Study guide for Remembering the Kanji 1
From Learning Japanese Wiki (RtKWiki)
This article is a study guide for the book Remembering the Kanji Volume 1.
Contents |
Key resources
- The Remembering the Kanji Text book (available through RevTK)
- A Japanese to English dictionary (or whatever language)
- Kanji practice paper
- Workbook to write the Heisig stories
- SRS (such as Anki)
- A (free) user account on RevTK
Key concepts
The Heisig technique requires you to create and remember stories for individual kanji. These stories are a means for remembering the individual primitive elements of the kanji and so how to write the kanji. This makes the stories a key factor in the success of your study. Ensure that you spend sufficient time on creating the stories, and then reviewing the stories as you continue to review. Although eventually you will shed the stories (almost, but never completely) when remembering kanji, while studying with this method it is essential that you remember the kanji through the stories.
Detailed guide
Two key points:
- Write the kanji and the story down on paper first.
- Do not to practice writing the kanji too much early on. Writing the kanji multiple times creates a trade-off with the story. Focus on the story.
Step by step:
- Look at the kanji, meaning and primitives. Write the kanji and the meaning in a book (along with the hesig number)
- Take time to think over the story. Use Reviewing the Kanji, or a Japanese dictionary to be sure of what meaning is intended. Also use an english dictionary to better understand the keyword where necessary.
- Do the above for about 20 Kanji. At the end read back over the stories.
- At this stage, don't start reviewing them in Anki (or any other SRS), I go and do something else. This might be reviewing previous kanji (in Anki), or repeating the process above for the next 20 kanji.
- After this break, go back to the stories and read them one more time. Note, that at this stage, you will have only have written each Kanji once (with exception given to difficult-to-write kanji).
- After the new kanji once via Anki, enter the story into this website.
