Re: Newbie stuff: Kanji. The Heisig-way or the Highway?

Ben Finney wrote:

> To hopefully forestall too much repeat of old arguments...

He plants tongue firmly in cheek and says right before launching into:

> My verdict:
>
> Heisig's method is sound, if you follow it as he suggests in his
> introduction and through the lessons (as opposed to how others might
> summarise his method). If you have a good knowledge of English
> language already, and can manage abstract concepts -- i.e. if you are
> an adult with English as a primary language -- then the method of
> starting with strong, existing knowledge (one or more English
> keywords) and connecting that to the new learning (the writing of a
> kanji) is a very reliable way of getting the kanji into your head as a
> body of knowledge.
>
> I believe he's also right that the meaning-writing connection in kanji
> is significantly organised and robust, and of such value in learning
> the rest of the language, that studying it in itself is very helpful.
> The readings of kanji, the forming of compounds, the conjugation of
> words -- none of these link very strongly to the meaning-writing
> connection.
>
> Yet it is this meaning-writing connection that is so very foreign for
> Westerners to absorb when learning Japanese: unless we're very
> fortunate, we've never experienced such a concept in learning other
> languages in childhood, so while it's very structured and valuable,
> it's a significant barrier trying to learn the meaning-writing
> connection haphazardly as we encounter each kanji. Having learned to
> connect a meaning and a written form together as a separate process,
> it's much simpler to learn other things about a kanji, since you're
> then building on existing knowledge.
>
> Heisig's keywords and stories leave something to be desired; many of
> them are of dubious value. What many seem to miss is that in the
> introduction to the book, Heisig encourages the reader to invent their
> own stories, that have much more imaginative impact for the individual
> reader. On the other hand, Heisig cautions strongly against changing
> the keywords; since he has gone to pains to make each keyword unique
> among the kanji, this would be good advice, if a better source of
> keywords were not available.
>
> I made a set of flashcards, based on Heisig's ordering and primitives
> in volume I, but changing all the keywords to those found in Halpern's
> "Kanji Learner's Dictionary", supplemented by the older but more
> extensive "New Japanese-English Character Dictionary" by the same
> editor. The core meanings there are as useful as Heisig's keywords,
> and perform the same function; but they were not chosen by a single
> person, instead being the result of a lot of linguistic research and
> study to find an underlying concept to tie all of a kanji's meanings
> together.
>
> To each card, I added a single most-frequent 音 and 訓 reading, for
> when I want to turn around and systematically learn the readings as a
> separate exercise. This was simply to save the effort of sorting
> through the cards later to add that information; I'm not using it in
> conjunction with this method.
>
>
> So, my current learning, which I undertake as time allows, uses
> Heisig's method with these custom cards. For each card, I do the
> following steps:
>
> - Read the core meaning as a concept with particular connotations
> - View the kanji as a sequence of components as they are written
> - Close eyes
> - Create an imaginative scene linking the meanings of the components
> to the core meaning of this card
> - Watch the scene play out in my mind as an observer
> - Restate the core meaning and sequence of components to affirm the
> scene's significance
> - Visualise each component in spatial relation corresponding to the
> kanji
> - Open eyes
> - Write a summary of the scene in my notebook
> - Write the kanji slowly next to the summary while viewing the scene
> again in my mind
>
> This gives a specific, imaginative experience strongly linked to the
> writing of a particular kanji; and the writing of a kanji is, of
> course, simplified by being the writing of whatever components make it
> up.
>
> Reviewing the kanji is a matter of:
>
> - Select some amount of cards from those already learned
> - Shuffle well
> - For each card:
> - View the core meaning
> - Try to write the kanji within a minute
> - Confirm the kanji's writing against my attempt
>
> Cards which I get right progress toward the back of the box, while
> those I get wrong stay at the front. Nothing leaves the box; all cards
> are candidates for review.
>
> Recently I've had some difficulty with some kanji; the most recent
> fifty or so just don't seem to stick in my mind. When I realised this,
> I looked in my notebook for the scenes against these kanji; most of
> them were bland and undistinguished, or vague with no strong images.
> That was a period of stressful work, and I realised that I'd been
> rushing through the creation of scenes, with the result that nothing
> had really stuck in my mind to connect the kanji to the meaning.
>
> This was an interesting realisation, because it showed me that it was
> the efficacy of the method outlined above which was helping me
> remember all the *other* kanji I'd learned. When the scenes weren't
> powerful, the learning was poor.
>
>
> The method Heisig describes is a good one, and I've found it to be
> very effective at building a kanji vocabulary (note: *not* a Japanese
> vocabulary, which is an independent thing) starting with no good
> understanding of kanji. A vocabulary of kanji meanings and writings is
> a great aid in learning the rest of the language, since the huge
> distraction of trying to tie an abstract character to a word or phrase
> which itself is unfamiliar, is gone.
>
> Make no mistake, though: the reason Heisig's method is good is not
> that it makes anything any easier. It's still darned difficult to sort
> out all those kanji into a system in your mind, and takes long hours
> of work over an extended period. The reason it's a good method is that
> it isolates the difficult, yet well-structured, meaning-writing
> connection of kanji and allows that to be learned as simply as
> possible without other confusion.
>
> Thus, it's a good method because it stops you wasting time repeatedly
> trying to get the kanji into your brain in the first place and keeping
> them there. When the method works, you learn each new kanji once only,
> which is much more efficient. Everything else is then working with
> kanji you already know and have strong, useful associations for.
>
>> It seems radical, pardon the pun, but as I haven't got any teacher
>> to spoil my self studies I figured I would give it a try.
>
> My teacher has been very happy that I'm studying kanji by myself; she
> knows of no better way to teach them other than drilling and rote
> memorisation, which both she and the student find dull and
> frustrating.
>
> She's been pleasantly surprised at my growing knowledge of kanji
> meanings (currently at 800 kanji and slowly rising), and finds it
> very easy to teach me new words (and new usages of existing words)
> since I now frequently know the meaning of the kanji involved before
> seeing the word.

Jeff

.

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