down the stories, but not the Kanji right?

Only the crazy zealots from this forum would ever reccomend something like that.

No, visualize the story, then the primitive elements, and write out the kanji. Be sure to get the stroke order right.

Are you saying not to write down the stories at all? Man, you people must have some
pretty powerful imaginative memory. Let me guess: astrophysicist, by trade, right?
And if poor hereticalrants forgets a story totally, he would have to re-invent one right on, or start searching for one on the study page? No.

He said only crazy people would recommend not writing the stories. Hence; he says it is in fact important to write them down.

Quote:Funny thing is I never wrote down any kanji when studying them, I "wrote them down" only with my eyes, and that's it.

How is your knowledge of stroke order? I'm curious.

Quote:Isn't muscle memory = rote memorization in this context? Aren't we supposed to avoid that with Heisig?

Muscle memory has absolutely nothing to do with memorising how to write the kanji by writing them over and over. Muscle memory can also happen if you've just written the kanji 2 or 3 times and it actually triggers your memory of the kanji, like the stories and elements do. Heisig actually recommends writing them down once or twice. That's enough to get it in your muscle memory.

Koos83 Wrote:Muscle memory has absolutely nothing to do with memorising how to write the kanji by writing them over and over. Muscle memory can also happen if you've just written the kanji 2 or 3 times and it actually triggers your memory of the kanji, like the stories and elements do. Heisig actually recommends writing them down once or twice. That's enough to get it in your muscle memory.

What is this muscle memory exactly? The more I read about it the more convinced I am that this is almost the same as rote memorization. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory,
"it involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition"
If repeating a certain thing with one or 2 times, and than it gets instantly into my "muscle memory", then this memory is one of the most effective I've ever heard of....
How much does this muscle memory contribute to learning a kanji, overall? If it doesn't help memorizing the writing (like the stroke order you've mentioned) (which I would consider the only relevant and valid purpose), then in what part of the learning process does it help? I highly doubt it that, writing a kanji down 2 or 3 times, would trigger anything, or would help memorizing the kanji (specially in the long term memory)....but I could be wrong
Oh and if I recall correctly, Heisig mentions, that you should indeed write them down, but only to get a "feel" for it. Nothing more.

Raschaverak Wrote:What is this muscle memory exactly? The more I read about it the more convinced I am that this is almost the same as rote memorization. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory,
"it involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition"
If repeating a certain thing with one or 2 times, and than it gets instantly into my "muscle memory", then this memory is one of the most effective I've ever heard of....
How much does this muscle memory contribute to learning a kanji, overall? If it doesn't help memorizing the writing (like the stroke order you've mentioned) (which I would consider the only relevant and valid purpose), then in what part of the learning process does it help?

I don't think it's the same as rote learning in that it's specifically about motor control; you could in theory learn the kanji by rote without ever writing them out with a pen (although the traditional kanji learning process usually described as "by rote" probably leans heavily on muscle memory). I think it's basically the difference between writing kanji and just "drawing" them. I agree that two or three repetitions is nowhere near enough for this to kick in, though. I think that if you do any amount of longhand writing in Japanese you'll automatically acquire muscle memory of how to write at least most of the primitives and common kanji anyhow.

Muscle memory is infact seperate from rote memorization.

I solve Rubik's cubes and play an instrument.

Rubik's cubes are solved with 50 some different sequences of moves called algorithms. One such is F R U R' U' F'. F corresponds to a turn of the F face; there are videos on youtube if you want to learn more. When you're first solving the cube, you will say the algorithm in your head. It will have been memorized from some input with either visual or audio memory (audio in my case.) Eventually, after performing it repeatedly, you will be able to do perform second naturedly and forget F R U R' U' F'. You can perform it but not remember it. This is physical memory.

The same applies to playing musical instruments. If you're doing wrong, it will not only look/sound wrong but feel wrong, believe me, its both physical and visual/audio memory going on.

Can you hold a pencil? Your certainly can't describe how you hold it or what the hold looks like, but you can do it. This is physical memory.

The problem is, though, that physical memory is felt, not observed, and it is hard to use as an example for teaching. This fact is huge in educational methodology theory.

hmmm interesting. Maybe this is what I'm doing. I no longer orient things with RTK, but maybe drawing/writing the kanji so many thousands and thousands of times has them physically wired in place - so learning new words taps into this as well. How to write it, is usually is the easiest part of a new word for me to remember (though not always).

There's also the fact that by both reading something and writing it, you are remembering it in two different areas of your brain, making it more lodged in there.

About the once or twice thing: when you review, I assume you write down the kanji? I've finished RTK1 about 5 months ago and I still write down my reviews. So it's not like I write it down in total one or two times, but when I was studying RTK I'd write it down once or twice while making a story and going through the rest of the process. That was enough for my hand to remember how to write certain primitives (sometimes I'd need to write them 6 times to get the primitive to feel right and comfortable, but not often).

Now, sometimes my hand will automatically write a common primitive somewhere, one that often follows another primitive I've just written, even though I know it doesn't go there. Then I have to write the kanji again. I had that today with fog (霧). My hand kept writing 'mouth' instead of 'power' on the bottom right, because that part looks so much like 'each'. And that happened not once, but twice in a row. Had to rewrite it and actually stop before writing power to make sure I got it right the third time. That's muscle memory. My hand just does it without me consciously thinking about it. It's the same as how you described playing a musical instrument, Dragonsheep. It feels wrong if you play a wrong note, and often your hands can just play the notes without you thinking about it.