しあわせ » Heisig

Kanken London 2010

ロバート — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:13:40 +0000

This year’s kanjikentei will be held on Sunday 31st of October at SOAS UCL London.
They have a Google webform this year for candidates to request application forms. The deadline is the 28th September. You can sit more than one level if you want but this year I’ll only be attempting 8 kyu. It may take me a few years to reach my 5 kyu goal of the 1006 primary school kanji. It’s not the kanji so much as the vocabulary and usage.

Be aware that British Summer Time ends on the 31st, so make sure you turn up on time for the test!

(I had a rather interesting search term in my blog stats today. “Heisig classes in Tokyo” Good Luck with that, Heisig seemed very anti-teacher and only an individual could manage his method. And only the Internet has kept his book in print… )

Also open for applications is the 2010 JLPT held at SOAS. This year they have online application and are again limiting candidates to 1000 across all levels. I must get back on track with JLPT. The leap to 2 was too daunting, but now there is the intermediate N3 I should give it a go. Just not this year!

More Heisig Musings

ロバート — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:22:56 +0000

I never learn, so “once more unto the breach..”

I am interested in how people learn and the problems of kanji and language in particular.
The topic rises again and again on forums so I’ve been thinking a bit more about it. Instead of a long post into threads that have strayed and grown too long I thought I’d make it into a post here.
It has stayed in draft form for a long time but between a comment about Heisig on this blog recently and trying to catch up with half finished posts, I’ve revisited it. Hopefully this will put Heisig to rest for me, it becomes a little frustrating to have my kanji studies defined in reaction to a method developed 33 years ago by someone who self-admittedly knew nothing about Kanji or Japanese when he first developed it.

First I think there may be a mismatch with what people are calling having learnt a kanji. For people who have used RTK1 “learnt” seems to be writing a kanji linked to a keyword. Quite an achievement and useful in and of itself. Another group perhaps equate “learnt a kanji” with being able to use it. ie linking it to actual words in Japanese, reading and writing. And yes RTK users will progress onto this at which time they will fully “own” those kanji.

Here may be the difference in style. RTK users are learning a larger chunk at once concentrating on two tasks, writing the kanji and an English meaning. They are deferring putting the kanji to Japanese, with the hope, or certainty, that this will be easier further down the road. Traditionalists, for want of a better term, want to have usage of a kanji all at once for the Japanese they know at a given time. They may have to deal with more at once but they deal with it in smaller chunks at a time, and have more immediate full use of a given kanji. They may concentrate more of kanji they immediately need. I also get the feeling that self-directed learners tend to use the Heisig method and those that attend classes tend towards more traditional methods. I feel it’s a bit swings and roundabouts though.

As far as I am aware, other than anecdotes and opinion there is no evidence or studies one way or another about effectiveness or time taken to be literate using any method for non-natives. (Literacy being able to read and write Japanese to a particular standard; the end of formal schooling before high school, being a reasonable benchmark perhaps.) Also while we seem to be discussing two styles of learning I’m sure there are many more styles of learning a language and many approaches. The problem is finding the approach that will work for you.

This is what I’ve found with Heisigs order. Which I followed for a while. I constantly came across kanji that as yet I have no use for and this inhibits my memorising of them. I have far more success with those I can link to Japanese I already know or see some more immediate use to. Now of course there’s no reason I have to stick to the order, but then I’d lose the advantage of taking something off the shelf rather than having to work it out for myself. Catch22 it seems. But if you take away the strict order and learn components as and when you need them it would be easier to use for kanji you need to learn, for the grade school and JLPT orders, or based on frequency of use. There are diminishing returns in learning kanji. The most frequent 1000 are used 90% of the time.

Another thing I’m noticing is the keywords. I’ve noticed a couple of things here. Ambiguity; I don’t make the same connections as Heisig. For example, Spring can have 4 meanings for me; season, water appearing from the ground, metal coil, the action of jumping. I’ve got to go the usage of the kanji to clarify it. Then I feel fountain gives a better prompt for 泉［いずみ］The other thing I’ve noticed is less common links being made. For instance 頂, “wear on head” an idea which I’d more commonly associate with 冠, made more useful links when I saw it was いただく or ちょうだい. humbly receiving. I suppose in one respect it makes these kanji stand out but it also erodes what confidence and trust I have in the author and I’m back to not being able to use something off the shelf. Nor am I alone in noticing this and I wish Kanjidic would cull the Heisig keywords or at least note them as such rather than having them as the first meaning.

Whatever way you look at it these keywords are giving meaning to a particular kanji. I’d also go further and say the stories are giving meanings to the kanji. Often meanings that don’t exist. It may not be the intention but I feel it is a by-product. This suspicion is one reason I dislike the stories. I’m more interested in the actual derivation of a kanji. That helps me more than making something up. In any case I’m not very good at making up stories like this.

Writing out kanji as the alternative to Heisig is a common misconception. Yes at first it does look like that is the alternative. Especially if you use Japanese classroom like materials with all those practice boxes.
Traditional isn’t write repeatedly and cram readings in (IMHO). Yes on Japanese school books or handouts there is usually space for 12 characters but it’s very important that a child learns neat handwriting. And yes the action of writing helps you learn it. But… The learning of meanings and readings seems more to do with hanging the kanji on example vocabulary the student already knows, combined with a definition and possible etymology of the character. Because of traditional dictionary usage, stroke count and radical are taught although I would guess this might tend to be ability to count and identify rather than rote learning. It’s more based on understanding than on rote. The characters are also broken down into specific elements much the same way as spelling in English. So in explaining 明，it might be described as 日 and 月

That breaking down is one part of the key, yes just as ol’ H does it. I just prefer to use the actual names and not use a story. にちへん、つきへん。If I can I prefer to hang it on a Japanese word. 明るい in this case. The other part is putting it to words rather than trying to remember a complete picture.

A more interesting Japanese approach is in the books by 下村昇, a Japanese teacher whose writings predate Heisig’s. His method uses pictures to explain the etymology of the forms (although he does ignore the difference of phonetic components and semantic components) This at least gives you an understanding of the character. Then having broken down kanji into about 36 basic components and 24 common radicals he can write out in a sentence of about 4 steps how to write any given character.

From an article about EFL I read recently.

Alas, the perfect method is an illusion. A chasing of the wind.

And the problem may be that on the Internet there are very many students and very few teachers. The Internet while of fantastic value is full of amateurs (like me and many blogs and forums) groping for direction in the dark. Often the value of a good teacher isn’t recognised. I think some good kanji teachers are needed.
下村昇 is one, so is隂山英男 (of Kakitorikun fame), and 加納千恵子 the author of the Kanji Book series and a researcher into teaching Japanese to foreigners is another.

Heisig revisited

ロバート — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:49:45 +0000

Having embarked on another kanji learning phase I looked again at Heisig to see if it could help me. Unfortunately not, I’m a traditionalist at heart. A traditionalist who doesn’t have the type of imagination and patience needed to invent mnemonic stories.

However there are some things I’ve learnt about Heisig that I feel are worth pointing out for anyone embarking on that method.
You have to do it on Heisig’s terms. That means you follow his order, use his keywords and do not attempt to integrate Japanese. He has the reasonable insistence that you should do one thing at a time. In RTK1 this is putting English to the symbols in such a way that it becomes easy to remember how to write them. You come back later to integrate that into Japanese readings. Also it’s all or nothing. For it to be truly useful you have to complete the course. At the end you are in a similar position of a Chinese person, able to recognise, write and put a meaning to kanji but not knowing the language. Heisig himself admitted that while he could write kanji from memory after developing his system he could neither write nor read ねこ　for the character　猫; he could only relate it to the English “cat”.

All my reservations about the Heisig method still stand, but if you have the ability and 6 months it could be worth the attempt.

Adventures in Heisig • week 2

ロバート — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:20:00 +0000

…in which I stray from the path

Heisig isn’t really working for me straight from the book. So I’ve decided on my own Shiawase system. It takes longer. So it’s not the speed system that Heisig mk1 might be.

What I’ve decided to do is incorporate it into more standard learning. I go beyond the keyword and kanji and I look up Jack Halperns keyword in the Kanji Learners Dictionary, because I don’t trust Heisig sometimes, and I believe Halpern is more accurate. I look up the onyomi and kunyomi. Most importantly I look up example words. Preferably words I already know, and preferably compounds.

If I learn a compound I’m linking two or more kanji together. In theory learn 1000 words and you can have all 2000 kanji. In practice, this is how you’ll use kanji; in actual words. Always in the company of other kanji or of おくりがな　kana tails. If you take it even further a sentence or paragraph can tell you about a specific kanji. But it’s a much slower process assimilating them.

I feel that the Heisig system is good for remembering how to write a kanji,,, by hand.
In these days of computers you need to know the reading in order to type it and then to be able to recognise that it’s the correct character. There are writing recognition programs. I’ve never seen one on the Mac, but Nintendo has some, and there was one for the now all but defunct PalmOS. Success is variable and keyboard input generally quicker and more accurate.

I’m not sure about reading using Heisig. As a base system you can only “read” in a sort of rebus fashion. Knowing the english keyword of several kanji won’t necessarily allow you to understand a word. However you might be able to guess from context.
公開図書館　Can you guess what that means? Have you any idea how to say it?
public-open-map-write-Bldg.
does こうかいとしょかん help?
public library.
however it just doesn’t work like that in practice, with me, when I know a word I tend to know the Japanese then equate that to the concept or to English. I no longer see the components as such.
To be fair to Heisig I think he does point out this jump in Lesson 31

So I’m about to leave Heisig behind.
I need/want to use Japanese daily. I won’t/can’t ignore it just to master the jyouyou kanji using Heisig.
I have taken his order, as good as any and in the later parts much more ordered by shape. Although I might go off on my own tangent at times. I’ve taken his mnemonic idea of creating a vivid image from the kanji’s components. I’ve taken his review order of going from keyword to kanji.

I’ve ditched the book. I’ve ditched his stories and fake etymology. I’m carefully examining his keywords.

I’m proceeding at my own pace and am in no particular hurry. I like to explore kanji. I like them. I don’t see them as an irritation to be gotten over. I’ll learn them to go with the words I use. I’ll read at my level in Japanese.
I’m dissapointed with the immediate uselessness of the earlier kanji in Heisig. A lot are Grade 8 or 9 and appear mostly in place-names.

I remember why I didn’t try Heisig before. It was out of print. Maybe the Internet is what has put it back in print. There is certainly a lot written about it. Testament to the fact the people want to learn kanji (outside a classroom) and there aren’t many systems. Although the Heisig fanatics wear me out a bit. And the whole debate is draining. (“I learnt 500 kanji in a week”, yeah right… read this out loud please. Hand-write a letter to a Japanese friend. )
I wonder what system an actual teacher, who knew something about kanji and teaching a second language and how people learn, could come up with. That would be something.

My advice.
If you know nothing about kanji give his method a go. Better still if you have 3 months or so to dedicate to it, try to blast through it. Don’t do any Japanese learning at the same time. Use the reviewing web site.

If you do know Japanese or about kanji. Download the free chapters and give it a go. It might fit with your style of learning.

or attempt Shiawase. Read the sample chapters. Get the order from Anki. Make more notes in Anki or export them to a program where you can have multiple parts to a card; I use iFlash. Someday I might upload my deck but the process of making it is beneficial in and of itself.
Learn and use Japanese.

Adventures in Heisig • day 3

ロバート — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:07:51 +0000

…in which I persevere.

But I wonder if it’s truly worth it.
I find the kanji character can be memorised fairly quickly, and I can produce them when prompted by keyword. But what I’ve learnt is of no immediate use. Even when I look up the kanji a lot are fairly obscure.

The “stories”. The ones in heisig are almost useless to me. I’m not great at coming up with new ones and think my energy might be better spent in other ways.
BUT
If I’m going to use this memory method or trick it’s best to have vivid personal images. ie. not “pen” but a particular favourite wood effect fountain pen that writes in black ink and is wonderfully smooth. That image is more likely to be hooked onto something else than a generic “pen”.

As memory techniques are the core of the method are there prehaps other ways? How much of it really is memory? I use 行く、見る、日、月etc all the time. And it’s not a feat of memory; they’re just there. I also think of them with their Japanese meaning and the language free concept. No tortuous story. I wonder what the process was to get to that point?
The BBC had a program about memory, The Memory Experience that has some interesting ideas and articles.

I’m contemplating revising the keywords to something more useful. And maybe the order. And learn the Japanese as well. I’ve abandoned Heisig completely by that point.

Can I stick with it to 500? never mind 2000

怪しげな方法
via Google I found a thoughtful piece on how Heisig is snake oil.
Although his thought experiment with two twins doesn’t quite ring true to me. I don’t think you can learn 1000 kanji successfully the traditional way in 6 months. However it does raise the point that there has been no study into Heisig’s method. I’d like to see what can be achieved in 3 months by two cohorts using each method. And their respective progress following a standard course over 3 years.
(coincidentally he also translated the Japanese Apple ads featuring the Rahmens.)

Tae Kim (of Guide to Grammar netfame)also has little time for Heisig. And amusingly ranks number 1 on Google for a particular search term. But ends up writing a thoughtful piece about RTK.

I suppose I must try to find someone writing positively about Heisig but without a fanatics gleam in the eye.

Lesson 4 18 kanji.
只、貝、貞、員、見、児、元、頁、頑、凡、負、万、句、肌、旬、勺、的、首
5 components, 3 are radicals 儿、几、勹、

I think these entries will be weekly from now until completion or surrender…
I have better things to occupy myself with.

peeves du jour
Only the student is wrong never the method or the teacher.
Don’t think too much or analyse.
More religion.

Heisig — Snake oil or Solution?

ロバート — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:36:45 +0000

Remembering the Kanji 1 James W. Heisig. pub: University of Hawaii Press

Heisig is the Marmite (or Natto) of Kanji learning. It’s mostly a love it or hate it affair. It also seems to have cultish tones with talk of unbelievers and converts amongst its fans. 溜め息

But because it has so much written about it I decided to give it a try.

Firstly lets be clear what this book promises and doesn’t promise.

The aim of the course is to put an English keyword with a kanji in your memory and give you the ability to write that kanji from memory. It does this with 2042 kanji which is more or less the amount of individual kanji a Japanese student leaves school knowing. It’s a course not on remembering the kanji so much as not forgetting them.

The specific aim is to give you the use of 2000 kanji in a manner similar to having the use of 26 letters of the roman alphabet. This would make it easier to add to your Japanese knowledge because you would be more able to read authentic texts and quickly assimilate new kanji words.

I think ideally you would do this course before knowing any Japanese. This apparently is how Heisig developed the course. In fact after trying Heisig for a few days the less you know about kanji the better.
However I think it’s unlikely for any student to do it this way. Once you decide to learn Japanese it’s unlikely you would delay it for the amount of time needed to learn the kanji. If you were even aware that the system existed.
The time taken is going to vary. But instead of years it is possible to do this in months or indeed weeks if you can do it full time. It seems reasonable to manage 20 new kanji per day, although from what I’ve read people tend to slow down a bit the further they progress.

OK what does Heisig not do?

It does not teach you the Japanese readings
neither On nor Kun. (in book 1) Indeed apart from the kanji themselves there is no Japanese whatsoever in this book. No kana either.
It does not teach compounds.
What you learn are individual kanji and the components that make up those kanji.

How does it achieve it’s goals?

1. It breaks the kanji down in to a systematic order based on their components.
If you examine kanji you will notice there are elements that re-occur. So very simple elements combine to form slightly more complex kanji and those kanji combine to make ever more complex kanji. By being systematic in the order of learning kanji every new kanji uses the knowledge of previously learnt kanji.
Almost as a side benefit of this you learn similar shaped kanji at the same time which makes it easier to remember them and distinguish between them.

2. In perhaps the most debated part of the system. Heisig uses “stories” to place the kanji in your memory. There is nothing new in mnemonics but many people see it as an unnecessary learning overhead.
However Heisig has a very good point here. The usual method of remembering kanji relies on our visual memory, which for most people isn’t very good. Therefore we forget a kanji rather quickly even after an initial success. By remembering a story instead the student uses a different sort of memory and so can recall a kanji accurately and consistently. I found I was doing this myself before I came across Heisig. The 3 women in 姦　easily reminding me of noisy. (surprisingly my Japanese friends didn’t know that the kanji for かしましい　was 姦しい、as that particular kanji has many negative meanings when in compounds. but I digress…) The shape of 臭い　reminds me of the Stinky Head Cheese Man in a children’s book. I also tended to break down kanji into components I recognised. for instance 語　being 言、五、and 口. Heisig is just being more systematic in using how we remember stuff like this.

3. Lastly the method of practising is by going from English keyword to kanji. In effect remembering how to draw the kanji. This is a little more difficult than reading but much more useful as once you can remember to produce the opposite more passive skill of reading is a cinch.

Why do people dislike it so much?

Indeed, it’s only a book. But like many things those that like it rave about it and those that dislike it tend to hate it.

However I have misgivings.
The total separation of Japanese readings until you’ve mastered writing and understanding an English meaning bothers me a bit. Indeed there seems to be an insistence that it might impeed your successful completion of Heisig. It’s unrealistic to expect that Japanese won’t be attached to a kanji.

The reliance on English keywords rather than concepts also bothers me. Everything I’ve read seems to suggest that you shouldn’t use your first language as a middleman to the second language, that you should combine the foreign word and the concept, not foreign word, english word, concept.
But this is difficult and I’m willing to let it slide.

Heisigs “stories” often annoy the hell out of me, especially the religious overtones. (His writing does as well, I find him dismissive and condescending at times) But I’m free to make up my own mnemonics and hopefully now I’ve seen his big idea I can get past his personality coming through the writing. In fact it’s better to make up your own mnemonics as you’ll remember them better.

There seem to be a lot of “lies to children”, over simplifications, disregard for more conventional aspects of kanji. He also doesn’t really explain the concepts underlying his method nor point out his divergence from the more accepted meanings of the kanji and components. It’s very much a case of “trust in my greater wisdom, grasshopper.”
For now I take a deep breath and remember it’s been done for a specific purpose.

The order seems a bit strange if you know any kanji.
Early on 吾 is introduced as I. Which it is but it’s a bit rare I think and 私　is the most common, probably followed by 俺、僕、and 我. The reason why 吾　is introduced is that it is made of the smaller components 五 and 口.
This seems to often be the case. You are not learning kanji that are immediately useful to you. (In fact you aren’t really learning kanji you are remembering them.)
But as there is a purpose behind it all I let this one slide as well.

While he has an odd insistence on knowing the traditional stroke order and stroke count, the rules governing this are never fully explained that I can see.

I get the feeling that I’ll have to unlearn some of the “lies to children” further down the road.

So Snake oil or Solution?
Probably neither, maybe both. I can see benefits in the system and benefits to the order and groupings of kanji.
If I stick it out I could be in a stronger position. I’ll still have a lot of work to do to actually read Japanese properly and leverage the knowledge into speaking better however. Let’s say it’s a partial solution to my particular problem of wanting to read Japanese. In a similar way to knowing the alphabet won’t actually allow me to read (phonics anyone?) I think that finishing Heisig is but a step on a far longer journey. It isn’t the panacea that some would suggest.

However after trying it for a while I’m finding it quite annoying with a whiff of snakeoil about it. The core ideas are reasonably sound, I’m not sure I like the implementation in the book however. The more I do the more I feel I’ll have to unlearn. Nor does it seem that useful until you can finish it and start the task of knowing how to read them properly in Japanese.

The book is useless as a reference.

The fact that the last text is a strange Latin quote, kind of sums it up for me. Does Heisig actually like and teach this language?

I’ll try to keep an open mind and give it a go.
But you know, I don’t really like Marmite…

十人十色　I suppose.

In the meantime if you’re curious the first part of the book is available here.
An interesting essay about Heisigs methods is here.
And this is a very good web site to help you using Heisig.

More traditional approaches are JLPT3 Kanji by Examples and Basic Kanji series
Better headwords are in the Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary
Let’s Learn Kanji has a lot of detail of how kanji work.
And more accurate etymology in Henshall’s Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters and the Kanji Networks web site.

Adventures in Heisig • day 2

ロバート — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:36:29 +0000

…in which I begin to have doubts.

Already.

I’m coming up against the 2 huge faults the detractors of Heisig come out with.
The “stories” are long-winded nonsense.
The “meanings” given to components are often very forced and sometimes just aren’t true.

This is a problem. Because the “meanings” (not the keywords) are given as being factual so when I know one to be wrong it throws everything else into doubt.
It also doesn’t help that there are no citations or references at all in the book (other than to his own books). No further reading. No language credentials beyond having dreamt up this method. If it were a wikipedia article it would be taken down.

I’m also encountering the problems Heisig himself points out.
I rely on visual memory a lot. Partly that is because I come from a visual background.
I am resistant to the “stories”. I’m fairly literal and my creativity is generally of a collabrative nature than of an inspirational nature. And I’m more interested in actual derivation in the kanji than the fantasy derivations Heisig seems to be coming up with.
So while I still find the core 3 ideas of Heisig useful, I’m wondering will it all fall apart if I try to adapt them to my own ends. Would my “heresy” lead to failure.

I’ll press on and try to be more receptive to the method. I’m sure it would be easier if I knew nothing at all about kanji and just believed in Heisig.

Lesson 3 18 kanji.
旧、自、白、百、中、千、舌、升、昇、丸、寸、専、博、占、上、下、下、朝、
４ components, 3 of which are actual radicals 卜、丨、丶

enough for today I have other things to do.

peeves du jour
博 isn’t a medical doctor but has more of the meaning of someone with a PhD.

Adventures in Heisig • day 1

ロバート — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:54:12 +0000

…in which I begin the experiment

Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji continually comes up in any forum about learning kanji. So for better or worse I decide to check it out and see if I can complete the course. (I’ll have a review of the book here soon) And partly for myself, partly as a blogging topic and partly for anyone contemplating using Heisig I’ll chart my progress here.

OK. After reading a bit about it I bought the book. £20 from The Japan Centre.
I am sceptical and have reservations but am willing to experiment. I don’t think it can do any harm.

Lesson 1 16 kanji.
I already know these.
一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八、九、十、
口、日、月、田、目、

But as I like to be able to work offline a set of computer flashcards is needed too. Anki has a good built in set. iFlash has a set in the deck library but the author didn’t number them so all 2000 or so are only in alphabetical order.

lesson 2 19 kanji
古　吾　冒　朋　明　唱　晶　品　呂　昌　早旭　世　胃旦　胆　亘　凹　凸
due to the novel order some are new to me

36 is enough for day 1 reviewed and (for now) remembered.

peeves du jour
An insistence that stroke order is important but no explanation as to why this is so. nor are the simple principles of stroke order and drawing kanji properly spelt out.

I realise Heisig came up with this method in the days before word processing (1977) but you can only type kanji if you know some reading of the kanji (not necessarily the correct one). Helpfully I can cut and paste from Reviewing the Kanji, and they also give an On reading in their listings. But a lack of Japanese readings will be a hindrance until I can put proper readings to the kanji. But to be fair it’s not the point of the task as it is set out.

nightbreak is an annoying keyword for 旦　(dawn), but annoying enough to be memorable.
I find myself looking up “actual” or more conventional keywords.
The religious stories are already starting. 溜め息
His stories are overly verbose as well.
Baseball as a derived meaning for 九 is ridiculous. and spurious.

This going to be harder to persevere with than I initially thought.