Best Way To Learn Kanji

[raeldor]

Hi,

Curious about people's experience with this, so made a poll.

Thanks!

[Bueller_007]

What exactly is the difference between "pure drilling" and "learning meanings"?

[raeldor]

What exactly is the difference between "pure drilling" and "learning meanings"?

Drilling is just practicing recognizing/drawing the character as a whole entity as opposed to learning the meaning and the history behind the individual components of the character (I believe some characters are combinations of other characters or parts thereof, so learning the meanings of these components may help recognition).

[peace123]

Google Heisig and see if you think his method is your cup of tea

A sample is at the bottom of this page,

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/pub ... anji_1.htm

[jkeyz15]

Heiseg is not very good past grade 1 or 2 or so. It's more of a starting method.

I'd say first few grades (1-2, maybe 3) is through pure drilling, writing it over and over, flash cards etc.

The rest, cut back on the drilling and just learn as you come across it. Learn kanji meanings, and readings from context. Recognizing from reading and usage, and writing will come from pure usage and driling.

Same thing with vocabulary, past a certain point, vocab lists become pointless, and it's better to learn in context as you encounter them. Repetively seeing it will drill it in.


Words, kanji combinations and readings come mostly from context, there is some light drilling, but rarely. There is a very limited amount of different onyomi. I used to have a link to a chart of all the onyomi that occur, and it's not that big. I subonciously match up readings with a kanji after encountering it in different usages.

So I didn't vote, as I don't see that option. Maybe put a option for something like context based.

[kichigaijin]

I already voted but i learned an important lesson recently.

I've been trying to run through the kanji-a-day calendars, copying each one in 2 separate notebooks- about 130+ times in total.
I spent time focusing on on and kun readings, stroke order, english meanings, and some popular combinations.

Unfortunately, I found that I just wasn't retaining enough.
Usually, I'd just be able to retain meaning, stroke order, and 1 or 2 readings; maybe a combination if I was lucky.

Recently I got a Japanese tutor because my Japanese class was finished for the summer.
She wanted to be able quiz me to have a metric for my kanji progress.
Well the problem with the wrote repetition is that as a learning tool & source for quizzes/exercises, it is very limited.

On the recommendation of a friend I picked up the Beginning Kanji series.
This week I've been blowing through it and kanji I thought I knew I'm now learning in more depth.

The selling point of these books and books like it (ex: the Kanji in Context series) is that it forces you to actually use your kanji knowledge in different scenarios. These scenarios include picking out the reading and knowing which kanji to use with a given reading/context, in addition to knowing how to write it & knowing the English meaning.

In other words, I'd like to see another option up there for learning kanji in context/usage from textbooks containing drills and such; because I'd definitely have to change my vote to that.

[jkeyz15]

as said in my post, I second an option for context.

Past grade 1, the intial bump, context becomes your best friend.

[kichigaijin]

believe it or not i did read your post.
i believe i just demonstrated how poor my memory's retention rate is. haha
my post should be seconding your's for sure!

[ch0b1ts]

I just completed an intensive study in Kanji. We learned 250 Kanji in six weeks. This was no easy task, but this is how it was accomplished.

You first need a good vocabulary base with which to worth with. Kanji is not for the complete novice.

One you have a good base vocab, you can start associating kanji with the vocabulary.

Once you are able to recognize the kanji associated with the vocab, then you already know the most common readings and have a very good idea at the meaning.

After you have associated the kanji with your known vocabulary, you then need to learn how to use the words. If you don't know how to use them, then they are useless. Start by making up meaningful sentences. Kodansha's Furigana dictionary is very helpful in showing how a word is used and gives example sentences.

BTW For my kanji class, we covered the entire Basic Kanji Book Vol 1. This is a fantastic book for those that have completed beginning Japanese. We are expected to know all 250 Kanji for JPN201, and it was highly recommended that we work thru and learn all the Kanji in Vol 2 by the end of JPN202. I have my work cut out for me.

[Tom]

ch0b1ts: That sounds a lot like the course I just finished, but mine was more lecture-based with mindless exercises for homework, so I think I'll try supplementing it with some of the techniques you mentioned.