Hello all,
I was terribly disappointed to see that the above discussion was terminated. I feel that Ms. Tham is clearly a very intelligent person. It was the replies that seemed to go beyond the bounds of civil discourse. This technology impaired, middle-aged, Japanese American speech therapist is sad. I have really appreciated that support of the members of this forum and feel that if Heisig's methods are indeed sound they will stand up to any and all criticism.
Laura

I think Mr. Fabrice stated his reasons pretty clearly and he didn't place blame on anyone for it. He urged users to freely continue the various discussions separately in a civil matter. What's the trouble?


Criticism of Heisig is fine, but only when accompanied by (reasonably) rational arguments. Often she would drop statements about "this is the most efficient" or "this is better" or "why would you..." without substantiating her comments. This leaves no room for debate, and should not have to be tolerated. Here are a few such instances, with surrounding text to show that I am not taking it out of context:

Quote:

JimmySeal Wrote:If it's any reflection on teaching in Japan, my teacher (日本人, I took one year of 2nd year Japanese in college) taught kanji very much in a "here, learn this, and quickly" kind of way.

This is called learning Kanji by "context", and it's actually the most effective way of learning kanji (once you get to intermediate level). The problem is, it's not very effective for beginners (because it comes across as completely random and you don't have the background to effectively learn by context) - I think too many teachers use this method too early in the process.

Here, no explanation about why it's the most efficient. Simply a bold, irrefutable statement. And Ms. Tham, if you're listening, please do not try to say again that this is a personal statement that I am misconstruing, because there is no possible way to interpret this as you only talking about yourself.

Here's one more:

Quote:I started learning kanji using Heisig's system. At the end of the day, Heisig's system is just a memorization technique to get you familiar with the shapes of the 2000 characters, and keywords associated with them. When you complete RTK1, you actually haven't learned any kanji at all, at least not in the sense that a Japanese literate person would consider learning. You don't know the readings, you can't differentiate between noun/verb usage, you will not be able to understand compounds (I know, because I have tried).

What's worse, I discovered Heisig's method is actually counterproductive in the long term, because he does not distinguish between phonetic and semantic markers, hence his method is detrimental to the most effective way of learning Kanji (composite phonetic/semantic marker decomposition).

Again, no substantiation about why this other method is better, or even important, and therefore no substantiation about why Heisig's method is "counterproductive."

And even if she was speaking on a personal note (and if so, she sure did as little as possible to make it look that way), dingomick's advice is very valid:

Quote:Finally, as a word of advice, never rely on anyone to simply understand you from context by adding "to me" to your statements. It doesn't matter how personal and overtly individual a piece can be, bold statements must be clarified. "Japan is a shitty country" would offend a lot of people even if you'd spent a whole book saying it was all a personal opinion and you know many people who love Japan.

I, too, was saddened that the original thread was shut down. Although I believe that Fabrice did so with the best intentions for the website, I feel that it is better to let things calm down on their own pace whenever possible.

My post to the original topic was
a) my genuine interest in a method/concept that Ms. Tham had brought up
b) an attempt to focus the discussion on a complementary (and/or alternate) concept/method that Ms. Tham had raised.

I wish that Fabrice would have waited just a bit longer to see if my post (and possibly others who may have joined in) would have been successful in redirecting the discussion.

Without opening the kettle of worms of "who is at fault for being inflammatory" I want to acknowledge Ms. Tham for her insights and contributions to this website. I hope that she will continue to contribute.

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To my defense I think it's only the second time I closed a topic since the forum's inception. Practice makes perfect as they say, and yes I did it with the best intentions.

I hope you did not take offense to my expressing sadness that you shut the thread down.

I do understand why you did it. And in your defense, you did tolerate the volatile nature this thread had taken on for quite a while. As I said, I just wish you might have waited a bit longer to see if my post (and perhaps others) might have got the thread back to a more productive discussion.

I hope that we will continue to discuss complementary and alternative methods to the Heisig approach.

Although I did not complete RTK1 using a purely Heisig approach, I feel that I was able to complete it in large part thanks to this marvelous website that you have created. The study pages and forum have been invaluable to me.

Thank you!

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Quote:I hope that we will continue to discuss complementary and alternative methods to the Heisig approach.

Sure will!

JimmySeal Wrote:

Quote:This is called learning Kanji by "context", and it's actually the most effective way of learning kanji (once you get to intermediate level). The problem is, it's not very effective for beginners (because it comes across as completely random and you don't have the background to effectively learn by context) - I think too many teachers use this method too early in the process.

Here, no explanation about why it's the most efficient. Simply a bold, irrefutable statement. And Ms. Tham, if you're listening, please do not try to say again that this is a personal statement that I am misconstruing, because there is no possible way to interpret this as you only talking about yourself.

In the interest of helping Laura and Chadokoro_K and any others who have expressed interest in alternate Kanji learning methods, let me try and explain the context about this statement, and I will do so without any attempt at commenting on Heisig (if I can).

The statement that learning Kanji by context is "the most effective way of learning kanji (once you get to intermediate level)" is a statement made by my teacher, and also implicitly backed up by the book "Kanji in Context".

There are several reasons why this is an effective method, and it has to do with the way we think and remember things. I can try and explain them to you, but in the interest of avoiding an exchange where you are questioning my justifications, I would suggest you talk to my teacher (I can give you his email address if you want - I am not sure he is very email literate though) or you could try and contact the authors of Kanji In Context at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies.

In particular, I will urge you to read the Preface to "Kanji in Context", where they state that their method is based on studying "various methods" for teaching kanji, leading to "intensive research and trials". You will also find in the Introduction (pages 23-24) a brief explanation of why it is not necessary to study the full Jouyou set.

As for me not providing an explanation, I have in fact given this explanation to you before, in another post. Perhaps you may have missed that post (not surprising, since it's a long thread).

Quote:Here's one more:

Quote:I started learning kanji using Heisig's system. At the end of the day, Heisig's system is just a memorization technique to get you familiar with the shapes of the 2000 characters, and keywords associated with them. When you complete RTK1, you actually haven't learned any kanji at all, at least not in the sense that a Japanese literate person would consider learning. You don't know the readings, you can't differentiate between noun/verb usage, you will not be able to understand compounds (I know, because I have tried).

What's worse, I discovered Heisig's method is actually counterproductive in the long term, because he does not distinguish between phonetic and semantic markers, hence his method is detrimental to the most effective way of learning Kanji (composite phonetic/semantic marker decomposition).

Again, no substantiation about why this other method is better, or even important, and therefore no substantiation about why Heisig's method is "counterproductive."

Okay, let me try and substantiate this, and I will keep my reference to Heisig to a bare minimum:

1. Over 80% of kanji characters are composite phonetic/semantic markers. This is a statement of fact, and quoted in various books. For example, I currently have a book called "Illustrated Japanese characters" that state this.
2. RTK1 does not distinguish between phonetic/semantic markers. This is a statement of fact, because RTK1 does not teach the readings (intentionally), therefore distinguishing phonetic markers would not be possible. Yes, I do know that RTK2 talks about phonetic markers, but by this time it is possibly too late (see point 5).
3. "the most effective way of learning Kanji (composite phonetic/semantic marker decomposition)." This is a statement made by my teacher, and this technique is practiced in class, therefore I have first hand experience that the technique works, and is effective. Is it the "most" effective? I don't know, but I am relying on the judgement of my teacher.
4. Is it more effective than RTK1? Let's compare the difference between you, who have studied RTK1 and passed JLPT1, against an advanced student in my class [note: this is not me, at least, not yet]. You say you know 1200 characters but have difficulty pronouncing (ie. "reading") the other 800 characters. Can I suggest that if you had mastered the technique that I was talking about, you should be able to guess the meaning AND reading of any new characters you encounter (provided they are composite characters, which will be extremely likely if you already know 1200) purely by decomposing the character into semantic and phonetic markers. I have seen people, including myself (with a lot of hints), do this successfully in class, with a high accuracy rate.
5. RTK1 is "counterproductive" because if you accept that composite character decomposition is a powerful technique (and perhaps the "most" effective technique), then at some stage it would be worthwhile for you to learn it. RTK1 is counterproductive to this because to learn the technique, you need to unwind any stories that confuse between semantic and phonetic markers. This may or may not be an easy thing to do, depending on how "locked" the stories are in your brain. If you have been studying RTK1 using this site, they may be deeply ingrained in your brain and difficult to unwind (my personal opinion).
6. You could argue that the above technique does not work for kunyomi readings, and that's true. However, once you have studied at least 1000 characters, so my teacher argues, you already know nearly all the kunyomi readings. Additional characters are very likely to be composite characters with only onyomi readings. This is why the technique works AFTER 800-1200 characters, but not BEFORE.

Can I stress that, whilst I am trying to explain the above a little bit more carefully this time, if you search my previous posts you may have noticed I have already given the gist of this argument, several times. So to claim that I have provided "no substantiation" is a little unfair, I believe.

As a closing note, and in the hope that future discussions can be more productive, if in the future you see any statements I have made that appear to be lacking in substantiation, all you need to do is ask me to substantiate it (politely would be nice). As you can see, I am more than happy to substantiate, and quote references. I would prefer if you didn't start by saying I'm wrong, or not experienced enough to comment (which you have done before in previous posts) because that naturally puts me in a defensive position, and then any statements I make are likely to be interpreted as criticism of Heisig.

Hello Cristine, et al.

Thank you for your posts. I went back and re-read your previous posts, because I think you are on to something that will help me a lot. I too have been using De Roo. I have been trying to use Heisig's kanji sequence and De Roo's etymologies and I am up 220 with Heisig. In addition, I have been watching a lot of Japanese music videos with Japanese subtitles and the musical, "Elizabeth" from the Takarazuka review which is subtitled. It's the story of the last Emperor and Empress of the Hapsburg empire. And I have been reading various short articles from a Japanese magazine called "Kageki" using my wordtank and De Roo. Complete obsession with something Japanese, in my case, musicals, helps a lot.

I am able to do what the Heisig method requires, but everyday I have had more doubts. Here is the kicker, I imputed an article/interview into the reading function of this website and to my astonishment, I was able to read about 80% of it. Out of about 250 different kanji that appeared in this article only 3 were kanji I had covered using Heisig. How did I learn the other kanji? Most of them were in the musical Elizabeth which I have watched so many times, that I know the songs and the rest I had learned reading Japanese at the rate of about one paragraph every hour or hour and a half. And I noticed what Cristine has been saying. The second kanji of a compound word often does not add to the meaning. I learned both the grammatical meaning of "no ni" and "hazu" from the lyric, ?Tada no shoujo no hazu na no ni, ore no subete ga kuzureru and most of the kanji. When I encountered the word "houkai or collapse I already knew that the first kanji meant collapse because it was the same kanji in kuzureru. Even before I looked up all the kanji I didn't know in De Roo and used my word tank to find the compound words, I understood this article fairly well. What hit me was the relatively small benefit I had gained from using Heisig.

Now I need a more systematic approach. I think the real value of Heisig for me is the idea of attaching one primary meaning to each kanji. This works for me, but I am going to figure out a way to learn the Kanji in the order of usefulness. I need to develop some kind of structured SRS system. I am really good at processing and remembering auditory information and really bad at organizing things. To Cristine, your posts have been invaluable.

Best

p.s. Also, thank you to Mr. Fabrice. Being the watchdog can be a thankless job at times and I appreciate all your efforts to keep this site going.

I myself will try to be a bit more civil from here on. Christine, if you will, I hope you will join me in this thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=755

Christine Wrote:What's worse, I discovered Heisig's method is actually counterproductive in the long term, because he does not distinguish between phonetic and semantic markers, hence his method is detrimental to the most effective way of learning Kanji (composite phonetic/semantic marker decomposition).

Lately I haven't read this series of threads, so forgive me if I ask something already explained. It called my attention this paragraph, because you say that "Heisigh's method is actually counterproductive IN THE LONG TERM", eventhough you don't seem to have been studied Japanese for such a long time. So, unless you have studied Japanese for more time that I understand, or know someone who has finished RK a long while ago, that observation would be just a personal estimation that hasn't proved to be right or wrong.

Couldn't it be even easier to study kanji by your method after having completed RK in a couple of months? Couldn't they be complementary rather than antagonistic?

And note that I'm making questions, not stating anything, since neither do I have enough experience as to discard any system yet.

I don't remember the original author of this, why do some people erase the original author when quoting? >_< Wrote:Finally, as a word of advice, never rely on anyone to simply understand you from context by adding "to me" to your statements. It doesn't matter how personal and overtly individual a piece can be, bold statements must be clarified. "Japan is a shitty country" would offend a lot of people even if you'd spent a whole book saying it was all a personal opinion and you know many people who love Japan.

Personally, I prefer trying to take what is useful for me, instead of living worrying about other people's sayings and thoughts. Oh boy, this is an internet forum, nobody will die because he read something "unpleasant" on a pc monitor! Relax and take it easy man, life is too short to waste it being angry or worrying for things that won't cause you harm

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Christine_Tham Wrote:5. RTK1 is "counterproductive" because if you accept that composite character decomposition is a powerful technique (and perhaps the "most" effective technique), then at some stage it would be worthwhile for you to learn it. RTK1 is counterproductive to this because to learn the technique, you need to unwind any stories that confuse between semantic and phonetic markers. This may or may not be an easy thing to do, depending on how "locked" the stories are in your brain. If you have been studying RTK1 using this site, they may be deeply ingrained in your brain and difficult to unwind (my personal opinion).

If that was true, then you are effectively saying that Mr Heisig didn't plan ahead of time and is fooling every learner of RtK1 who will be unable to go on and use RtK 2 as expected?

RtK2 introduces signal primitives, and like Heisig points out, as if we even needed it to be pointed out : most of his "primitives" correspond directly to chinese radicals and hence the "signal primitives" are your phonetic markers.

RtK2 goes on to group the kanji learned in RtK1 by those phonetic markers. I've read mutliple accounts of people completing RtK2 and proceeding onto advanced literacy in Japanese. You may still find some accounts of this on the japantoday forums. It's just that RtK2's approach seems a bit loose after RtK1 and many learners simply skip it. That fact doesn't in any way support that RtK1 is counterproductive.

I don't understand why stories would confuse someone between semantic and phonetic markers. Stories using the same primitives should generally have the same images, and hence point to the same phonetic components. Only in RtK1 you don't know yet which "primitives" will become "signal primitives". How does that make it confusing or difficult to know afterwards?

For example in Heisig's stories you will eventually figure out that many kanji including "old / tomb" have the on yomi reading "KO" :

古估居固姑怙沽枯倨個裾

I am not specifically trying to defend RtK I just don't agree with your statement. What did I miss?

Also we might have a different vocabulary here. You seem to make a distinction between phonetic and semantic as separate characters? Or did I misunderstand that?

Because I'm pretty sure what actually look like meaning in some characters is phonetic markers, in addition to a semantic component which itself is usually in the prominent position in the character. So most characters have both.

Christine_Tham Wrote:6. You could argue that the above technique does not work for kunyomi readings, and that's true. However, once you have studied at least 1000 characters, so my teacher argues, you already know nearly all the kunyomi readings. Additional characters are very likely to be composite characters with only onyomi readings. This is why the technique works AFTER 800-1200 characters, but not BEFORE.

Did he mean distinct kun yomi? Obviously the distinct readings are less, but you still need to know exactly what Japanese reading goes with what kanji.

Or did your teacher imply that the kanji components can themselves point at the distinct kun yomi ? I've never heard of that yet, if so I would like to hear more about it.

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Quote:I don't remember the original author of this, why do some people erase the original author when quoting?

Whoever wrote that, the simple answer is that not everybody uses the "Quote" option. Quoting the whole post is not necessary most of the time, and is actually bad manner on a forum. So when you quote by hand using the [ quote ] [ / quote ] markers, you have to type in manually the person's name, sometime people forget to do that.

ファブリス Wrote:If that was true, then you are effectively saying that Mr Heisig didn't plan ahead of time and is fooling every learner of RtK1 who will be unable to go on and use RtK 2 as expected?

You have to remember, RTK1 was written based on Heisig's experiences trying to memorize the characters after spending one month in Japan. The book was published based on the notes he kept during this period. At that time, Heisig did not know Japanese at all and can't read, write, speak or listen. The method he devised allowed him to read and assign meanings to characters.

Of course Heisig did not "plan ahead of time" - he simply did not know enough Japanese to do so. And also remember, RTK2 was written years after RTK1. In the preface to RTK2, Heisig clearly stated he never planned for RTK2 when he wrote RTK1.

Quote:Only in RtK1 you don't know yet which "primitives" will become "signal primitives". How does that make it confusing or difficult to know afterwards?

This is my personal opinion only, but if you created a story in RTK1 to help you remember the meaning and primitives in a character, you don't know which component is the phonetic marker, so your story does not distinguish or specially highlight the phonetic marker.

Later on, when you are trying to remember the readings, it would be helpful if your story automatically highlighted the phonetic marker. If you didn't create the story that way in the first place, effectively you have to discard the story and create a new story that distinguishes the phonetic marker (to enable you to remember the reading).

In this sense, the effort in creating the first story that did not highlight the phonetic marker is "counter-productive" because then you need to create TWO stories for each character. Also, if the first story is deeply ingrained through spaced repetition techniques, it may be difficult to overlay a second story. Again, my personal opinion only - perhaps there are people out there that have successfully done this and it's not a problem at all.

Does this make sense, or am I just confusing everyone?

Quote:Also we might have a different vocabulary here. You seem to make a distinction between phonetic and semantic as separate characters? Or did I misunderstand that?

Yes, you misunderstood. When I referred to a "composite phonetic/semantic character" I am referring to ONE character, with a component (ie. a "primitive" if you like) that represents the phonetic marker, and another component that represents the semantic marker.

In other words, the kanji has been specifically created so that you can guess the meaning AND onyomi reading just by looking at it. Because the creator of the kanji designed it this way, it should be possible for the reader to decompose the character back to the meaning and reading components. This is the basis of the technique.

Does that make sense?

Quote:Because I'm pretty sure what actually look like meaning in some characters is phonetic markers, in addition to a semantic component which itself is usually in the prominent position in the character. So most characters have both.

Yes. In fact, over 80% of kanji characters are "composite phonetic/semantic characters." That's why the technique works. Kanji that are NOT composite phonetic/semantic characters, ie. pictographs, are usually learnt as part of the first 1000 characters, so "new" kanji learnt AFTER 1000 are very likely to be composites.

Quote:Did he mean distinct kun yomi? Obviously the distinct readings are less, but you still need to know exactly what Japanese reading goes with what kanji.

Or did your teacher imply that the kanji components can themselves point at the distinct kun yomi ? I've never heard of that yet, if so I would like to hear more about it.

No, the technique does not work AT ALL for kunyomi readings, because the kunyomi reading is not embedded in the character. These need to be memorised effectively by rote. Although the Japanese create poems (ie. waka) and songs to help remember kunyomi readings - I don't know if anyone has systematically collected these. If anyone knows of a book that analyses these, I would be grateful.

The point I was trying to make was: any character encountered after the first 1000 learnt is usually encountered as part of a compound, therefore the kunyomi reading is not applicable.

Transtic Wrote:It called my attention this paragraph, because you say that "Heisigh's method is actually counterproductive IN THE LONG TERM", eventhough you don't seem to have been studied Japanese for such a long time.

Yes, this is my personal opinion only, as I have stated. Take it with a grain (or even a carton) of salt. The rationale for this personal opinion is in the post above.

I must admit, despite having read more than a dozen different books on kanji in the last month, I am still a beginner. My views are still forming. It is entirely possible my opinion may change dramatically over the next few months.

Quote:Couldn't it be even easier to study kanji by your method after having completed RK in a couple of months? Couldn't they be complementary rather than antagonistic?

See my post above. I must admit, initially I thought studying RTK1 and the alternative approach can be done in parallel, because they are complementary, despite Heisig's warning not to do this. I now realise Heisig is right - I must choose one over the other.

Can I do them one after the other? Yes. However, my circumstances/preferences do not allow me to have the luxury of doing RTK1 first, because I have already signed up for classes so I am committed.

I am concerned about the "counterproductive" aspect of doing RTK1, as per my post above. And the more I study, the more I am convinced that this "counterproductiveness" is real. I just reviewed over 130 expired kanji on this forum, and I must admit, I feel more and more that the process is not helping me. So whilst I have currently kept up my reviews on this site, I may stop in the near future.