yudantaiteki wrote:
The hardest thing in handwriting kanji is remembering which kanji go with which word, and I don't know how much RTK helps with that.
I think it depends on the person (how they learned and their level) and the word (frequency and kanji properties.) I'm finding I'm more likely to falter on a part of a kanji than on which kanji.
Here's an admittedly exaggerated example just to help explain: Say a learner memorized the on-readings of individual kanji without paying attention to their range of meaning. To remember which kanji to use in a compound, they could rely on accurate whole word visual memory (which is far better for recognition than production) and/or hope that very few kanji have that reading.
RTK, on the other other hand, can help someone produce the correct kanji in a compound in a few different ways.
* Having a semantic sense of kanji can often either identify the correct kanji or at least rule out obvious non-candidates. I also think it's a common vocabulary learning strategy to incorporate meanings of the individual kanji. It doesn't really matter if this is etymologically correct or not; it creates an association that can be relied on to produce the correct kanji. (This is an argument for avoiding outlandish RTK keywords for kanji and components. If they're closer to plausible meanings, you never need to discard them. They'll help, not hinder.)
* RTK can help us choose the correct kanji b/c it fine tunes discernment of the components. As reading skills advance, people rely more and more on visual word recognition in the case of familiar words (in Japanese and English). When writing those words, they can almost see it in their minds, but there's often just one portion of the kanji that's fuzzy. The dreaded "blob". RTK is very effective at blob replacement. The early focused effort to distinguish similar kanji seems to really pay off [whether it's conscious reliance on a quick mnemonic or unconscious retrieval.]
* This isn't unique to RTK, but writing kanji apparently creates another form of kanji memory (kinetic or motoric memory). Self-studiers who do all their writing on the computer (the norm?) won't develop it. For them, the RTK process might be the only opportunity to create such mental links. These links are so developed in Japanese and Chinese people that "air writing" is commonly used to recall kanji. In studies, the recall accuracy is lower when they don't engage [in "air writing"]. Interestingly, the area of the brain involved in writing kanji is activated even when just reading. (I found this other factoid fascinating too: Japanese patients who lost the ability to read kanji were still able to write them.)
Some people here have probably experienced something similar when they forget how to write a kanji: by clearing the mind completely and just starting to write, our autopilot will often complete the forgotten part. [This never ceases to amaze me. The musicians here are also probably familiar with an ability to play 'mindlessly'.]
* I've personally become fairly convinced (not based on any science, just personal experience and the opinions of [former classmates] who've been involved in language teaching for a while) that strong familiarity with individual kanji results in longer kanji word retention. This could be achieved in a number of ways, but RTK seems to be a particularly effective way. (There's a bunch of information on the benefits of component analysis and kanji knowledge, but I'm not aware of anything relating it specifically to retention.)
To tie this back to the original question, I agree with others that the benefits of handwriting kanji when learning Japanese are probably significant (for initial learning, subsequent handwriting and knowing which kanji to use.)
Edits in [ ] and fixed mangled wording.
Last edited by Thora (2012 July 28, 2:27 am)
