Standard

Posted by

Posted on

December 22, 2011

Posted under

Overview

On Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji and Kana

Kanji are meant to be learned by you. That’s how they’ve evolved. Like the structure of language itself, all writing systems in use culturally evolve in such a way that they are constrained by the brain to be optimally learnable by children, limited in the type and/or number of strokes they have. They are shaped to make use of areas of the brain used to identify objects and process natural scenes, and to be written through human motor processes.

Kanji are complex within this evolved learnability, because as morphographs they’ve evolved to be object-like which requires this iconicity (as opposed to phonographs where they have object-like parts so they can be assembled into less object-like words), but they tend to reuse the same constituents (semantic radicals, phonetic components) made up of simple strokes, with a limited handful of chunks in any given character. Once learned they are processed holistically, similar to faces or pictures. Their complexity allows you to remember them well and to process them uniquely, through the levels-of-processing effect and iconicity, among other things. They are uninhibited by their complexity. They also allow writing itself to take advantage of its graphic nature, making reading a more multisensory process, like language is.

Studies show that children and adults go through similar stages of learning kanji, learning the basic parts and chunking them into wholes. Adults can skip a stage or two by using their more developed brains, using deliberate encoding strategies that take advantage of their knowledge and learning kanji faster, such as with mnemonics (which works for hangul (Korean alphabet) as well). Combined with spaced retrieval, achieving Japanese literacy becomes a cakewalk.

When to do RTK

In 2003 or so, years before actually applying my plans, I came up with the idea for myself that James Heisig’s Remembering the Kana/Kanji books should be used at the onset of learning Japanese. Initially I’d been tempted by Pimsleur into focusing on speech first, but I couldn’t see any reason to ignore the written language, particularly when it’s so effective at scaffolding the learning of words alongside their aural forms. This notion was corroborated by various “So you’d like to… ” guides on Amazon at the time for self-studying Japanese, and years later mirrored by other online blogs and forums.

Heisig’s recommendation to learn readings separately, presumably to reduce overhead, sat well with me, as the idea of learning readings in isolation did not appeal to me. I also discarded the learning of grammar and words for the time being beyond the occasional audio-only lesson that didn’t rely on kanji, thinking it best to get Heisig over with first, with 2000+ kanji seeming such a vast task.

After completing Heisig using online sites and resources for sharing Heisig kanji stories, I decided that while the assembly line process as I conceived it was a fine idea, and worth fighting for, there was no need to do Heisig in isolation.

The writing system is part of any language, parallel to speech in the spoken/written continuum as it comprises the form in the form-meaning pairings that construct languages, in this case, written language. In other words, becoming literate isn’t a matter of what collection of symbols is easier to memorize separately from language, or in order to record spoken language knowledge, which as a native would be relatively small compared to what’s coming through literacy, or which as an ‘additional language’ learner ought to have been learned alongside writing from the onset since they support each other. It’s about learning to make meaning in a graphic space.

Kanji play a very different role (see references here) in literacy acquisition from kana and the alphabet; they’re integrated with meanings on the visual level, a long-term tool, so you don’t need to learn them all separately and en masse at the onset, the way you would with the alphabet, or kana. It’s more akin to memorizing a few thousand highly learnable morphographs that facilitate learning the tens of thousands of mostly two-character words they’re used in versus learning tens of thousands of phonetic strings making up the less morphologically transparent words an alphabet comprises, words which aren’t processed as iconic wholes like kanji are. Integration with speech is a nice bonus, but considering most new words are learned in written language, there’s a benefit to the visual-semantic bias of kanji.

You can begin learning batches of kanji then batches of words, or select batches of words then batches of their kanji, based on a combination of what’s in what you want to read/watch and what’s frequent in general. Just keep enough space between the kanji and the words to make use of strategies enabled by the nature of kanji, as described below.

If it helps drop any speech-oriented bias you may have been unfortunately indoctrinated with, I’ll tell you of two possible bonuses that research indicates learning kanji will give you: increased intelligence, and improved visual memory. Lest you think this is only for children, remember that these days it’s well understood that the brain is plastic and generating new cells all one’s life; learning to read means changing the structure of your brain, adult or child.

The assembly line process, I realized, could be applied at every level, through various strands and increments. To use a related term I discovered in a previously referenced research paper (Roediger): ‘multiplexing’ complementary language learning components allows for the reinforcement of learning techniques without increased overhead.

Update: I recommend using this kanji order and deck.

That is to say, begin learning the writing system at the onset of Japanese, starting with Remembering the Kana. RTKana will familiarize you with the Heisig process in preparation for the more complicated and lengthy kanji phase, and it will give you the means to facilitate spoken language learning and to focus on words and resources that don’t require kanji, without relying on romaji (see final paragraph). More importantly, while doing this you should also be learning the grammar through basic texts that don’t require knowledge of kanji, such as Japanese the Manga Way, and the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

  • Japanese the Manga Way is ideal because it is sensitive to language register and style across ages and social groups including politeness levels and colloquial vs. formal language, while using multimodal, native materials to illustrate concepts. I realize the book is freely and illicitly available in a 90mb .pdf, but the print copy is well worth the money.

Additionally, you can use strategies or Anki plugins such as Suspend by Character to learn vocabulary words containing only the kanji that you know or that have ‘matured’, rather than waiting until you’ve learned a mass amount. Combined with options in decks and at Heisig-related websites focusing on targeted subsets of RTK’s ~2000 kanji based on your own goals, you have a much quicker and more effective beginning phase at hand that works harmoniously. This strengthens each successive phase of your learning, as learning the iconic meaning-oriented kanji enhances mnemonic vocabulary learning by providing elements to utilize in word-based strategies, laying the lexical foundation alongside grammatical knowledge.

So you can see how, while each component requires effort, they complement one another in the way the skills developed for one component enables and augments the other components, and in that they require different mental resources, differentially comprising and affecting cognitive capacity and mental fatigue.

Strengths of RTK + Anki

RTK is a method of explicitly learning the kanji as part of a mixed explicit/implicit process; studies show that like with most things, this is superior to learning them implicitly alone, especially for application to later vocabulary learning. Using Heisig lets you learn these many characters infinitely faster than learning them implicitly through reading exposure, e.g. 2000+ kanji in approximately three months. It’s redefined the notion of “rapid” learning of kanji for L2 learners from an alphabetic background, which previously had been ~200 in the span of four months.

The strength of RTK combined with Anki or spaced retrieval is that it combines all the best parts of learning this particular writing system according to research: You’re cultivating your mnemonic and retrieval skills by using these strategic stories in an SRS. The keyword→kanji (keyword on the Front, kanji on the Back) takes advantage of weak cues for targets to be retrieved.

Weak cues are ideal for lasting memory. Kanji, being complex icons which are seen as gestalt wholes, are also best learned from the bottom-up, beginning with strokes and radicals. Heisig’s method, as kanji become ‘mature’ in your deck, quickly enables you to instantly perceive kanji in the manner that natives do, with a fine-grained attention to detail to polish it off.

Keep in mind that learning a particular meaning isn’t the intent of Heisig, it’s learning the writing and recognition of the kanji, with writing aiding recognition. Keywords are simply useful mental anchors for relational strategies. True focus on the meaning in kanji comes as meaning is invested through usage in words. There are what are called “compounding schemata” for the way kanji-based morphemes interact in compounds, and a morphological awareness of this is developed when learning the words and sentences.

Readings (Onyomi and Kunyomi)

In addition to the reduced overhead of separating the individual, ineffectual decontextualized readings, learning the phonological forms of the words as kanji compounds, i.e. learning the readings after you learn a kanji and begin to learn words using that kanji, allows you to abstain from continuing such words’ individual kanji reviews. Instead you polish your knowledge contextually. Also, once you have mastered the Heisig techniques, you can easily apply them on-the-fly to any new kanji.

Readings are most suited to be learned contextually, in compounds and words, due to the nature of the writing system with its heavy emphasis on visuospatial and semantic elements. Place the primary effort on learning those aspects up front, and use them as meaningful vessels later, at the same time developing your intuition of compounding schemata. Readings change based on context and word formation through compounding.

Learning them individually is thus ineffectual, and learning them on top of learning the kanji themselves increases overhead ineffectually.

How to think of Heisig stories

Rather than thinking of them as visual tales and worrying over antiquated notions of different types of learners (e.g. visual learners), think of Heisig stories as descriptive captions for kanji-as-images. Kanji as images in themselves, strokes and all. The stories then become conceptual frameworks to scaffold the bottom-up visualization of the strokes and radicals into wholes.

Keep in mind that radicals and stroke patterns, not stroke count or stroke order, are the main contributors for recall and recognition, aided by internal motor programs developed through handwriting and muscle memory. Developing a consistent stroke order for the development of that kinetic memory is what’s useful for recognition and recall, rather than a particular official stroke order.

On Mnemonics

There seems to be a sustained amount of hate speech and the like in many mnemonics you’ll find online. Odd for language learners, who you might presume to be multicultural and open. Years ago when I was using community story mnemonics to learn kanji, there weren’t so many that were extremely unpleasant to experience, and they were easy enough to ignore. If you’re going to be deeply processing and carrying around a narrative in your head for a while, and encouraging others to do the same, please do it with respect for others’ backgrounds and sensibilities. The stories are designed to fall away, but there’s generally a kind of residual connection you can make use of if you like. Why bury a rotten seed in your experience of the beautiful and amazing written language?

The more people who use these mnemonic methods, the better, but a good number of men and women and children of other races and sexualities understandably don’t want to be exposed to strangers’ imaginative use of sexual violence or racial slurs and scenarios which categorically belittle them or those they care about, in order to learn a kanji. Human beings, adults at least, tend to exercise a certain amount of self-censorship in order to create a healthy, civil atmosphere. Online, there’s typically no practical accountability, so you get to see what kind of person you really are, when you can interact with others with little fear of reprisal, and responsibility is yours alone. If you intend to share your stories for a diverse learning community, please help these communities grow and thrive by being flexible and at least outwardly respectful. If you don’t want to do this for others, then just imagine the benefits of having a larger, more robust crowd from all walks of life to generate learning resources you personally can take advantage of, just by restraining yourself.

Let’s talk more about that, which is the real purpose of this section. Useful mnemonics. There are a lot of popular simplifications about these, which probably lead to otherwise sensible people committing random acts of mnemonic violence.

First of all, constraints are actually a valuable tool for creativity. They force you to think of fresh solutions and new routes. So let’s take self-restraint off the list of cons and move it to pros, or ambiguous at the very least.

Secondly, all emotions can enhance memory.

For the negative ones, which generally tend to be more effective, we’re talking about a complicated range of negative emotions. Secondly, these can be generated in any number of broad and subtle ways. Thirdly, they tend to enhance emotion-specific details, i.e. you’ll be remembering better the negative parts of the experience, at the cost of other details. Using negative emotions, then, becomes a bit tricky. There’s also that if you’re willing to compose, use and/or share, say, a racist mnemonic, it’s arguable whether you find it all that negative. And if others find it negative, most likely they’ll be remembering you and the experience of having read the mnemonic and what offended them about it than anything else, so it’s not much good to them other than instilling negativity for its own sake.

Also, positive emotions enhance memory, too. Perhaps better for our purposes. They tend to enhance it in a more global, thematic way. The goal of, say, a kanji mnemonic is precisely this sort of thematically linked, holistic process, where visualizing the kanji is the primary aim, not the story. Additionally, positivity in the overall emotional ecology promotes learning, increasing reasoning, motivation, resilience, and receptiveness. Creating a negative atmosphere is not conducive to learning. Hateful mnemonics tend to derive from and perpetuate a resonance with real world negativity.

There’s also bizarreness. Surprise can enhance memory, but surprise doesn’t underlie the effectiveness of the bizarre. Additionally, bizarreness is more about elaboration than imagery (mnemonic imagery is only useful insofar as it highlights contrasting features), modulated by humor, and less is more, i.e. the more bizarreness you have among items you’re memorizing, the less effective it is. Common, concrete things are of value also, because they’re immediately relatable. A mixture is best. This is because bizarreness is really a form of distinctiveness, called secondary distinctiveness, where the items to be remembered are incongruent with general expectations. Primary distinctiveness is the process that results when the items contrast with their specific surroundings. Distinctiveness is connected to elaboration and relational processing, where relating to-be-remembered items meaningfully to each other and your existing knowledge base allows you to work out similarities and differences and encode things richly and uniquely.

Putting it all together, you want to create clear mnemonics that are meaningful to you and engender distinctiveness; overall amusing and positive, with strategic, sensitive, and infrequent use of negative and bizarre options.

Speculations

In the future it might also be possible to combine Heisig kanji with Morph Man, so that kanji that are mature in your Anki deck might be automatically transitioned into words to learn. Update 3: See this post.

Update 2: Regarding the below text: Use this deck, which also features yubimoji (Japanese fingerspelling).

Update: Looks like there is now an Anki 2 deck as described below, here. (As recommended below, you might want to enable the ‘type in the answer’ function, if you want to get a bit of a jump on typing. Don’t worry, the visual feedback will be the economical kana, so romaji used in this way will mostly stay in its covert role for typing, an action which you’ve already internalized (through your L1) to an automatic level. Even if you don’t practice typing now, you’ll want to later, as ‘typing literacy’ is an often overlooked aspect of language learning.)

A hiragana and katakana Heisig deck that includes audio (obviating the need for romaji phonetic indicators), and animated .gifs of drawing the kana (allowing for the inclusion of sensorimotor encoding) would be ideal. Combining this with the typing option in Anki enabled would also reduce the romaji involvement to basic, mindlessly automatized muscle memory, a desirable aim as romaji can interfere with the development of Japanese speech perception and pronunciation, among other things. Total avoidance of romaji is impossible, but minimizing where possible until after the foundations are laid is recommended.

References:

About these ads