276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Remembering the Kanji 1: A Complete Course on How Not To Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters

£16.475£32.95Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Fast forward a year and I find myself living in Japan (if you want to know the full story please read my blog. Or simply imagine someone getting on a plane in one country and then getting off that same plane in another). I decided I should probably start trying to learn kanji again when my previous culinary skills (using the microwave) began to suffer (not being able to use the microwave) Single kanji words. Just like with first timers it's easy to get the meaning. For example with 昨日 、 髪を切りました I have no idea what the official grammar with を or ました is though I see them a lot, but I can tell this sentence is "Yesterday I cut my hair" because I see 昨日 = yesterday + day, 髪 = hair, 切 = cut. Of course this isn't ideal and you need to explicitly study grammar, but kanji gives me a lot of strength in understanding these sentences the first time I see them. The course teaches the student to utilize all the constituent parts of a kanji's written form—termed "primitives", combined with a mnemonic device that Heisig refers to as "imaginative memory". Each kanji (and each non-kanji primitive) is assigned a unique keyword. A kanji's written form and its keyword are associated by imagining a scene or story connecting the meaning of the given kanji with the meanings of all the primitives used to write that kanji. The method requires the student to invent their own stories to associate the keyword meaning with the written form. The text presents detailed stories in Part I, proceeding through Part II with less verbose stories. This is to encourage the student to use the stories as practice for creating their own. After the 547 kanji in Parts I and II, the remainder of the kanji in Part III have the component keywords but no stories. However, in cases where the reader may be easily confused or for difficult kanji, Heisig often provides a small story or hint. What to do afterwards? Honestly speaking, I just finished the book and I haven't gone through this issue yet, but I have seen infinite threads online about what to do after finishing Heisig, I am sure following them will prove beneficial as they were done by Heisig graduates. Once you have learned to produce the kanji by keywords, sounding them out is taught in a separate volume, following a similar method. Ironically, when having finished this book (volume 1), you should be able to read the basic meaning of many Japanese writings without speaking Japanese, closing the gap a bit on the advantage Chinese and Korean students enjoy when taking on the Japanese language. You still need to learn the syllabic Hiragana and Katakana writing systems as well, as the Japanese use these to write down the grammar part of a sentence and Japanese-only words (Hiragana) or foreign loan words and transliterations (Katakana).

Kanji in about two months, in addition to being able to dissect new Kanji and learn them effortlessly in the future. I feel like I can learn a new Kanji just by seeing it a few times now. You feel powerful seeing the progress and feel motivated to keep going further. I had a lot of time so I used to do it all day, but even 4 months (as is the recommended pace by the author and most people) is still incredible considering that they are... two thousand freaking Kanji that usually take Japanese children until the end of high school to learn.The method differs markedly from traditional rote-memorization techniques practiced in most courses. The course teaches the student to utilize all the constituent parts of a kanji's written form—termed "primitives", combined with a mnemonic device that Heisig refers to as "imaginative memory". Each kanji (and each non-kanji primitive) is assigned a unique keyword. A kanji's written form and its keyword are associated by imagining a scene or story connecting the meaning of the given kanji with the meanings of all the primitives used to write that kanji. The method requires the student to invent their own stories to associate the keyword meaning with the written form. The text presents detailed stories in Part I, proceeding through Part II with less verbose stories. This is to encourage the student to use the stories as practice for creating their own. After the 547 kanji in Parts I and II, the remainder of the kanji in Part III have the component keywords but no stories. However, in cases where the reader may be easily confused or for difficult kanji, Heisig often provides a small story or hint. The stories presented for helping remember the Kanji have been constructed by the author so far, and he has a real hunch for making stories that are memorable because they either work really well or alternatively because the mind balks at them, making them all the more memorable. You don't have to be a visual learner to benefit - I'm definitely not one. I remember the stories and their parts, and that works just as fine. It's more about imagination than visual memory. Phew! I started working with this book at the end of July/the beginning of August. Heisig himself says in the preface that it should be possible to finish it all in six weeks if you're dedicated and have the time - I laughed at that and thought to myself that it would take me years. With all that said, this is the book to learn Kanji. There's no real practical and efficient way that I know of to learn Kanji that works better than this method. All 400 Kanji I presumably knew before starting this book (using the drilling method and brute force memorization) I would forget 50% of the time and wouldn't even know how to write 75% of them. This book filled that gap and added 1600 Kanji on top of them. They are presented in such a logical and organized way to avoid confusion with similar looking Kanji.

The first book in the series, commonly known as RTK1, was originally published in 1977. The sixth edition of the book was released in 2011. In the book, Heisig presents a method for learning how to associate the meaning and writing of 2,200 kanji, including most of the jōyō kanji. There is no attention given to the readings of the kanji as Heisig believes that one should learn the writing and meaning first before moving on to the readings in Volume II.Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To process transactions Heisig, James W.; Richardson, Timothy W. (2009). Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1 (PDF). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3323-7. Anki is an open-source flashcard app that uses spaced repetition algorithms to help you prevent natural forgetting. That means that in contrast to most normal flashcard programs or apps, Anki only shows you a flashcard when you're on the verge of forgetting it. If you see a new card, you can choose between different options:

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment