Hey Folks, I´d like to know when exactly you think a kanji is learned. I just recently found out that I used the Heisig method in a way that is not very effective which was not "seeing" the images in your mind, but this is discussed in other threads already.

Now that I figured out how to see the stories of the kanji with my mind it has become a lot easier to remember most of the kanji, but at the same time it´s often quite difficult to "maintain" the image for a few seconds. Do you think that if I can just see the image of a kanji I create in my head for an instant and if I then write it down, i can consider it "learned"?

And also I would like to know how you learn kanji compounds. Do you always try to see the images of the kanji that a compound comprises of or do you just write it down if you are familiar enough with it? Cause if you first try to create the image in your head, that would become a rather slo/ long review, I think.

I guess the idea behind Heisig is, to be capable of seeing a kanji in a very unique way, namely in an imaginatory way. Heisig's method is like a "brain jogging" game, which motivates your brain to create funny/grotesque/etc. stories, which stay in your mind - to resemble the kanji.. Remembering all these kanjis like all the textbook tell you to do is fine, as long as you live in japan and see the kanjis around your 24/7, but i guess you won't see them quite often in a western society (like Germany f.e.). So we have to create images for each kanjis. A kanjis is learned when you are able to retell the story like you learned it for kanji nr.x, that's it, in my opinion at least. A kanji is therefore unlearnt if you cannot repeat the story (logical, huh?).
Take your time maintaining the image, take it. Even if it's 5 minutes per kanji, it's worth it, trust me. It will never ever leave your mind (nightmares of kanjis.. i had that once. I had to write a maths exam in japanese and i did not understand a word what the teacher wanted me to do - not because my japanese sucked, but because i sucked in maths lol)

Regards,
T.

Some like to say 'never', some like to say after the card is next due in 1 year or more, some like to say when the next interval is 'after you have died'.
Bottom line is that its best to keep reviewing it for as long as possible...

And I wouldn't approach learning compounds the same way as kanji, they are just vocab and should be learned on their own, for instance in the context of a sentence.

However, when learning a new word I do take a moment and look at what kanji are used in it. For instance I just learned this word: 天馬【てんば】, which means pegasus (yay mining from fire emblem ). The word is made up from the character 天, which means heaven, and the character 馬, which means horse. In this case the kanji used are quite obvious and logical (horse from heaven), so the compound is easy to remember. However I don't go as far as creating a specific story, furthermore not all words are constructed in such an obvious logical way.

Such a question is purely academic.
A sentence is learned when you can understand it in context.
Not knowing words and grammar will make it impossible to understand sentences.
Not knowing kanji will make it impossible to read words.
Kanji are not the goal; understanding is.

Two basic methods for learning jukugo (熟語):
The word method, where you study words. Kanji -> Kana + Meaning. Getting either wrong means you fail the card and have to try again.

And the sentence method, which I don't really understand. I don't do the sentence method, but if I did, I'd underline a part of the sentence, and the challenge question for your SRS card is "Do you know this word / Do you understand this part of the sentence." Once sentence seems like too hard of a challenge for an SRS card, to me, especially if it has more than one unknown word or grammar in it. I would put the sentence in twice with different parts underlined.

There's the bottom up approach:
Learn kanji, then words and grammar, then sentences.

And the opposite approach:
Get some sentences
Identify words & grammar you don't know and study those
Identify kanji you don't know and study those

I stopped reviewing RTK a year after I finished it, and I never really looked back. RTK gave me tools, and I use them on kanji. That's about it. Once I got into learning Japanese in the style I like to learn in, I stopped worrying so much about individual kanji, and worried more about words and their meanings in context.

RTK gave me placeholders to fill with Japanese. So for the first push, it is most definitely useful. But once I got past a certain point, I just didn't feel like I needed it anymore. 大 is だい. It's not anything else in my brain. 金 is かね. It will always be かね, except when it's きん. 鉄 is てつ. Same goes for a lot of other kanji, the Heisig words for which I couldn't tell you even if you came at me with a 砲, a 剣, and an 犬.

Sentence reviewing is as easy or as hard as you make it. If you put in a huge sentence full of material or concepts you don't understand, then of course you are setting yourself up for a World of Pain. Short sentences work best. Short sentences work best. Short sentences work best. (It bears repeating.)

You can learn both grammar and vocab through sentences. It's not hard at all.

Start with short sentences full of things you get, with one or two things you don't, and build from there. It's not rocket science. Don't just think one sentence will cover a vocab word or a grammar concept. It takes me at least 3-4 sentences to do it, sometimes more, depending on the concept. Sometimes a lot more.

Studying some verb conjugations may require cloze deletion drill sentences that will span the spectrum of possible conjugations. That's what used textbooks and grammar drill books are for. They're filled with this kind of stuff. Low-hanging fruit. Good OCR speeds things up tremendously.

As for studying only the underlined part of a sentence, well, if you only zero in on the underlined part of a sentence, what's the point of the rest of the sentence if you don't care whether or not you can understand it? You might as well just review isolated vocabulary. But the problem there is the lack of context you get from staring at word and not know how it's used.

"Domicile. One's home or dwelling. A residence." Can lead to:

"Hey, let's go hang out at your domicile today!"
"Oh, I see you painted your domicile a new shade of chartreuse! That's an interesting segment of the spectrum to employ!"
"So, your domicile or mine?"

That's why I prefer sentences. At least I get some context.

I treat the whole sentence as a binary issue, I either get the whole thing or I don't.

If I don't get the whole sentence, I flunk it, even if the flunked chunk is something I should already know. (Especially if it's something I should already know! Something is wrong here!)

If it doesn't come quickly, it gets a 2, and if it comes too slowly, I flunk it to encourage faster recall. It only gets a 3 if it comes to mind right away. 4 if it's like breathing.

But that's my approach. It works for me. Everyone here is experimenting, and reporting their results.

The trick is finding a style you like to learn in, and sticking to it if it works. If it doesn't work, be flexible enough to change it or dump it. But stick to the overall process, and you should still get some sort of results.

I agree with the above. Using Anki, if it takes me a few seconds to remember the Kanji, I'll still hit "3" (Good). If I have to show the story for a hint, then I push (2) Hard. If I wrote the Kanji wrong or still couldn't remember it, I just (1) Again.

Heisig isn't for learning Kanji, it's for learning how to differentiate between the mass of squiggly lines. You learn the Kanji by doing sentences. So as long as you feel like you can identify that kanji, the keyword connection is pointless after that.

zachandhobbes Wrote:So as long as you feel like you can identify that kanji, the keyword connection is pointless after that.

Unless you want to write it...

Well that is implied with the whole process. I mean, by the time you can easily identify a Kanji, you'll have done the repetitions on Anki so many times. I haven't gotten a single mature card yet, but I have a 90% retention rate of kanjis (I'm up to 500 in Heisig, so not that high yet) and I write every kanji every time.

When you see the Kanji, you'll see the primitives. That is how you identify it.

If you can see the primitives, you can easily write it.

zachandhobbes Wrote:... the keyword connection is pointless after that.

You might not want to hang onto the English keywords, but being able to associate a concept with the kanji is valuable.

Quote:If you can see the primitives, you can easily write it.

Nope.

Well, whatever you say. Personally I think as soon as you can you should ditch the english keywords and meanings. They are an obstruction that we use because we have nothing else to use. I remember Kanjis that I know the Japanese definition of (for instance, 見), because when I see "see" keyword, I think of the Japanese word "見る" almost instantly. I don't have to even refer to my story because I just make that connection. When you're done with Heisig you should leave with the ability to distinguish two different complex looking Kanji so you can learn how to pronounce and learn what they actually mean.

If I had a strong sense of Japanese I wouldn't even use English keywords or stories, but obviously since I'm doing RtK, I don't really have a strong sense of Japanese.

You haven't learned a Kanji if you can merely write it... you have learned it when you know all there is to know. That's why I think OP is a bit off, because Heisig will not help you learn Kanji except for being able to identify them.

From experience, do RTK.It will give you the ability to recognize the meanings and you will have the ability to write. Once that's done, then head into real context.

After doing a lot of sentences, I soon switched to monolingual for a while. I must say, that's the best thing you can do. It's pretty much the only way to become fluent(or at least fast). It allows you to understand japanese to japanese, which is what everyone intent is. When you can understand what you/what you read without ever thinking about the translation and you can just "understand" it. Then your set. Reason why I quoted "understand" is, it takes time. Give yourself a while, but you will know when you can understand it fully in it's language.

caivano Wrote:

zachandhobbes Wrote:So as long as you feel like you can identify that kanji, the keyword connection is pointless after that.

Unless you want to write it...

Primitive keywords will always be useful when encountering unknown kanji. Kanji keywords... it varies greatly, but those tend to fade as you learn Japanese.

As for reading/writing: The way I see it, reading is simply identifying the word the kanji is in, knowing its pronunciation and meaning. Production is the ability to generate a word made up of kanji just from its readings (whether the readings come from generated text or the voices in your head). Writing is the ability to create coherent content made up of the words and grammar you can produce. Penmanship is the ability to create legible words. All different skills, but all important in pen-and-paper literacy. (Penmanship not so much in digital literacy.)

If you want to have good handwriting, pick up a good book on ペン字. RTK isn't an end-all "how to write kanji" guide. There are better books out there on how to do that, and they all happen to be in Japanese, which is great! Because you can learn a lot of Japanese that way.

One really *good* thing about doing RTK reviews is that you can practice your penmanship. I used to do them with a brush pen to work on my calligraphy/書道. Kept me from getting bored when I did them, but it would work with ペン字 as well.

If you want to get better at pulling kanji out of your head from hiragana readings, you can try production (but I'll warn you, it's time-consuming, and will wind up eating your deck.) A lot of people don't like production cards for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is that it's time-consuming. You don't have to write out the sentences, or even the kanji. You can just draw the kanji in the air with a finger to save time. Works just as well. But I find I can pull kanji out of my head a lot easier than if I don't do it. YMMV.

Or you can just sit down and write about stuff, and get it critiqued by people who know the language well. That's the more natural way to do it. Writing will use all three skills-- production, writing, and penmanship. Just a question of how you want to go about it.

As I said earlier, it's about learning styles. How do you want to tackle it? By parts, or as a whole? 2 different people are going to approach it 2 different ways. But there are a lot of skills you can pick up along the way either way go.