Just ignore her and do your thing. You will succeed, she will probably fail.

And no, such a thing never happened to me.

I wonder what the lecturer said. I haven't seen many people complain about the Heisig approach, that must have been before my time.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 February 05, 2:15 pm)

I've had people tell me that I'm wasting my time with Heisig - and they always have their own magic book or magic method that they're using *instead* of it. The ones that have been more open-minded have conceded that they're not very good at visualizing _anything_, let alone something abstract like pictures that you associate with radicals (etc).

There are advantages and disadvantages to any method of study. I have come to terms with the fact that Heisig doesn't teach readings because:

(1) I started Heisig to improve my writing after I had a marginal level of spoken fluency and basic literacy under my belt. Heisig doesn't claim his method to be a panacea, nor does he hide the fact that his method doesn't teach readings.

(2) I was never very good at outright, rote memorization of a bunch of on- and kun-yomi. I tried that for my first two courses at Uni, and it was a helluva lot of work. I find that I learn better by sitting down with a good manga and my dictionary, even if it takes me three hours to get through two pages (it *did* when I started, luckily reading comprehension skills improve the more you use them).

(3) I don't intend to stop studying Japanese when I finish the RTK series. This is *one* step along my journey, and I try to make use of other forms of input to build other skills while I'm working through RTK.
  -> I have already taken a low-level Kanken exam, which was incredibly useful for me to improve my basic reading ability. There are many books for Kanken that are more than straight drills, so that also helped my reading comprehension and reinforced a variety of important grammar concepts.
  -> There are a ton of DS games to help kids and adults improve their Japanese. there are also loads of interesting game shows that quiz celebrities on odd/tricky aspects of the language. These are also great for foreigners, and I take full advantage of these immersive edutainment opportunities. If it's good enough for Japanese people, I say it's good enough for me!

(4) Penmanship in any culture is important, and in a second language it demonstrates a certain level of competence. I used to struggle with looking up kanji in dictionaries, or with copying kanji from one place to another (say, textbook to notebook). Now, with a decent knowledge of how kanji are put together, I can easily recognize parts of kanji (which makes transcription much easier), and I can write with the knowledge that I don't write my characters like a 5 year old (most of the time! *grin*)


I looked into Heisig, compared the disadvantages and advantages of the method, and decided that it was something that worked for me. I do recognize, however, that this approach doesn't work for everyone. It seems that, when it comes to learning Japanese, many people seem to be insistent that the only way to learn things properly is to use the same method that worked for them - they forget that there are many kinds of learners, and learning styles.

So, when someone tells me that Heisig is useless, or that X other method is "way better", I listen, take note of the thing that they recommend so that I can investigate it later and decide if it would *also* work for me, politely disagree with them about the usefulness of the method, and then carry on with my *own* style of studying.

There is a very useful Japanese idiom that, I think, sums up what I'm trying to get at:
十人十色 (じゅうにんといろ) - ten people, ten colors (to each his own).

Study Japanese in the way that works best for you, and when you share your learning style with others, be equally receptive to hear about their study success stories. When someone attacks what works for you, try to remember that that method may have failed miserably for them, and be patient with their intolerance of your practice. If it works for you, then you don't need to defend yourself.

I don't appreciate it when people launch vitriolic attacks on a learning style that works so incredibly well for me, and for other people that I know, but at the same time I realize that this may be a terrible method of study for certain people.

... and I suppose at this point I'm just rambling, so I guess I'll put a sock in it...

sorry for the rant!

(#^_^#)

People who are serious about learning languages tend to hate things labeled as "fast" and "easy".  I personally hate the "Rosetta Stone" commercials claiming that it'll take no time at all to be fluent.  Not only that, but the commercials also feature Michael Phelps, the most ironic spokesperson for learning things "quickly" (who knows how many years he spent in the pool to get where he is now? )... -rant-

People who learned to read the traditional way hate Heisig because it seems like one of those notorious "quick" methods which leads to nowhere.  And all the newbie traditional method people (Heisig-haters) tend to be followers of the group above (sounds like your friend).

In the end it doesn't really matter what study method you choose as long as you make it to an advanced level, and meet your goals.  There's a high rate of failure to learn the language, in both the "traditional method" group, and the "Heisig-method" group.  However, it's my opinion that a newbie would be better off learning 1000+ characters and failing, rather than learn 1000 words of broken Japanese that they'll never use (or identify). 

As for your problem, telling your teacher that your study methods are sub-standard is not going to help your friend know Japanese any better.  If your teacher is any good, then they will realize that also, and not think anything of your friend's comments.

The real question here is:  Why do you continue to call them 'friend'?  They obviously have no respect for you.  They don't care about you or your feelings.  Why do you call them friend?

Though I think it was a jerk thing to do, to be fair, it's easy not to realize the claims one is making. It's very easy to say, halfway through Heisig, that one "knows" a thousand kanji; there are caveats on that "know", and those caveats aren't difficult to know and internalize, but they're also pretty easy to leave out (especially when recommending a method).

When one person is saying "I learned the jouyou kanji in two months", and inside their head they're very loudly hearing "I learned how to write the jouyou kanji in two months", and the other person is hearing "I learned everything about the jouyou kanji in two months" (or some weaker but still substantively different claim), and it turns out that's not true, it's easy to believe you're talking to someone who is eyebrow-deep in kool-aid.

This is compounded, I think, by the fact that traditionally recognition is seen as the first step; if someone is assuming that writing proficiency comes after reading proficiency, and you don't have reading proficiency, well, you can see the logical conclusion (which is fully logical, it's just on a flawed base).

The fact that there's a lot to hate about RtK (some logical, some illogical) doesn't help, even if it still does end up being (IMO) far more beneficial than baneful.

Edit:

The real question here is:  Why do you continue to call them 'friend'?  They obviously have no respect for you.  They don't care about you or your feelings.  Why do you call them friend?

You've really never had a friend who could, on occasion, be spiteful? I'm not proud of it, but I've been that person a few times in my life, and while it did wreck a friendship or two, I like to think that it isn't correct to say that I didn't care about them or their feelings. If simply caring about someone were enough to get us to not act hurtfully towards that person, life would be a great deal easier.

~J

Last edited by woodwojr (2009 February 05, 2:57 pm)

rich_f wrote:

Ah, college drama.

It's too bad Drama Queens (and Kings) like that graduate and sometimes even find employment, and eventually become your co-workers. Oh well. Knowledge is power.

Don't feed the royalty next time.

Sounds more like highschool drama to me I've never seen anything like that happen around me.

I'm amazed but the tales of open hostility some students in this forum report. Japanese is the language of a major economy and culture. Should we not be getting praise, or at least encouragement? One gets none of this negative attitude here in Ireland, where some high schools have optional Chinese or Japanese and there is a shortage of multilingual workers locally. I wonder how much of it happens in the States. When I was a student in Florida ( back in the last millennium ) I took a core curriculum French class and was accused of being brown nosed, for not hiding my effort and enthusiasm. The accusation sounded like a dire warning of imminent social ostracism, were I to not mend my ways. I was arrogantly geeky back then and answered contemptuously ( boy, did that make me popular ). But it did surprised me. "Brown nosed"? In college?


J

Last edited by Jeromin (2009 February 05, 3:58 pm)

It's funny how there are now at least three Alberta residents on the forums now. I wonder if any are also from UoA...

I have told a few people about RTK, but not in a classroom setting, since I haven't taken a class on Japanese (other than translation, linguistics, or classical) since winter 2006/2007, at which time I hadn't done RTK seriously yet. When people ask me how I got to where I am now I can't honestly respond that it was due to RTK or SRS anyways. I was already pretty high level before I did either.

Well, many people discouraged me while doing Heisig. Some of them were my friends who ignored me or tried to convince me I was wrong.
The thing is that the great results I got this year were enough to make some of these people try Heisig.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2009 February 05, 4:58 pm)

I showed my heisig books to a taiwanese friend of mine ( we both do Japanese at school and are deadly competative about it to the point that we have "secret weapons" which we bust out in conversations with native speakers for the sake of the other person not understanding ) he was gobsmacked at the site of these three thick books on Kanji and the fact that i had learned 500 kanji in three weeks, he was actually quite impressed, he was like " wow you're hardcore "

The only place I ever really saw any criticism is online forums, where groups of likeminded Japanese students clump together.  This site obviously is pro-heisig, and seems to be alright with most ideals of AJATT ( with a few noteable exceptions, or differing conclusions anyways )

In my own personal life I have never come across any negative criticism for using Heisig.  Most people do not know about it, and I explain it to them, and they seem more impressed than anything.  I have actually gotten a few fellow Japanese self learners to go the route of Heisig and some have what it takes to complete it, some don't.  Even in some of these communities, such as TJP ( where I am an active member and did an RTK experiment thread during my RTK process ) I don't seem to get any real flack because I have re3alistic expectations over what I am getting from the book.

Main problem is yes it is an alternative method, and it works well, quickly.  Someone can start it, talk about how they found the magic bullet ( which doesn't exist) and how they are better at Kanji than all these people studying for years ( which is not true ) and then fail ANYWAYS only to fuel on the anti-heisig attitudes.  If everyone had a clear understanding of the expectations for the book, and understood how much work it still is to complete, they would not have made such a bad name for the method.  Considering that the Japanese culture is also very much more humble than say Americans, I am surprised that this isn't effecting the attitudes of people learning the language, then again, many Heisig users that DO fail tend not to be serious enough to know something like this anyways.

I completed RTK my computer died IMMEDIATELY after a hardcore finish so I have a huge failed pile to clean up ^^  It just shows how hard I am working just to get closer to the Kanji, and I am seeing results studying Vocab.  The earlier Kanji are no problem whatsoever while the later ones I am still having trouble with.  Heisig doesn't end at the end of the book, it ends many months later.

I hope the attitudes of these anti heisig people can change, but I understand their side of things and all I can do is show them a positive example of why it works and is a great tool.  If everyone has this attitude things will change.