Remembering the Kanji, by James Heisig

[snarp]

It is not, in general, my practice to praise educational materials - I mean, I'm not a good teacher. I can recognize something that's clearly awful, but I have trouble distinguishing the gradations between mediocre and good.

That said, Remembering the Kanji is incredible. I studied Japanese for five years using other books, and in the four months I've been using RtK regularly, I've doubled the number of kanji I know. It's utter madness.

And I'm spending way less time studying this way, too. People who have used mnemonic techniques before will not be surprised by this, but I was! I had a really bad teacher in elementary school who explained them to us, and after that I associated them with her for years and so decided they must suck. So this whole thing may seem obvious to some people, but it was a revelation to me.

I'm honestly a little angry with my college Japanese department and with Yamasa for never discussing this as a possible study method for kanji. Because the traditional Japanese method is Copy Over And Over And Over, that's what we were taught - but that's a method intended for little kids, not for adults. For most adults it plainly doesn't work well.

For me, it doesn't work at all. To say that I'm bad at spatial stuff is a substantial understatement - I have no visual memory. (I will spare you the anecdotes, but if you are familiar with Ranma 1/2, you may safely imagine me as Hibiki Ryouga.) Several times I seriously considered giving up on Japanese, because I just thought that I was never going to be able to learn kanji. I never did give up, but I went on with the assumption that I'd always be at a serious handicap reading-wise.

Basically, if I'd known about this technique in college, I think I would have passed the JLPT 2 in December. I might even have passed it two years ago. That thought annoys me.

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should try it after all...I may have it somewhere; I just have an irrational prejudice against it because it sticks fake etymologies in your head (if it's the one I'm thinking of). But who cares; it's not like I'm going into Japanese linguistics, I guess. :p I couldn't remember the kana until my second Japanese teacher taught them to us using silly drawings instead of just having us copy them (like, と is your toe from the side, with a little thorn sticking out).

(Notably, she got her master's in teaching Japanese as a second language from San Francisco State University.)

[snarp]

it sticks fake etymologies in your head (if it's the one I'm thinking of)

I'm pretty sure it is the one you're thinking of! But if you already know some kanji, I think it's usually visible where Heisig is making associations that shouldn't really be there. I think you can use it without messing up your ability to learn reality-based etymologies.