Everything that matters to you needs to become a game. If it matters to you, then it matters that it be fun or be made fun. But why? Why the apparent strictness about fun? Why the blanket statement? As the late Jim Rohn so eloquently put it, success is easy: the things one needs to do to succeed are easy. When you do that, the things that we need to do to succeed become hard not to do. Besides, do you want to go your whole life in a near-permanent state of struggle and boredom punctuated only by some form of socially-approved legal drug-induced stupor?
I mean, is that all there is? By all means, become an addict. But with a twist: get addicted to good things. Get addicted to constructive things.
Fun is the hook for both forming and maintaining those constructive addictions. Easy to make the cards, easy to do the reps. Easy, easy, easy. And fun. On a whim, I came up with this card format:. While I have read having to work harder for a memory strengthens it, having to work too hard just makes you not want to practice at all.
And having to work hard thousands of times is just hors de question. Also, in my own personal experience, struggle is not necessary to make a memory stick. Think of how you know your own name, home phone number, and mailing address by heart. You know tons of advertising jingles, by heart. You know the content of the billboards and advertisements in your immediate environment, by heart.
And this all without ever even trying! Because of repetition. Now, the situation is different with kanji. There are many of them, right? Well, as it turns out, we have a tool that can do all the work of handling exposure timing for us.
That tool is the SRS. Pre-SRS, I think it may well have been important to work harder to make sure the kanji were really remembered. But not any more. I have no long-term data. I may be completely off base. My experience with the previously mentioned memory situations tells me this format will work. Related link: Lazy Kanji Kendo Mod. I will give this a shot to make the deal swizzly sweet for kanji. I was thinking of giving up my SRS review of the Heisiglians, but something is better than nothing!
Interested to hear how that style of cards works out in the long run. There is a difference between passive and active knowledge of a language though, and although it might be a little harder to recall something e. In earlier stages of learning a language I reckon active recall is more appropriate.
Only one way to find out though! I was… 2 years old. It still seems valuable to pick apart the kanji components though. Otherwise you lose the benefit of easily being able to recognize similar looking kanji.
I appreciate what you wrote Khatzumoto. I was am right am the cusp of figuring that out myself. This way I type hardly anything. And I make a game out of recalling the meaning from the context, because there are minimal clues. But make the part to train like writing and put it into the game of recall. I can see that clearly now. But if I take the time and make a recall game out of writing itself. Language being so hard, people write it on everything…to help each other remember, hehe.
One other point, recall needs to be easy and diverse for the simple fact that your mind will remember everything in the environment when you activate it in a direction.
The more paths to a goal, the easier it is for to reach, hence diversity. If you include struggle or difficulty…ie. Your mind will associate your desired target with that and it will bug out trying to achieve your desire to have no stress fun and your desire to have language learned. The brain is simply a computer, 69! So, simple winnable games, that are fun, that are embedded in the environment….
Thank you again for the inspiration. Cheers for your Journey. Before I found this site about a month ago, I had been hardcore on smart. The quiz design at smart. I think for learning new kanji after a certain point say, arbitrarily, after RTK1 your method will work fine, due to the magnet-effect of all those prior learned kanji. But, I doubt that, for the n00b, this is the most efficient, or even fun way to go about it.
You kind of left that part out. I was thinking about this way for a while too. I was reading a blog about learning curves in Chinese that stated that after about 2, characters the hanzi became super easy to learn because by then you have magically come into contact with all the elements that will ever be combined into a character.
Learning new ones simply becomes memorizing the one little change and retaining the similar character. If you know the super basic shi of lao shi then you know taking off the head of the teacher would definitely make him more handsome. Like this:. This solves a couple of problems for me actually.
In my experience with the, essentially flipped Heisig review card is that it helps me in reading a lot. After a short time a month or two -ish? I noticed an improved proficiency in understanding new kanji compounds much quicker than before. That ought to whip you into shape as far as writing kanji is concerned. Here we literally have the front with the character to be written, an example sentence that uses it, and then on the back, we have the meaning of the character.. I finished on the 20th!
Or are sentences just ultimately a superior way to learn the readings? Sentences are far superior. They remind me too much of test and quiz exercises in school. If they sound interesting to you, I think they are worth a shot to try and see if they match your learning style.
And I have to disagree with three cons. He still has poured the same years of hard work into the program. Hmmm… What is the best way to study single kanji with Anki? The same goes for the meanings of kanji. Any ideas? The point is, trying to memorize the readings of single kanji out of context is just going to be frustrating and not too efficient at all. I have pretty much finished reviewing in the deck through RTK1. You might be able to get somewhat of a list if you upload your deck to Anki Web, and then view it through that site.
I think it provides a list of all cards in the deck with all their fields in text format. At least that is what it used to do. Then you can just cut and paste. First of all, thank you so much for sharing this with us!
Apparently, though, the file is no longer there. Could you please upload it again? Thanks for pointing that out. It imports fine, but trying to edit the cards, study, or sync with AnkiWeb throws out errors. Could you please update it when you have the time? You modified deck looks really good. I have been studying RTK for about two years and have been looking for a new, fresh way to study it.
I like the idea of learning the Japanese keyword, as well. Any suggestions on how to get that pronunciation included? I could, every time it happens, flip over to a dictionary app and look up the word, then go back and edit the card by adding the reading. However, that could get really tiring, really quick. Secondly, How do I go about unzipping the file? Download WinRAR it is free. The reason why it is zipped with WinRAR is because it saves space on the server, and since I offer it for free, I try to save money where I can.
Hahaha, wow, thanks for the update to Anki2! Sorry for bringing this up now, but will I never really come across these words up there on Kanjis? Also, one more question. However, according to the new Japanese definition, we should know as the Joyou. What can I do? I believe the recommended government standard use kanji changed after the creation of my deck this is reflected in the newest RTK textbook.
Anyone familiar with this care to give some input? No, you will come across this kanji eventually but still only occasionally , especially once you start getting into deeper literature. Rtk is hard enough and you have enough on your plate. Of course not everyone agrees with me on this and the kanji I chose to remove are subjective based on experience.
I think the coolest thing about this deck is that the keywords link to kanji. Doing new Kanji is fun just for the sake of reading the awesome sometimes downright hilarious stories people can come up with.
It is exactly what I had in mind to proceed in learning kanji, and I just never had the time to really create the cards. You saved me a lot of time. How do you use the deck in conjunction with RTK? Are you supposed to complete RTK and then use the deck for review? Would I start studying with the anki deck and just stop at 25 or what? What I personally would do is just start with however many cards I was comfortable doing per day…say, 25 or so. Grind, grind, grind, 30 or more Kanji a day.
It was okay at first…but when I started hitting reviews a day, I burned out hard. I learned my tolerance is much, much lower…more like 15 new cards a day.
That probably cost me more time than just cutting the number of new cards in half to begin with would have. Think of it like this: I just started RTK today.
I went through the first 50 kanji. Now I want to review using this anki deck. Should I just open anki and hit study, then stop when I get to 50? This is all very confusing to me. Thanks so much for your reply, StereotypeA. Is that right? Essentially what I mean is this: first time you see the keyword in Anki? Every other time? Thank you :. Wow, thank you very much for the great deck. Excuse me, which one is the latest deck update?
Am i getting the wrong link? The original deck was in Anki 1 and much bigger, but these 2 decks are both in Anki 2 and are compressed. Are you getting a file size over 1mb? The deck came preconfigured at new cards per day, which is pretty high. Is that supposed to be a recommendation or is it just something that never got adjusted?
I normally stick with the Anki default of Click the tool icon next to your deck. Click options. Go to reviews tab 4. I tried creating a fresh new user id and deck and this works. For example, I have yours set to 10 new cards and max reviews every day. So I was trying to figure out how to make each deck change individually, rather than an overall setting. Yeah, not really sure about it then. It sounds like there should be a way though. I clicked a couple of more things and found it actually — I have to save a new deck setting options group, then assign each deck.
Thanks for the help! Am I missing something? Does it appear on all cards or just a few? The problem is that when I open this deck on Anki to start learning there are only notes instead of Can you help me, please. Has anyone else encountered a similar problem that can maybe help? Thank you for replying me. I am not sure how long I can keep up managing two decks, though… Priority on Heisig, maybe….
I did the Kendo method. My retention was pretty good and it was fast. The stories fell away pretty quickly too, leaving only the keyword, which is good. My cards usually look like this:. Fill the gaps, just like you would with vocabulary and grammar, it makes things a lot easier. Notes: It takes 1 minute and a half per card to create with the Japanese dictionary app — everything in one place.
Good luck! What surprises me is that people type out their stories at all. I mean, to each their own but I thought the point of Heisig was to reduce writing or in this case typing!
I have a different take on Kanji, completely different form RTK, as I had been doing them in classes and independently before discovering this site. There are several features of.. One for reading, one for writing. Recognition card has the kanji and stroke order picture on the front, and the question is remembering the readings.
Production card has the readings on the front and the task is to write the kanji. I learn how to write the kanji, I learn the ways to read the kanji, and from the selection of words I picked, I learn the meaning of the kanji, all without breaking my all-Japanese train of thought with any English.
Interesting idea. I suppose the lazy method could be done the same way, but with Keyword and Story on the front, and Kanji on the back. One thing I like about glancing at the character — eventually I want to be able to glance at characters and think the meaning instantly. Instead, if I have to write out a word, sometimes I have to think about each individual character.
Lots of similar characters that confused me before, now are impossible to mix up. Howdy ho ajatteers! When I did Heisig originally I pretty much stuck to what he says in the book religiously, despite running into many of the frustrating problems people are experiencing here. You will forget characters, you will confuse them. Intuitively, this is obviously a huge problem, but Heisig dismisses it, and since Heisig was all about going against your intuition I though ok, just do as he says. In other words, I blamed this problem on my own perceived inadequacies rather than accepting that the method was imperfect.
At that point I figured, if Khatz is doing it, it must be ok, so I reformatted my cards and gave it a whirl. I think this is fundamentally the main problem with the Lazy Kanji method, as well as the KendoMod.
I was forgetting a large number of characters that I once knew, but it was hard to tell whether I had truly forgotten these or if I just had a very fuzzy understanding of their meaning. With this method, I decided to put the story with a keyword cloze on the front to help with a few of the more difficult cards that I had in my deck, thus making them like the Kendo Mod described above.
This is a radical departure from what Heisig recommends as well. I actually find that the small added challenge that makes this more fun and less passive without being too difficult to do. You know easily whether you remembered the keyword properly, as well as whether you wrote the character properly.
However, to reiterate what I said above, do not bother to do this when you first make the cards. Judge for yourself whether this strategy is helpful or not. After I had them in my sentence cards, and I knew the reading. On the front of the card are the passive pieces of memory that remind you of what you want to actively recall on the back. In my experience, the only way something in the front of the card gets remembered is by sheer exposure: rote memorization.
Sure, SRS will give you that exposure, but in order to really strengthen your memory you need reinforce the links between memories as well. The tricky thing with Kanji is that there are actually two pieces of information that you need to remember for the same character: the keyword and the writing of the character. Honestly, my current method has not solved this problem completely, though it is an improvement.
I would also stress that in practice, needing to recall the exact keyword of a character is rarely necessary. Being able to say that sentence or a similar one is less a matter of having seen the sentence several times, but of having remembered the principles behind how its component parts go together. Make stories for every character, make them well, make your cards beautiful. You will thank yourself later if you do; you will kick yourself later if you do not.
Your cards do not need to have the Japanese readings on them. Your cards do not need to have any more complex definitions than the one or two word phrase that Heisig gives. This is a hard reality to take. I, too, questioned the necessity of this preparation the entire time I was doing Heisig, and it was extremely frustrating.
Wow, you just grabbed that idea from my head! I quit. Luckily, there is a trick to making stories stick.
Memory Championship. If you go look at that article, it will talk about the mechanics of memory. And the author gives a list of random words. The last time that I read it was probably about months ago.
So, I just wrote that list from memory, and I was only missing one item: 4, Child. I was able to do so, because I made a mnemonic story that utilizes my spatial memory my actual memory of places and things that really exist.
I stepped out of my apartment in Shimokitazawa, and I noticed a balloon tied to the banister at the top of the stairs. I went over to look at it, and there was a cannon at the bottom of the stairs aimed right at me!
It fired, and I dodged it, but it made a hole in the roof, and the sun shined through it and hurt my eyes. I tried to climb up through the hole to get away, but it was hard to get through.
Luckily, a child helped pull me through the hole. Instead, I jumped off the roof into the big tree behind my house. I thought I was going to drown, but luckily a ship came by. So I climbed into the ship. In the ship, the captain was reading a giant book. I looked out around the ship, and there was water everywhere. That might seem like a very long, detailed story, but it only takes me about seconds to go through the whole thing in my mind.
Our minds are capable of amazing things. In particular, scientific studies have shown that our spatial memories are particularly reliable. But reading directions for those things might seem confusing. Luckily, the same type of memory can be utilized when tackling tedious numbers, facts, and you guessed it kanji characters. For example, consider the following. Image from Jisho. Perhaps there are some of you who disagree with this. I know that there are so many students of Japanese that stress learning the readings of characters , after all.
Only, those are not words by themselves. They only form parts of other words. But memorizing the reading of this character does not teach you any of these words. And trying to learn the reading of this character as you learn the meanings of the kanji will only slow down your kanji learning, which will in turn push back your vocabulary learning, will which in turn push back your progress in Japanese.
You will know the meaning, because you will have learned all the meanings in Phase 2. So just by looking at that list, you could guess the meaning for most of them:. As you learned words like this, you would naturally get a feel for the reading of the kanji. There will come a time when you have to learn all of these things. So, in a way, you could say that studying them is kind of meaningless. In fact, I had to look up online which one was which before I wrote this section of the guide.
At least not until Phase 3 when we start filling our heads with a ton of Japanese vocabulary. Last but not least: the stroke order. So, yeah, learn it if you feel like it. Specifically, it depends on the frequency and quantity of your studying.
One of the readers on my website used this system, kept track of his progress, and said that he learned all of the joyo kanji in just over 80 days. And that was while he was studying full-time at university. I tried to think of a method where you could just go to sleep, then wake up in the morning with a bunch of kanji memorized.
Concepts make more sense. Vocab makes more sense. The opposite sex makes more sense. So what are you waiting for? You can do it. I know you can.
You are awesome. I love the word amalgamation. Now I get it! Wow, kanji are awesome. Used together, these three tools can speed up your kanji acquisition exponentially. The first thing you want to do is….
The flashcard deck shown below is outdated. An updated and improved version can be found in our Hacking Japanese Supercourse. Download Anki. You should have already done this in Phase 1. But I know some of you are slackers. Seriously, go here , download it onto your PC, install it, and then open it. If you have problems, then consult the help pages. When you open it, you will see a screen like this:. You did it. So, you should…. See in that photo above?
Download the Nihongoshark. Use this link to get it. In my case, I downloaded it to my desktop. So I double-click the desktop icon:. Our main item of concern is that second drop-down box. Everything we might need is there, things like stroke order, kanji numbers in the Heisig system , etc.
But the real item of concern is the mnemonic. So now we have learned our first kanji! Okay, whatever. Sometimes it does, but not this time. This story is a great example of why I encourage writing your own mnemonics. This story seems great, and it seems easy to remember. Just because the mnemonic is clever or makes sense does not mean that you will remember it.
However, koohiiStory1 has given me an idea for a story that will stick, which I write in myStory:. When I first read Remembering the Kanji , Heisig told me about 1, times to make sure that my mnemonics were visual.
Yet, it almost never worked. There are some places in this world that you know really well. You know every nook and cranny of your home. You know how to get from your bed to the front door of your office or classroom, whatever. You could close your eyes and make that trip in your mind, seeing thousands of details along the way—the height of the roof in your bedroom; the type and size of window in your living room; the type of handle on your front door; the corner at the end of your street.
We can take those little pieces of your incredible spatial memory, and we can add kanji mnemonics to them. Assuming you have a living room window, that story should be pretty easy to conjure up.
You can picture yourself opening up the blinds, curtains, whatever. You know exactly where you would be standing when that happened. You know exactly what you would not be seeing because of the giant, bright sun and moon filling up the entire scene.
Memory Palaces are all the rave these days. You can read about them on Wikipedia. You can look at sites dedicated to them , and you can even read entire books on how to create them. This is sweet, because our spatial memory is super-powered. For me, though, the only way this has ever worked was just to start doing it.
Then, I took note of what worked i. Practice makes perfect, right? Yeah, it sounds like a lot. Why 56, you ask? Because Remembering the Kanji has 56 lessons, and in each lesson we can use one memory palace. If you look at the fields in your kanji deck, you will see that each card also lists the kanji lesson.
I have found that my memory palaces always work best if I walk through them in the same order every time. So, as we go through a lesson, we can try to write stories in order as well. This will help us connect stories to one another and bring up points that we are nearly forgetting. Some of you might still be thinking: But 56 Memory Palaces?!
All of these are places and routes that I know extremely well, because I have passed through them countless times. They are all probably meaningless to you, but each of these places is concretely imprinted into my spatial memory.
I do a lot of walking, so a lot of those are walks. But maybe you like going for drives.
0コメント