Kanji Learning Log

The_Nipper_One

I just finished learning the smaller kana, and am about to start into the Kanji.

After a lot of reading I've decided to go ahead and do the Heisig method, because I do feel it would be a massive load off to learn the various meanings of the Kanji AFTER I know how to write them.

I want to finish these things ASAP, so that I can then set into learning how to use them in a more fun and relaxing way.

I plan to update this thread everyday under a couple of different headings.

1. A countdown of the remaining Kanji
2. Number of Kanji done that day
3. Time spent learning
4. Difficulty rating for that day
5. Recall rating for that day
6. misc thoughts on the journey so far/concerns

When it's finished, it should hopefully make for some interesting reading, and might provide a good impression for anyone seeking to go the same route.

I will also edit the OP occasionally to reflect the current state of learning, but I'll leave it as it is now until I hear from a mod as to whether a thread like this is OK.

Initially I plan to cover somewhere around 75 a day in 5 sessions of 15 Kanji. However this is totally ambitious and I expect to come down to a more realistic number per day as I set into it and get a feel

I probably won't even manage 75 tomorrow! :pac:

Looking forward to getting this thing filled out

Konata

Thread like this is fine. Will most likely be interesting, particularly to anyone curious about the Heisig method.

Bear in mind that you can only edit your posts for a certain period of time (I don't even know what it is - a day or 2 anyway) so if you want to update the OP at any point after that you'll have to contact me to change it.

Best of luck with the learning! I've never tried Heisig myself but I'm not a big fan of the premise. It's entirely impractical for college students learning Japanese in any case but seems to be more useful for independent learners learning in their own time and with no deadlines where they must know certain kanji and their readings/meanings looming! Will be interested to see your progress anyway

The_Nipper_One

1972 Remaining
70 completed today in a time of 2~ hours.

4/10 difficulty

Thoughts:
Met the target today easily (didn't continue on to 75 because it started into a new section), though it must be said that so far all of the kanji have been simple.

It is immediately apparent to me that the heisig method does exactly what it advertises and no more, in that it makes the shapes easy to remember through a logical progression in complexity and configuration. breaking the kanji into sessions of 15 was a good idea, as I noticed that I was fairly consistently only forgetting 1-2 of the kanji in each batch. This meant that very little backtracking was required.

HOWEVER, as this is only day one, I'm very interested to see how long it takes before information taken in on day 1 fades.

I plan to look up some translations of the kanji I've done so far to see if the English keywords the book presents are in any way related.

... Roll on day 2.

The_Nipper_One

Konata wrote: »

Best of luck with the learning! I've never tried Heisig myself but I'm not a big fan of the premise. It's entirely impractical for college students learning Japanese in any case but seems to be more useful for independent learners learning in their own time and with no deadlines where they must know certain kanji and their readings/meanings looming! Will be interested to see your progress anyway

Thanks for the heads up about the edits, and I agree that it wouldn't be ideal for someone who needs to meet any deadlines or is already learning the kanji anyway.

I was a bit skeptical myself for a while, but I figured I'd give it a go anyway and attempt to storm through it in a month or 2. At the very least, even if it doesn't work out as intended and I end up forgetting half of them, I will have been exposed to a good range of kanji, at least visually anyway.

Just Like Heaven

Still working through it myself, started more or less 8 weeks ago exactly. Got fed up a few times and have taken a one week and a two week break with lots of days missed here and there >_< Consistency is the key! I'm *currently* back on the horse, but learning less than 15 a day, just trying to review a bit more at this stage. I'm learning other languages and with the lack of anybody to speak to or looming exam of any sort, my Japanese is sort of on the back seat. It could be months before I start studying it properly again, so I thought I'd give Heisig ago, I also like the idea of 'having the kanji out of the way as quickly as possible', but I'm not putting much work into it, so even if three months from now I just know the readings for a couple hundred more, that's fine. Or if I know nothing more, that's grand too sure :pac:

I'm on 1,580 myself, won't start learning the readings until after a few weeks of reviewing the keywords with a bit more confidence.

Best of luck with it, starting a log for this sort of thing is a great idea to keep yourself motivated, or at least obliged to keep working Try and be patient, the odd day in which you blitz through 90 kanji is great but can also end up a waste of time if you don't follow it up with a lot of reviews in the next day or two. I'll be reading anyway!

Just Like Heaven

Oh yeah and I agree with Konata about it being no good for college students. Unless, you were gonna do it over a Summer or something. That could be a good idea.

The_Nipper_One

fewtinsoffroth wrote: »

Still working through it myself, started more or less 8 weeks ago exactly. Got fed up a few times and have taken a one week and a two week break with lots of days missed here and there >_< Consistency is the key! I'm *currently* back on the horse, but learning less than 15 a day, just trying to review a bit more at this stage. I'm learning other languages and with the lack of anybody to speak to or looming exam of any sort, my Japanese is sort of on the back seat. It could be months before I start studying it properly again, so I thought I'd give Heisig ago, I also like the idea of 'having the kanji out of the way as quickly as possible', but I'm not putting much work into it, so even if three months from now I just know the readings for a couple hundred more, that's fine. Or if I know nothing more, that's grand too sure :pac:

I'm on 1,580 myself, won't start learning the readings until after a few weeks of reviewing the keywords with a bit more confidence.

Best of luck with it, starting a log for this sort of thing is a great idea to keep yourself motivated, or at least obliged to keep working Try and be patient, the odd day in which you blitz through 90 kanji is great but can also end up a waste of time if you don't follow it up with a lot of reviews in the next day or two. I'll be reading anyway!

Cool, that's a hell of a lot you've got done so far!

I hear what you're saying about making sure what I've done stays and not overreaching my memory. I'm using Anki for the reviews, so if in the next week it doesn't start giving me adequate review numbers I'll have to play around with the settings a bit to make sure im retaining an acceptable amount.

The_Nipper_One

1916 Remaining
56 completed today in a time of 2.5~ hours.

6/10 difficulty for new Kanji
3/10 difficulty for new Kanji

Thoughts:
Firstly, I've decided that now as the lessons are increasing in length, I will aim for one lesson a day unless I encounter one which is excessively short. I also decided to do this as I notice that there is sufficient complexity in the possible configurations of elements that each lesson deals mostly with one type of flavor. This also means that if I focus on one lesson a day, I will get better groups of Kanji as they crop up in reviews.

Increasing the complexity of the Kanji has definitely made it a slower process to move through, though I think this is partly due to the way I'm responding to the "stories" as Heisig presents them.

I'm finding that sometimes, his stories are very good. Other times though, while they may help with the remembering of the elements, they don't help too much in terms of element layout. For this reason, in the last batch of Kanji I began deviating structurally from the stories presented, but still followed the same naming scheme for the elements.

Finally, when I have completed lesson 10, I intend to do a random review of approx 50 Kanji to see if they are sticking. If I don't feel I get an acceptable result, I'll go back and start again, this time opting for less volume. I don't think it will come to that though as I seem to be holding onto what I'm learning (so far.)

Just Like Heaven

http://kanji.koohii.com/ for the stories.

The_Nipper_One

fewtinsoffroth wrote: »

http://kanji.koohii.com/ for the stories.

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a go tomorrow when I come across a story I can't get into.

The_Nipper_One

1916 Remaining
Review Day

Thoughts:
I did a linear review today from start to finish of all the Kanji I've done so far. There were approx 20 which did not come to me, and I think that's too high for this early stage. It was a repeat of what I mentioned yesterday in that the stories helped me remember the elements but not the order, so I've been going back over all of the originals and making new slightly altered stories.

Part of me is sorry for losing a days progress, but if I continued on with an 80% recall rate, it would mean I would be looking at needing to go back over about 400 Kanji at the end. I'll take this time to solidify lessons 1-8, and then push on to lesson 16 and do the same again, except by then I'll be doing a straight test of lessons 1-16.

Konata

How's it going Nipper? Been a while since you posted, hope you haven't given up?

The_Nipper_One

Konata wrote: »

How's it going Nipper? Been a while since you posted, hope you haven't given up?

Hey!

Nice to see people were wondering while I was away

The reason for the lack of updates is that since my last post I got a fairly intensive job which has me working long hours (up to 11 hours regularly) and on top of that about 70% of those hours are between 4pm and 3am.

I gave myself a bit of a break from all personal pursuits while my body and mind adjusted to that, but I didn't forget, and have during that time managed to cover an additional 314 while staying on top of reviews.

The reason I'm returning now is that I spent a good while today making a new structured list of goals I can focus on in the face of employment. I'm going to strive to give myself an hour each day and see how it goes, in the attempt to get regularity back into it, away from the "here and there" approach I'm taking now.

And now for an update into how I am finding the method overall.

I'm pleasantly surprised to say that even despite all the interruptions and non ideal state in which I am learning right now, I am retaining a lot of what I am learning. I'm at a point now where it feels almost surreal, because if you would have said to me back before I started that I would remember 400 Kanji, which at the moment are almost arbitrary in meaning to me, I would have thought that would have required a major consistent undertaking.

I am even noticing the effect of the stories dropping away already. By that I mean that while for new Kanji it helps to visualize a scenario to remember them, the old ones which I have revised 20 times already just pop into my head automatically.

Some things I would recommend at this stage:

1. 100% use Anki, this program has pretty much automated the entire learning process for me, leaving me to focus on the actual learning of the material.
2. Realize that complexity of the Kanji has nearly 0 correlation to how easy they are to remember using this method. Often, for me, I have found that the more complex the Kanji, and more elements it contains, the easier it is to remember because of the story it can generate. I have about 20 - 30 niggly Kanji I forget frequently, but the majority of them are simple from a visual complexity standpoint. You might think this adds an element of chaos to the difficulty, but I find it reassuring that as the Kanji become more and more visually complex (the way they are structured in this book), that is not a sure sign that things will get harder!
3. find the magic number of kanji for you to learn during sessions, and find it early.

Since I'm taking them in batches of 200 now, aiming for 20 a day, I'll update you guys when I reach the 600 mark, which should if all goes well be in 8-9 days!

The_Nipper_One

Keeping up with the targets so far, but the unexpected good weather means that I'll have to get my parents turf home sooner than expected (doing it alone.) Will be a bit delayed, but something fun happened while I looked at a packet of noodles today.

When I picked up the packet I saw about 5 stylized Kanji on the front of the packet, and I was able to know all the keywords because they just happened to be ones I have already covered hehe. Felt strange seeing them in an unexpected real world situation and being able to recall them

The_Nipper_One

Found out why I'm getting so many hours in my job; apparently before i worked there noone had cover to take holidays, so now that I'm there they are all taking them before they loose them and I am getting all their extra hours

Money is good, but in the short term it means I'm getting it hard to fit in personal stuff.

FWVT

I bought the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary. I'd highly recommend it. A totally new way of looking up Kanji.

PS. I bought it on amazon.de for around €30. It was €70 on amazon.com and .co.uk!

The_Nipper_One

Sigh...

Just found out that I'll be working a lot next week...

I'm really sorry to say that I think it's time I dropped it to 10 a day. To make up for it I might start looking into grammar sooner rather than later, and even start into some vocab. To that effect, does anyone know of a good list of say, the 1000 most used words in the language?

The amount of Kanji I'm doing a day isn't the biggest issue now, it's the fact that I'm tired all the time except for 2 or 3 days a week, and that means that I'm not retaining as much as I usually do, which means it is reflecting in my reviews. I would rather get all my reviews right so that I know I'm retaining. I might use this as a general type of learning log now, but still having this be about my main focus being on Kanji for the moment.

FWVT

This is the list of the most frequently used Kanji in newspapers.

http://kanjicards.org/kanji-list-by-freq.html