Re: Help With Learning Kanji
- From: Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:58:35 +1100
"metaphist" <pauleford@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
What you some of you better recommend for learning: looking up and
drilling sets of kanji as they appear in actual reading? Or learning
the radicals first, then moving on to the complex stuff?
My method is reductionist. I'm learning the writing-to-meaning
associations as a separate study, and learning the readings
(pronunciations) as they occur in vocabulary learning.
The latter is simply a matter of vocabulary drilling and other
methods. It's made much simpler, though, by the fact that I'm learning
the writing-to-meaning associations systematically, and can recognise
the kanji as familiar characters with core meanings that usually
associate easily with the word I'm learning.
The writing-to-meaning association is a systematic study, which I've
derived as a combination of James Heisig's _Remembering the Kanji
volume I_, the core meanings from Jack Halpern's dictionaries, the
_Zhong Wen_ and _KANJIDIC_ online dictionaries, and (following the
method Heisig gives) my own mental-image-based mnemonics for the
associations.
Remembering the Kanji volume I
<URL:http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htm>
New Japanese-English Character Dictionary
Kanji Learner's Dictionary
<URL:http://www.kanji.org/kanji/index.htm>
Zhong Wen
<URL:http://zhongwen.com/>
KANJIDIC
<URL:http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjidic.html>
Be aware that Heisig's _RtK_ series, and especially _RtK:I_, is a
rather controversial topic among Japanese teachers and learners. Many
consider it to be at best useless, and at worst actively harmful, to
study kanji using Heisig's books.
I can sympathise with this, and find that many aspects of the series
are not worth the bother, but I do think that the first volume's
*method* is a very effective one for me. I'll go into some detail of
what I do and don't use from his work, since I believe I'm taking only
the good parts and leaving the rest.
Heisig's RtK:I teaches a method sometimes called by others "component
analysis". The kanji are analysed and sequenced based on their
composition from components: sometimes other kanji, sometimes
radicals, and sometimes other collections of strokes. Each of these
components is given a single meaning (Heisig calls it a "keyword")
that is unique to that component. The meaning is written as an English
word or short phrase, but must be learned as a nuanced conceptual
meaning independent of language, rather than rote learning of an
English phrase.
I try to choose meanings that are strongly associated with the actual
range of meanings the component or kanji has in use:
* For kanji found in Halpern's dictionaries (jouyou, jinmeiyou, and
many less-common characters), this is the "core meaning" given
there. This is much more useful than Heisig's "keyword", which I
disregard as irrelevant for my purpose.
Halpern's core meanings are carefully chosen to give a concept
that ties most or all of the actual in-use meanings of the
character together logically, which means that making this
association *first* in my mind is an aid to learning all the other
nuances for that character.
* For kanji found on KANJIDIC, I analyse the range of meanings and
derive a suitable "core meaning" for the kanji, using the same
principles as Halpern's dictionaries (but without the benefit of
his research).
* For components that are radicals but not kanji, I use the
commonly-accepted radical meaning, or something similar that works
better for my mnemonic stories.
* For components that are Chinese characters, I look up the meaning
of the character on Zhong Wen. These meanings are often helpful in
learning Japanese kanji that use this character as a component,
obviously since the Japanese kanji meanings are derived from the
Chinese meanings.
* For other components that are not separate radicals or characters,
I make up an arbitrary meaning (or use Heisig's suggested keyword)
that will aid in constructing a mnemonic story image.
This is a last resort, and is quite rare, but since the component
isn't a character I won't be using it outside the context of this
study, so it doesn't really matter what mnemonic I associate with
it, as long as it helps me learn others.
This gives me a single, nuanced meaning for every kanji and component
of the kanji I learn, and Heisig's _RtK:I_ gives a progression of
components and characters to learn that build knowledge up based on
components already learned.
Having chosen a core meaning for the component, I follow Heisig's
method, ignoring his often-unhelpful keywords, and making my own image
stories to associate the meaning of each of the existing components
found in the current character, with the meaning of that
character. (This is Heisig's recommendation; the stories given in the
book are actually just suggestions to help train the reader into the
practice of creating their own. Since I'm not using his keywords, most
of his suggested stories are virtually irrelevant to me anyway.)
Having learned a character, I have a flash card with the core meaning
written on one side and the character written large on the
other. Flash card drills consist of reading the core meaning and
writing the character, then checking to see if I've got it right. I
never need to drill the other way; drilling from established knowedge
to new knowledge is effective at making the reverse association as
well.
I have an empty Kim Chi box (bright red!) that nicely fits about 150
flash cards, with two spacer cards to separate to-be-drilled, correct
and incorrect cards inside the box. I carry that with me everywhere so
that I can use a spare ten minutes productively drilling a few dozen
cards, stopping and closing the box the moment my attention is needed.
I'm starting to use a Leitner-style spaced-repetition method to select
which cards to drill next, but don't know whether I'd recommend it
yet.
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashcard>
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>
Another aspect that makes Heisig's work controversial is that he
teaches writing-to-meaning as a discrete study from writing-to-reading
(pronunciation). His argument is that the readings are not strongly
associated with the writings, so are less amenable to systematic
study; the meanings, on the other hand, are quite strongly associated
with the written composition of the components of the kanji, and thus
reward systematic study.
Thus, he argues, separating this association out as an early, separate
study can help the student through focus on the part of the kanji that
makes the most logical sense, and will give a solid foundation for the
much more arbitrary writing-to-reading association.
The requirement to learn readings and more nuanced meanings is not
eliminated, but, he argues, it gets rid of much of the senseless
repetition encountered by trying to learn all aspects of a kanji at
once and forgetting most of it many times over. This is probably one
of the more unproven parts of his method, but I can only anecdotally
say that it works great for me.
What some detractors seem to conclude from this is that Heisig
advocates learning *all* the jouyou kanji writing-to-meaning
associations before learning *any* other part of Japanese. I can
understand how a superficial reading of Heisig's books might give that
impression, but I don't agree that he advocates that.
I certainly haven't delayed any of my other Japanese learning while
studying writing-to-meaning of the kanji. On the contrary, I find that
I get far more effectiveness and satisfaction in my vocabulary
learning the more kanji I study this way. The association between the
word meaning and the kanji used to write it is often quite clear, and
is always amenable to a simple mnemonic, when I have learned core
meanings for the kanji in that word. For kanji that I haven't yet
learned, it's nowhere near as easy, and I would hate to learn kanji
only as I encountered them in vocabulary.
--
\ "If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?" |
`\ -- Steven Wright |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
.
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