Hello I'm quite new to studying kanji. I tried the RTK method and it worked up until about 600 kanji. I got really frustrated at that point because of the fact that I had to write on paper. I can't stand writing on paper and I would rather type on a computer or a mobile phone.

Also, in RTK he suggests going from the keyword to the kanji. Can someone please explain why that is? I think it makes more sense to go from the kanji to the keyword because when you're reading Japanese in real life isn't that how you're going to recall them?

I was also thinking that because I don't like writing the only way for me to learn the kanji would be to have them on the front of the card so I can see them.

I would really appreciate if you all could give me your opinions on how you study kanji, what has worked for you, and what you think can work for me.

Anon1094 Wrote:Also, in RTK he suggests going from the keyword to the kanji. Can someone please explain why that is? I think it makes more sense to go from the kanji to the keyword because when you're reading Japanese in real life isn't that how you're going to recall them?

Actually, no it's not. You don't want to see a kanji and immediately think in English - your point is eventually to be able to see Japanese and understand it - in Japanese.

I hate writing on paper too, but there's myriad reasons to do it for RTK. I mean pretty much the only long hand writing I've done in the past 6 months is RTK. It's not that bad. I'm doing reviews of about 100 cards a day in like 20 minutes on the same legal pad I've been doing it on for years. I usually get frequent hand cramps writing in English, but pretty much never get hand cramps doing RTK.

You should know that writing improves the learning process because it's activating different parts of your brain. Stuff you write down will stick with you longer, and it will be easier for you to learn. This has been proven in studies, and is actually a bit of a problem with the newer generation that takes notes on computers in class versus writing them by hand.

I'm of the opinion that if you're not reviewing from keyword -> kanji + writing then you're not really doing RtK.

Oh oh oh, I've got an idea for you. Do you have an iPad or iPhone? I've used one of the free whiteboard apps on my iPad before in situations where it would have been really annoying to use pen/paper like in a doctor's office. It's not quite the same, but it's real close. Note: Reviewing this way will mean your handwriting will inevitably end up being terrible through lack of practice.

Anon1094 Wrote:I think it makes more sense to go from the kanji to the keyword because when you're reading Japanese in real life isn't that how you're going to recall them?

Yes, but what about when you need to write them? That's the harder half of the coin so that's what needs the focus. If you can write them, you can read them, but the reverse is not true.

You may have some irrational hatred of writing things on paper (‽), but chances are, if you want to make good use of your effort learning kanji, you're going to need to write them sooner or later.

I don't think it's as much being able to write them by hand as it is being able to reconstruct them in your head, which works immensely towards being able to recognize them when you see them. Which in turn is ironic since simply being able to recognize them is your only goal if you're doing kanji -> keyword.

tokyostyle Wrote:

nohika Wrote:Actually, no it's not. You don't want to see a kanji and immediately think in English - your point is eventually to be able to see Japanese and understand it - in Japanese.

This is just a silly straw man argument. Obviously the entire Heisig method is learning the kanji by thinking in English.

Kanji -> keyword is just fine. When the time comes your brain will have no trouble getting rid of the English keywords.

By reviewing through keyword -> kanji, English is simply the trigger for constructing the character with the images in your head. When you go keyword -> kanji, you get the keyword on the front so you can focus on working your brain into remembering the character, not the keyword. We're trying to learn the characters, it makes sense to make them the goal of the reviewing instead of the keywords.

By going kanji -> keyword, you already get the character. You already get all the primitives. All you have to do then is to work out the keyword, which makes it so that the actual work you do is simply recognizing the character and then focusing on the keyword. This is nullifying the purpose of the RTK method in my opinion, just because you can tell what the character is when you see it once, does that mean you're working on the use of an image that stimulates the long-term memory?

Also, getting rid of the English keywords will be far easier if you do keyword -> kanji as it means that you're not focusing on them rather than the characters.

Just my opinions anyway, not trying to start a war here when there's been so many threads on this.

Kanji to keyword is an awful, backwards way to learn the kanji, and you should avoid it at all cost.

Your target is the kanji, not the keyword, so you want a weak (weak is best) cue (the keyword) on the Question side, so you can retrieve the target (the kanji) with an associative/relational mnemonic strategy (the story). Add in the handwriting component for the muscle memory enhancement of recognition and recall.

It follows that you'll also be able to recall the keyword when presented with the kanji given this method, as retrieval practice enhances cue and associative memory in addition to being superior for target memory, but it's a fuzzy side-effect incidental to retrieving the kanji and optimizing its memorization, which is good because it allows the English keyword and story to fall away while also keeping it in your brain to refer back to should you wish to incorporate it into word/sentence-related mnemonics.

Edit: And as for paper, I've gone paperless with iPod/convertible tablet, but I use the stylus, this way you're getting the fine motor detail as well as the screen/monitor externalization as feedback for the visualization/placement.

Tangent: I mentioned sentence mnemonics and explained previously using sentence context in rapidly composed and briefly retained mnemonics to facilitate vocabulary acquisition, and also the idea of lexicogrammar in the context of Dehaene's research on the cortical representation of constituent structures (and related it to semantics and syntax and subtrees/treelets [the latter per Gary Marcus]), and now while reading up on recent developments in reading models I just found this amazingly fascinating paper that seems to click well with the aforementioned topics: Rapid Extraction of Gist From Visual Text and Its Influence on Word Recognition - This idea of coarse semantic protocontext being especially interesting. There's also a serendipitous relationship to a dual-route model at another level of coarse semantic processing, here: http://www.frontiersin.org/language_scie...00054/full

I don't think there is anything terribly wrong with going kanji->keyword. If your argument is that making the keyword the target is a bad idea, I agree with you but that only invalidates the method if you are being incredibly specific as to what you consider successful.
I did RTK forwards (keyword->kanji) with fairly good retention rates and about a month and a half of review after getting through the book but still frequently saw kanji that I knew I had studied but could not remember what they meant (I think this was mainly for kanji whose stories used the keyword right of the bat). I have since switched to studying backwards and my ability to recognize and understand kanji has increased quite a bit. I have forgotten how to write a few but writing was never my focus. If I ever get into a situation where I need to write one and can't remember it exactly, I can always ask or just write it in hiragana if need be.
The important thing is that you don't focus on the keyword specifically, but more the concept that the kanji represents. If your guess doesn't match the keyword exactly but gives the same impression as the keyword, then you understand what idea the kanji is meant to convey.

I hate it when people make all-or-nothing statements about something as subjective as utility. You could say that I don't really understand everything I read because I sometimes resort into falling back on English keywords (or keyword-like words), but the long and short of it is that I can get meaning out of the notices that get handed to me at work instead always having to ask. Going from kanji to keyword has proven quite useful to me.

thisiskyle Wrote:I don't think there is anything terribly wrong with going kanji->keyword. If your argument is that making the keyword the target is a bad idea, I agree with you but that only invalidates the method if you are being incredibly specific as to what you consider successful.
I did RTK forwards (keyword->kanji) with fairly good retention rates and about a month and a half of review after getting through the book but still frequently saw kanji that I knew I had studied but could not remember what they meant (I think this was mainly for kanji whose stories used the keyword right of the bat). I have since switched to studying backwards and my ability to recognize and understand kanji has increased quite a bit. I have forgotten how to write a few but writing was never my focus. If I ever get into a situation where I need to write one and can't remember it exactly, I can always ask or just write it in hiragana if need be.
The important thing is that you don't focus on the keyword specifically, but more the concept that the kanji represents. If your guess doesn't match the keyword exactly but gives the same impression as the keyword, then you understand what idea the kanji is meant to convey.

The point of RTK is to use the keyword as a memory prompt to trigger your memories of a particular kanji. It's not supposed to be bi-directional memory. It's okay if you can't remember what a keyword is when you see the kanji. That's not the point. The keywords don't even express the whole meaning of what the kanji are.

You train what the kanji means and how it reads after RTK, with real Japanese. Trying to recall the keyword for every single kanji is very slow anyway.

If you see 大丈夫, you shouldn't be thinking large+length+husband. You should just instantly think だいじょうぶ and something like "okay" or "all right". It's a two step process, no need to get ahead of yourself.

But if it works for you, go right ahead.

Yes, I was talking about the best way to learn the kanji, hence the kanji is your target, and is what you're retrieving based on an optimal, weak cue, using a relational strategy like a ‘story’.

If your target is learning the kanji but you're putting it on the front, you're just studying/restudying the kanji without retrieving it, which is far inferior.

If you're doing both ways i.e. keyword→kanji and kanji→keyword, you're interfering with the spaced retrieval by making the recall task easier through inter-interval study, which also skews the spacing, which is again... inferior.

This all being for the long-term. If you're just learning the kanji because you've got a test the next day, then feel free to do whatever.

Rather than memorizing keywords or keyword-derived concepts given an individual kanji, you'd do better to learn the meaningful aspects of the kanji as they emerge through usage (based on frequency and individual encounter/desire), e.g. as morphemic elements in two-kanji compounds. That way you're also developing your morphological awareness of ‘compounding schemata’ in Japanese word formation processes.

Then you can refer back to the residual, fading keywords only if necessary when encoding/restudying (rather than maintaining) the words as you're first learning or when you fail them, as a relational strategy (which works great after you've been using the keyword as a weak cue to optimize learning the kanji in RTK).

I had similar feelings about writing when I started RTK. I didn't write much of anything, because I figured, well I'm not going to need to write them much even if I go to Japan. And it just seemed like a pain to write them.

However, I've found my retention has increased DRAMATICALLY when I write them for reviews, at least for the first few times they come up. It really helps cement the image of the kanji in my mind.

My method is: Write once or twice when I am learning them (along with thinking about the story).

Then when the kanji comes up in review, I also write them. Sometimes I know the kanji so well that I don't bother. But a lot of the time, the kanji isn't necessarily clear if I've only reviewed it a few times. Once I have a really good handle on the kanji and I can picture it in my mind, I generally don't write as much.

If I don't have paper, I often just trace with my finger, which also works quite well.

My retention is much better, and I've found that my reviews actually go quite quickly just because I know each kanji better and it doesn't take too long to write them.

My handwriting is still terrible, but that's not why I'm writing :-). I'm just doing it for learning purposes. I figure my handwriting will improve naturally overtime, and I don't care too much about it because if I ever go to Japan I don't think I'll be writing too much down. I don't plan to live there long term, I'm learning the language for fun because I enjoy it.

So I totally understand where you are coming from, but try to at least trace them with your finger. It will probably help you a ton!

@nest0r - I don't know any of the jargon you used but I think I get your point and I agree with you. I've only recently started digging into native material outside of bulletins and road signs (the kind of things I was talking about when I said recognition was useful) and am planning to go through my RTK deck and start throwing vocabulary that use the kanji instead of keywords as I encounter them.

I should point out that going through keyword->kanji was incredibly useful and I think everyone should do it that way first for all the reasons that have already been mentioned. Which I guess was sort of the OP's question. However, I don't see going through them the opposite way useless as I thought was being implied.

Oh and jishera, I feel I should point out that saying things like "I used to be like you." can come across as incredibly condescending. (good ol' internet) It's clear from the rest of your post that this was not your intent. Just a heads up.

@thisiskyle. Thanks for the heads up! I meant nothing bad by my statement of "I used to be like you", just wanted to point out that I had exactly the same feelings about writing at the start and then they changed overtime, and I think the change has helped my progress a lot. I'll edit it to make it sound less condescending for future readers. It's something that I would have said (with a playful tone) in casual conversation to my friends, who would have understood what I meant and not taken offense. Doesn't always work so well on an internet forum though :-). Sorry about that!

I also agree with you in that I don't think going from kanji to keyword is useless. Sometimes I find that I recognize a kanji while trying to read something but for the life of me I can't remember the meaning! I think this will naturally happen less and less as I practice, but there are times when I wonder if I should flip the cards around occasionally.

I wasn't implying kanji→keyword is useless, I was explicitly stating it. ;p Both for learning kanji and for meanings. A worthless and inferior memorization strategy that has no justification and in wasting time and/or compromising superior strategies, can actually be harmful. ^_^

thisiskyle Wrote:I should point out that going through keyword->kanji was incredibly useful and I think everyone should do it that way first for all the reasons that have already been mentioned. Which I guess was sort of the OP's question. However, I don't see going through them the opposite way useless as I thought was being implied.

It does seem rather counterproductive to me. If you have gone through RTK properly then it seems better to start putting it to work by studying and reviewing real vocab kanji -> kana/kana -> kanji. So that when you see a familiar kanji your mind naturally starts thinking of the Japanese readings rather than some English keyword.

The role of RTK is to break down the learning process into smaller chunks, so that when you're learning vocab you're not also having to cram those new squiggly lines into your mind in addition to the reading and meaning of the word. You instead associate the readings with already familiar characters, which hopefully makes it all much easier to learn and retain (it did for me).

Spending additional time intentionally trying to reinforce the Heisig keywords just seems like a waste to me.