1. By using mnemonics, you're remembering the kanji in a form that has less to remember because you already have associations to the mnemonics.

2. Mnemonics make associations between what you already know and what you don't know very quickly.

Stronger association.

Like, you might not remember eating cotton candy for the first time if you just had some on your plate at dinner one day, but if instead you were at the county faire with your girlfriend and she kissed you for the first time with her lips covered in cotton-candy, your mind would forge a strong association and it would be difficult, if not impossible for you to forget the first time you had cotton candy because of the strong emotions and robust stimuli you had associated with it.

Making a story is the same way. That's the reason you need to visualize it and imagine it and drown in it. The more you have to anchor that association in your mind, the harder it will be to forget it.

Last edited by FutureBlues (2008 October 16, 9:30 pm)

Imagination and story telling are the oldest and most powerful memory tools there are. It will be most effective if strong emotional attachments and aversions are used in the process.  Insult the senses like the book suggests.  Bring anger, lust, envy, and revulsions from personal experience into it.

I guess what shocks me is, different modes of memory appear to have totally different retention rates and rates of absorption.

From the replies, I can rant off the following:

1. Visual Memory (stories, RtK)
2. Tactile Memory (writing Kanji, playing the piano)
3. Aural Memory
4. Emotional Memory (stories)
5. Memory Compression (mnemonics)

So now comes the hard question:  what methodologies have you found that works best for studying GRAMMAR.  Because grammar is abstract and Japanese grammar doesn't map well to English, it seems difficult to use any of the five methods above.

I posted this question initially, because I was wondering, with everyone working so hard to become fluent in Japanese, has anyone come across a Heisig-level-effective way to study Japanese grammar?  Just so we have a concrete frame of reference, let us say, we focus on understanding and being able to use the 200 or so grammar constructs in JLPT2.

vosmiura wrote:

I don't know of a better way to learn the grammar than getting a good explanation, seeing it used and using it a lot.

This. Grammar isn't something you should memorize, it's something you should understand. The better you understand it, the better you will remember it, both what it means and how it's used. Get a GOOD grammar dictionary (there are quite a few) and it needs to contain:

1. The grammar point and variations of it.
2. Description of how it's used and what it means.
3. Example sentences of varying difficulty.
4. An explanation how the use is different in the various sentences.
5. Exceptions and similars. What other grammar points can be exchanged for it and in which situations? Why can this one not be used with those words?

The best book I've found for this, which contains all of the above and more, is "A dictionary of advanced Japanese grammar 日本語文法辞典" by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui. There are 3 versions, basic, intermediate and advanced. I only own the advanced book and it's REALLY advanced, so I really recommend it. There are previews on Amazon so you can read some pages in the books.