AmberUK
Member
From: Hampshire UK
Registered: 2007-03-19
Posts: 128
Website
I tried last week to explain the Heisig method to my Japanese teacher, I failed of course. So at class this week I took in the book and showed it to her. Even with the book it was hard to explain (she started saying how this wasn't a kanji and this wasn't - they were primitives). So I lent her the book because I said that the intro at the start was worth a read. Even if you didn't subscribe to his method/stories it was an interesting slant on non kanji users needing a different way to learn kanji than natives/people immersed. I said anyhow it would be good to have a week where I could take a break from trying to learn kanji. But i found myself looking on the story lists yesterday. I kept meaning to do it when I had the book. (I have been struggling to make good stories up). But I knew what number I was at, typed it in and read through the stories. When I found a few that I liked I rechecked the kanji and the primitives and worked out which were best and wrote out a card for them. Completely forgot about them all day. This morning looked at the keywords and knew them straight away, so tried a couple more. Yeah more success.
I think a few things are helping: only being able to see one kanji at a time allows me to not feel hassled to move on when I should not. But also its helping me with stories which even at #825 I am still not getting right. I have been too worried that I have 2000+ to do and should be finishing in x weeks/months to realise that some people take longer to pick up methods and thats an ok thing.
So thanks to anyone whose put a story in because you have really helped someone like me who is struggling with this method. I would like to add that I have been struggling to use visualisation to memorize vocab in general so I am hoping that it will help me get over that hump too.
Amber
stehr
Member
From: california
Registered: 2007-09-25
Posts: 281
Most of the native, Kanji/Hanzi user's that I've talked with either show great surprise or total indifference to the method used in RTK1. According to one of my professors, it is one of the 6 traditional styles of learning Hanzi. (I guess he meant learning characters by deconstruction of radicals). Either way, some of Heisig's ideas are not exactly original or new to the Japanese people. Open any 1st-3rd grade Japanese kanji books and you will see use of stories and visual aids to learning. The true brilliance to the RTK method is:
1. the order in which the Kanji are presented.
2. The use of English keywords, and
3. The idea that all the kanji should be learned in one stretch.
Combined with visual mnemonic learning, it's no wonder that some manage to become proficient in the meaning and writing of over 2000 kanji in as little as a single month.
@Amber: keep plugging away, your almost at the halfway point and it'll be all downhill after that. It may be helpful to read more about memory enhancing techniques, the following is a site I referred to while going through RTK1:
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_10.htm
check the "memory improvement" section for more articles.
Last edited by stehr (2008 July 06, 3:01 am)
