Are you sure your using heisigs mnemonic method? or are you just using rote memory?

my routine with heisig is..

1. Wake up and review the kanji I learnt the night before (between 10 - 25).

2. Go to uni / work

3. Review my kanji "mature pile" (I split my reviews between "newly added kanji" and "mature" kanji)

4. Have a cuppa/watch some japanese T.v. or something.. whatever you want. homework/coursework/play guitar/eat potnoodle.

5. Start adding my new kanji. so. Write out all the kanji you want to review by hand leaving about 5 or 6 lines between them for your mnemonic.

write down the primative elements of the kanji.

sit and ponder for a bit on the stories i'm going to write.

write the stories (see sam and frodo mt. doom above)

also, if the kanji is especially difficult. imagine a scene. such as... imagine the mountain literally crumbling ontop of the "companion" kanji and squashing the two 'figures' (the 2 moons) into a mushy pulp of over the top gore on the floor.

your brain works in images. so feed it lots and lots of images!

and tada, the kanji is stuck in my head and can be recalled from memory. (aslong as i keep reviewing my cards daily for the next 3 weeks or so)

Good luck! as i said before. kanji is a hurdle most learners trip up on and decide to stop learning asian languages.

push through the kanji hurdle and your well on your way to sucess in your desired language!

hope it helps!

|L.p.

No I don't use your system, mine is selfmade hee hee.
I make my own flashcards, physycally cut thick paper into small rectangles. I write on the front the kanji and then turn it around. I divide the back side in 2. On the left side I write all the the 音読み I can find amongst 4 dictionaries with the translations. On the right side I write all the 訓読み with all the translations. Every night at work I spend my lunch hour looking at the kanji and by heart saying all the back side (this is only about kanji, at home I study other stuff).
Now way I could learn in 1 day 10-15 kanji :O Certaing kanji took me weeks to be perfectly memorized...kanji like 下, where you have a long streak of reading like カ、ゲ、した、しも、もと、さがる、さげる、くださる 、くだる、くだす、おろす、おりる...and who knows how many I have missed LOL. Not to mention kanji which have tons of meanings like 付く or 作る just to name a couple. I am about to have to divide in 2 my flashcards since my lunch hour is almost no longer enough to study all the kanji :)

EDIT: Tho I admit that it is a huge satisfaction when I look up a word in the dictionary, and I see the examples given for that word and I read it smoothly because I know how to read the kanji used in that phrase. ;)

So with Heisigs method, the general goal is to be able to see a Japanese sentence and be able to read it in English, then later learn how to actually read it?


Why would you even want to do that? It's really not that hard to just learn the Kanji along with the readings and sample sentences. I don't even bother trying to learn all of the readings, but just learn from examples.

How does it even work when you learn things like 新 for 'new' and later 聞 for 'listening' or something, how do you even know what 新聞 is?

The point is not to be able to read anything at all, but to learn to write and tell similar kanji apart easily in a short amount of time, you still have to learn to read via seperate method.

Edit: that being said there's nothing stopping people from learning the readings as they go through heisig either

This is something I have always being told (I mean about learning all the readings). Everyone has its own way to learn and I respect them all. But the same way I could tell you what if you find 新しいXXX or 新なXXX? You will have to look up for the word in the dictionary. Then you will find for the first time　新聞 and you have to go and look up in the dictionary again, but this time first 新 then 聞 and look up in the dictionary trying different combinations of their readings. My advantage is that if I find the kanji as single element I already know the meaning and if I meet it in a compound I know the different readings already and my research is cut in half. Moreover, this is not always true and I agree, but in many cases knowing the meaning of the single kanji you can figure out the meaning of the compound. I always use as example the first time I have found the word 心電図. I figured out what it was before looking it up and to search it in the dictionary I guess the reading at the first try. Not to mention that, since it is a word I don't use much, to remember it (like I did now) all I have to do is remembering the electric picture of the heart and it comes out naturally.

The wat i see heisigs method is just..

divide and conquer.

once i know how to write all 2042. i can learn to read all 2042.. and their compounds..

in context.

and the best way to learn the meaning of kanji in my opinion is..

contect :)

|L.p.

Except that learning the individual meaning of Kanji doesn't necessarily help you read the compounds...

I guess I understand the method, but I don't get why anyone would want to learn a couple thousand individual Kanji meanings in English and then attempt to go back and learn the readings for all of them. It makes more sense that you would just learn the readings along with them (as some of you are doing.)

well.. when you were 4... you could say "radio" but you couldn't write it..

i'm just doing it in reverse. i'm learning to write the symbol for radio and then learning the word.

same for the kanji compounds aslong i can write the words for the kanji compounds, all i need to do then is add the words and the context.

if you want a more complete summary of the idea's behind this system.

go to: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency.

and read his blogs. they're awesome!

|L.p.

Exactly my thought. Kanji by itself is useless without reading or compounds. I guess Heisig's method is alright as a SUPPLEMENT to remember how to write Kanji but if you rely on his method to boost your vocab, you are screwed.

ok ok... i'm getting frustrated... so i'll spell it out.

Heisig is nothing to do with learning the readings OR the meanings OR speaking japanese overnight.

it's simply... learning the general way to write the characters and how to write them.

then... after you take this knowledge... you turn it into the japanese meanings and learn it that way.

Heisig is the equivalent of turning yourself into a native chinese and learning japanese

you CAN WRITE all 2042 jouyo kanji, and have a general understanding of how they work...

you then take that knowledge and apply it to japanese... therefore.. you'll learn japanese kanji at 500% speed.

It's not an overnight 2000 word vocabulary increase.

it's not superior to learning kanji AND their meanings..

it's simply superior in learning to write all 2042 characters ACCURATELY

AND

get this

AND

Discern them from one another.. so your not confused between similar kanji.

therefore.. makes the whole learning process smooth.. and easier for said person.

i mean. i'm sure i could have people who are ignorant to actually trying the method argue with me until they're blue in the face.

but at the end of the day.

we all learn different.. and this way works for me.

|L.p.