Postby QuackingShoe » September 5th, 2008 3:07 pm
Since I've been called out, I'll go ahead and throw my support behind this.
I definitely recommend trying Heisig. It's not very everyone, blah blah, etc etc, disclaimer disclaimer, but honestly it helped me immeasurably. In about three and a half months (with an unfortunate number of stalls) I now know how to write and recognize every jouyou kanji, and have a loose English definition attached to them. The usefulness of this is profound.
Already knowing how to write and recognize the kanji makes learning readings attached to them and words using them incredibly easy; in fact, I've found that it makes learning words much easier than it would otherwise be. I actually become upset when I have to learn vocabulary that doesn't have any kanji, because I know I won't remember it as well. Kanji are that beneficial, but only if you can truly recognize them already
A key advantage of learning these characters from the bottom up (by components), as Javizy mentioned, that you come to realize very quickly after you finish, is just how easy it makes it to learn kanji outside of the jouyou set. I've learned several non-standard kanji now, and I've learned them by simply looking at them once. It really is that useful, and it also highlights how ineffective the traditional method the Japanese themselves are taught kanji by really is. For instance, I've been told by a Japanese girl that 凄 (used in sugoi) is a kanji they don't use that often because it's 'hard'. I want to put this into context for you. The right side of this kanji is 妻, which means basically 'spouse,' and is a common kanji in a number of words and gets a good level of use. It's a jouyou kanji and every Japanese person knows how to write it. 凄 is the exact same thing, with the simple addition of two dots. That simple realization is enough for me to remember forever a kanji that is considered 'hard' simply because it's less common and traditionally learned as merely a mass of strokes with no consideration for it's internal pieces. Similarly, 塾 (cram school), which is a jouyou kanji, is apparently widely considered to be difficult to write, but it's made out of three simple components and just, simply, isn't.
Flashcarding sentences is also a useful method while you're attempting the language proper. It's based on the idea that you learn a language not as a bunch of words, but as a bunch of phrases, so, rather than words, you drill phrases. I've found it useful. Strictly speaking, the benefit of SRSing sentences could be made up outside of an SRS by simply reading a lot more, but the SRS has additional benefits as well. It lets you see phrases and words that you might not see very often outside of the SRS, and is a way to concretely test your recognition of words written in kanji. I also find that, personally, the actual act of inserting a sentence into an SRS prompts me to actually focus on it and it's vocabulary in a way that I don't generally otherwise.
However, what really makes it useful for me, is that you can drill the sentences both ways. That is to say, not only from a sentence in kanji to the same sentence written in kana, but from kana to kanji as well. This gives you extra associations built in your mind, which is nice, but most importantly it makes sure you REALLY know which kanji go with which word, and tests your ability to write them out. There are a very many words that I would be able to recognize on sight but not actually write out if it wasn't for this. That's something that's important to me.
