I have been studying a book called “Remembering The Kanji” by James Heisig. It is about Kanji, but a bit different from the usual approach to japanese Kanji. I started to study the book since I found a website dedicated to students learn through it. The website work as a comunity. In the book we make stories for remember how to write and the meaning of the kanji. You can create your own stories, but you also can use other poeple stories, and this is very useful and practical. Users can rank the stories, so you know what story works better. It is great. Also there is lots good statistics, a good revision system and a forum, where we can discuss. The site is very good, it works as a comunity where the members share their study.
I think LingQ should work in the same way. It is not like a usuall language course, where you just get “work sheets” and do your “home work”. Here interaction is key. I think we already have a good interaction here at the forum, and it will be better when the forum improve. Also some member are uploading content, that is very good, Today I notice that the second parte of Steve’s book “The Linguist” is avaliable in Japanese with audio, I am usuing the book and always waiting for new audio. I am not in a hurry, but when I see new content in japanese I always go straight away check it.
LingQ is growing, not so fast, but it is. And this is great! Just keep going LingQ, keep going!
The recording of my book in Japanese is excellent. I hope the contributor will identify herself. to do the whole book is a lot of work. I wonder if we should not try to divide the work up amongst several people. On the other hand the voice, diction and sound quality of this narrator is just outstanding. If she can do the whole book, great!
What about Portuguese or other language versions of the book? Any volunteers?
Mairo, I read Heisig’s books and stayed with it for a while but I kind of lost it during the transition from learning all the symbols to attaching the sound or sounds to them. That’s not to say that it didn’t help me. I certainly recognized many of the characters when I started to read but I’m not entirely convinced that learning the characters this way was the most effective way.
Do you know http://kanji.koohii.com/ ？
It is the website I talked about. I think just read Heisig isnt enough, you do it systematically using a good revision system. I always studied Kanji in the tradicional way and always get confused with similiar Kanjis. Heisig is good if you know how to use it, for me is working. Anyway, this should be discuss in another thread.
I don’t know that site but essentially now I just read and hope to eventually remember the Kanji if I see them often enough. Over time I remember more and more and if I spent more time reading Japanese I would pick them up faster. I’m not doing much Japanese at the moment. I’m saving myself for LingQ to be completely functional in Japanese!
I am really waiting for Japanese LingQ. I am studying japanese here, but I know it is going to better when it works properly.
Heisig’s book uses a method called “component analysis”, in which you break down the kanji in parts. You can learn through repetition just as japanese people do, but if you take a more logical aproach you as Heisig suggests, you can learn more fast. Have you ever read http://www.kanjiclinic.com/ articles? Maybe it can explain better than me.
I haven’t read Kanjiclinic’s articles so I can’t comment. My experience with Heisig was that without regular, meaningful exposure in context it is difficult to remember the characters since they are quickly forgotten. In a way it is like the LingQ vocabulary system which focuses on learning vocabulary you have encountered in context as opposed to studying standalone word lists. Encountering the characters in multiple contexts helps to reinforce the characters.