This post is actually a translation of one I wrote on my Japanese blog over a year ago (link here). Please excuse my poor English. ;)
Generally speaking, an SRS (Spaced Repition System) is a computer program that you can use to create virtual flash cards (like those boring ones you made at some point in school, but more fun). Why am I writing about this? Well, because I realized I use an SRS every day. You might have noticed me mention either "SRS" or "Anki" in previous posts; that's what this is. Why should you care? These programs are especially useful for learning languages, so I need to tell everyone. lol
Like normal paper flash cards, you write the question on the front and the answer on the back. For example, when learning a language, maybe you'll write a sentence in the target language on the front and the meaning on the back. But this is a computer program, so right off the bat you'll be making new cards very quickly. If I have 10 mins I can typically make about 20 cards. Yeah, try to keep up that pace with paper cards. When you start reviewing the cards you're shown the question, and when you think you know the answer you press "show answer" and grade yourself on how well you did. The ways to grade depend on the program, but the one I'm using has buttons for "Show Again," "Normal," "Easy," and "Too Easy."
At this point, if that's all there is to virtual flash cards, then all we've done is made flash cards more convenient. Essentially you can do the same with paper, albeit taking a bit more time. The beauty of an SRS program is the algorithm it uses. If you continuously rate the same card "Too Easy," then the next time the SRS will show you the card will be later and later: a week later, a month, 3 months, a year, etc. If it's really that easy, then there's no reason to keep reviewing it, right? However, difficult cards where you groan and press the "Show Again" button, after appearing time after time in the near future (5 mins or so), you'll eventually begin to remember little by little. As an aside though, if a card is just making you frustrated or bored, I recommend deleting it altogether; this is supposed to be a fun exercise to learn the things you WANT to know.
So the SRS keeps track of all of your results. It adapts to your memory, if you will. The objective of the algorithm (based on numerous psychological studies over the past century on "the spacing effect" and "the forgetting curve") is to show you the card right before you forget it. If it's effective in making you review at the optimal time, you are efficiently extending your memory of the fact after reviewing only a handful of times. Forget about wasting copious amounts of time reviewing all your material at random. Minimum effort for maximum effect. In other words, if you use an SRS every day, the facts you're trying to remember will never be forgotten, and you don't even have to worry about what to review next. It's pretty useful, yeah.
Of course, SRS programs aren't just for languages, but for anything you might want to learn. Notice I don't use the term "study." You've been studying out of boring textbooks for years now, give yourself a break and learn something. I used it for classes in my last sememster of college, and I was surprised at how easy it was to Ace tests (for optimal results I recommend trying to mimic the testing style as best as possible). My recommendation is Anki, which will work on virtually any computer or phone, and even your DS. Try it out!
NOTE: I actually posted this from an internet/manga cafe booth that I stayed overnight at. lol
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Kanji is Easy
Often times the most intimidating part of a subject can become the most straightforward simply by changing the approach.
If I had a 十円玉 for every time I heard someone say, "kanji is too hard" or "I've been studying Japanese for years but haven't started kanji" or "I've been studying kanji for years but only know about 500 (if that)," then I could, well... probably buy out a 百円ショップ. For those of you who've been studying kanji school-yard-style, learning the stroke order, the English meaning, the Japanese reading (訓読み), the Chinese reading (音読み), and maybe even some sample words before trying to rote-memorize that shiznit and move on to the next, prepare to have your world turned on its head. I'm willing to bet you've gotten frustrated a few times. Perhaps you even gave up for a couple months, before working up the motivation and then studying a whole FIVE in one day.
This was me in Fall 09, having studied 663 kanji (and making a paper flash card for each) over the course of 3 years, including 2 years of studying Japanese in college, a semester abroad in Japan, and studying on my own. I'd always loved kanji, and people around me can tell you that I spent a good part of my day flipping through those flash cards for review. It was then that I stumbled upon the Heisig method at AJATT. I officially started the method on 11/17/09, and a good five months later by 4/27/10 I had learned the 2042 basic kanji (that Japanese students study in school through junior high school). Over time I naturally got more efficient, eventually peaking at 27 kanji a day (taking about an hour and a half), which if I had done from the beginning I could have finished in less than 2 months. But no matter how many you do in one day, the most important thing is to be moving forward everyday.
What did I do and how can you do it better? That's why I'm writing this.
[Heisig in Theory]
In Japanese, there are two basic writing systems: kana and kanji. Kana consists of 46 hiragana phonetic characters used for Japanese native words, and 46 corresponding katakana phonetic characters for foreign words, some titles, and occasionally for emphasis. On top of those 92 phonetic kana characters, we have kanji characters that are primarily used for meaning. There are THOUSANDS of kanji, of which maybe 10,000 are actually used today but only 3,000-4,000 on a regular basis. As of the recent addition, the basic 常用 kanji that students learn is a total of 2,141 characters.
If you were going the rote-memorization school method, it would take you 9 years in the Japanese school system, and at least 5 years in a fast-paced study abroad program. Are you willing to rack up that kind of time? Heisig wasn't. Long story short, Heisig was a dude who went to Japan and decided if kanji was such a pain in the butt he would tackle it first. A month later he had memorized the 2,000 or so characters, and came out with a method anyone could replicate.
The idea is to assign a mnemonic to each kanji character. A mnemonic is a device that assists one in remembering something, which is something our adult brains are really good at. For each kanji you will write a short 1 or 2 sentence story that ties it to its English keyword, such that if you look at the keyword you can reproduce the kanji and vice versa. The elements of the story can be found in the kanji themselves; most components of a kanji, such as the left part (偏), the right part (旁), the upper part (冠), the bottom part (足), and the surrounding part (構え) are actually almost always repeated over and over and over again. You give those components an image, so when you're presented with a kanji with many components, you have many images to use in your story.
Let's use one of the kanji above as an example.
偏
In Japanese, there are two basic writing systems: kana and kanji. Kana consists of 46 hiragana phonetic characters used for Japanese native words, and 46 corresponding katakana phonetic characters for foreign words, some titles, and occasionally for emphasis. On top of those 92 phonetic kana characters, we have kanji characters that are primarily used for meaning. There are THOUSANDS of kanji, of which maybe 10,000 are actually used today but only 3,000-4,000 on a regular basis. As of the recent addition, the basic 常用 kanji that students learn is a total of 2,141 characters.
If you were going the rote-memorization school method, it would take you 9 years in the Japanese school system, and at least 5 years in a fast-paced study abroad program. Are you willing to rack up that kind of time? Heisig wasn't. Long story short, Heisig was a dude who went to Japan and decided if kanji was such a pain in the butt he would tackle it first. A month later he had memorized the 2,000 or so characters, and came out with a method anyone could replicate.
The idea is to assign a mnemonic to each kanji character. A mnemonic is a device that assists one in remembering something, which is something our adult brains are really good at. For each kanji you will write a short 1 or 2 sentence story that ties it to its English keyword, such that if you look at the keyword you can reproduce the kanji and vice versa. The elements of the story can be found in the kanji themselves; most components of a kanji, such as the left part (偏), the right part (旁), the upper part (冠), the bottom part (足), and the surrounding part (構え) are actually almost always repeated over and over and over again. You give those components an image, so when you're presented with a kanji with many components, you have many images to use in your story.
Let's use one of the kanji above as an example.
偏
Heisig's English keyword: partially
Components/images: person, comic book (door + scrapbook)
Story: The person reading the comic book is only PARTIALLY interested
You're learning, 1. how to write the character, and 2. what it means in English. At this point, some people have a kick-jerk reaction to this, saying "but what good is it going to do us if we don't know the meaning in Japanese?" Think about it like this: you will be armed with "English Kanji," the same advantage that Chinese and possibly Korean learners have. If you look at a newspaper, after only applying this method and not even knowing kana, you WILL be able to understand the basic gist of the articles. Hell, there are people who study Japanese for years and can't do this. You can do it in months.
Components/images: person, comic book (door + scrapbook)
Story: The person reading the comic book is only PARTIALLY interested
You're learning, 1. how to write the character, and 2. what it means in English. At this point, some people have a kick-jerk reaction to this, saying "but what good is it going to do us if we don't know the meaning in Japanese?" Think about it like this: you will be armed with "English Kanji," the same advantage that Chinese and possibly Korean learners have. If you look at a newspaper, after only applying this method and not even knowing kana, you WILL be able to understand the basic gist of the articles. Hell, there are people who study Japanese for years and can't do this. You can do it in months.
[Heisig in Practice]
You will need three things:
1. Anki (SRS computer program)
2. Reviewing the Kanji (website)
3. Recommended: Remembering the Kanji (book, sample chapter)
The core of this theory is the RTK book, written by Heisig, but why isn't it mandatory? Because the unaffiliated website above is literally a community created around Heisig's book. While the book only uses keywords and stories that Heisig came up with, the nearly 40,000 members of Reviewing the Kanji are free to post their own story ideas that are actually really clever and easy to remember. I learned by using the book and I can attest that there are some great ideas there, and he explains his theory in much greater detail than I did. But I've met people who only used the free website, and they're kanji fluent too.
So once you assign a keyword and create a story, how do you study it? Flash cards. But not paper flash cards, that's too inefficient; this is the 21st century and we have computer programs that use proven psychological algorithms (spaced repetition) for things like this, yo. That's where Anki comes in. Reviewing the Kanji has it's own virtual flash card program within the site and you're welcome to use it, but Anki has much more customizability and I can guarantee you'll use it for much longer. Actually I'm planning on writing a separate post on SRS programs like Anki in the future, but you can start using it right away to learn RTK. EDIT: Here is that post.
1. Download and install Anki
2. Recommended: watch videos and read info on using Anki on their website
3. File > Download > Public Decks
4. Download the one at the top: Heisig's Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+ 3
5. Open the deck and start studying
What you need to know: Anki is a memory program that can help you remember just about anything.
You will need three things:
1. Anki (SRS computer program)
2. Reviewing the Kanji (website)
3. Recommended: Remembering the Kanji (book, sample chapter)
The core of this theory is the RTK book, written by Heisig, but why isn't it mandatory? Because the unaffiliated website above is literally a community created around Heisig's book. While the book only uses keywords and stories that Heisig came up with, the nearly 40,000 members of Reviewing the Kanji are free to post their own story ideas that are actually really clever and easy to remember. I learned by using the book and I can attest that there are some great ideas there, and he explains his theory in much greater detail than I did. But I've met people who only used the free website, and they're kanji fluent too.
So once you assign a keyword and create a story, how do you study it? Flash cards. But not paper flash cards, that's too inefficient; this is the 21st century and we have computer programs that use proven psychological algorithms (spaced repetition) for things like this, yo. That's where Anki comes in. Reviewing the Kanji has it's own virtual flash card program within the site and you're welcome to use it, but Anki has much more customizability and I can guarantee you'll use it for much longer. Actually I'm planning on writing a separate post on SRS programs like Anki in the future, but you can start using it right away to learn RTK. EDIT: Here is that post.
1. Download and install Anki
2. Recommended: watch videos and read info on using Anki on their website
3. File > Download > Public Decks
4. Download the one at the top: Heisig's Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+ 3
5. Open the deck and start studying
What you need to know: Anki is a memory program that can help you remember just about anything.
[Heisig with Efficiency]
I recently began studying more kanji, and am now using a "Lazy Kanji" method. And you thought it couldn't get easier! It still utilizes the Heisig theory, but changes the order in the flash cards. Instead of the front being the keyword and the back being the kanji (and possibly the story), the front is the story and the kanji and the back is the meaning (the main keyword, the Japanese readings, and any other English meaning I can find). The reason is that you'll often find yourself looking at a kanji and wondering what it means. The original Heisig method of keyword kanji assumes that in the process the opposite will become a cinch. But the problem is the single keyword Heisig has chosen. This "Lazy Kanji" leaves a blank at the keyword in the story, and you'll judge yourself on how well you can guess any of the meanings. The point is to make it EASY, make it FUN, and Anki will take care of the rest by making you remember it.
One more thing to say about the stories. The more vivid the imagery, the more personal and crazy the stories (even by just writing it yourself), and the better linked to the meaning, the easier it'll be to remember in the long term. I made the occasional mistake of writing nonsense stories arbitrarily, and I'm paying for it now by not remembering some kanji very well and having to re-write the stories. That's why even if you use RTK, I recommend you check Reviewing The Kanji as well just to make sure your stories are solid.
[Learning Japanese]
The way I see it, Japanese has two steps to learn to fluency:
1. Kanji with Heisig
2. A solid and sustained Japanese environment
If you can do those two things, all you need are the motivation and a memory program to glue it together, then it's only a matter of time.
Alright, that's all folks. Sorry for the occasional rambling, and good luck on your Japanese studies!
Read on:
One more thing to say about the stories. The more vivid the imagery, the more personal and crazy the stories (even by just writing it yourself), and the better linked to the meaning, the easier it'll be to remember in the long term. I made the occasional mistake of writing nonsense stories arbitrarily, and I'm paying for it now by not remembering some kanji very well and having to re-write the stories. That's why even if you use RTK, I recommend you check Reviewing The Kanji as well just to make sure your stories are solid.
[Learning Japanese]
The way I see it, Japanese has two steps to learn to fluency:
1. Kanji with Heisig
2. A solid and sustained Japanese environment
If you can do those two things, all you need are the motivation and a memory program to glue it together, then it's only a matter of time.
Alright, that's all folks. Sorry for the occasional rambling, and good luck on your Japanese studies!
Read on:
Monday, January 16, 2012
Now with Google+ ACTION!
A happy "end-of-the-world 2012" new year to you all!
I thought I'd make an post pointing out a few things. First and foremost, I'm happy to announce that Google+ support in Blogger has gotten a lot stronger recently. On the left, you'll notice that I figured out how to connect my profile. In addition to showing my picture and intro, those links and the one at the bottom of this post will take you to that profile (I hence removed most of my other links to Google+). I've actually been meaning to write about my thoughts on Google+ since I registered in early July, and I welcome support like this across the Google board if it means easier use of the social network that I feel is closer to an evolved Twitter than a Facebook rival.
Second, I freshened up the look of my Blogger page a bit. Not that it was looking particularly dated, but I wanted at least a slight change and I really like the color scheme on this one. While I was at it I updated some information and links on the left as well. Actually, the big refresh came with my entrance into Google+, realizing that I didn't need to keep as much information public as I thought I did (like a link to my Facebook). So I moved it to my public Google+ Profile, but only available to those I add to my circles.
Third, and perhaps most pertinent to the survival of this blog, I've decided to put myself on a weekly writing schedule. Truth be told, it's not like I haven't done this before (lol), but this time is a little different (they're all different aren't they?). I'm finally more or less caught up on posting pictures and videos, for one. On a more personal note, I finally feel a lot more in control of tasks and projects that I've given myself, and it's put me in a better mood, like I'm satisfied with life or something. And with the Google+ support came, as Google so beautifully put it, "the makeover [Blogger]’s long deserved." In the background it definitely shows, and gives me more motivation than a New Year's resolution was going to.
Fourth, I want to direct your attention to a previous post that I made about places to follow me and my travels in Japan if posting does get slow here. Allow me to update that list:
Pictures (and videos) on Picasa - high-quality pictures since January 2011, and going strong with over 40 albums now. I really love how I can easily upload videos into the same album as pictures, and even better than that how they automatically show up in Google+ so that I can tag, caption, and encourage commenting as I wish. I virtually stopped using Photobucket after 2010.
Videos on YouTube - interesting videos that I want to share with the world.
Statuses on Twitter - the easiest way for me to share my adventures, so I tend to use it the most. Unfortunately for many of you reading this, as my Japanese level increases so does the use of it in my updates. However, my Twitter feed goes to my Facebook too, so if the demand is there I will make the effort to translate my Japanese posts.
Pictures and videos on Facebook - to my Facebook friends, I hope you've noticed by now that I've been making a big effort to caption and tag every freaking thing I post there! If you want stories from Japan that's probably the best place to look, so please comment. :)
Fifth and lastly, this year is looking to be quite an exciting one, and it has something to do with my fiance Jasmin. ;) I'm looking forward to writing about it if I can keep on top of this schedule once and for all.
I'll leave it there for now. This blog isn't a failure yet! Hope to write a lot more in the coming weeks, especially if I'm continuing with my plan to leave Japan at the end of July.
I thought I'd make an post pointing out a few things. First and foremost, I'm happy to announce that Google+ support in Blogger has gotten a lot stronger recently. On the left, you'll notice that I figured out how to connect my profile. In addition to showing my picture and intro, those links and the one at the bottom of this post will take you to that profile (I hence removed most of my other links to Google+). I've actually been meaning to write about my thoughts on Google+ since I registered in early July, and I welcome support like this across the Google board if it means easier use of the social network that I feel is closer to an evolved Twitter than a Facebook rival.
Second, I freshened up the look of my Blogger page a bit. Not that it was looking particularly dated, but I wanted at least a slight change and I really like the color scheme on this one. While I was at it I updated some information and links on the left as well. Actually, the big refresh came with my entrance into Google+, realizing that I didn't need to keep as much information public as I thought I did (like a link to my Facebook). So I moved it to my public Google+ Profile, but only available to those I add to my circles.
Third, and perhaps most pertinent to the survival of this blog, I've decided to put myself on a weekly writing schedule. Truth be told, it's not like I haven't done this before (lol), but this time is a little different (they're all different aren't they?). I'm finally more or less caught up on posting pictures and videos, for one. On a more personal note, I finally feel a lot more in control of tasks and projects that I've given myself, and it's put me in a better mood, like I'm satisfied with life or something. And with the Google+ support came, as Google so beautifully put it, "the makeover [Blogger]’s long deserved." In the background it definitely shows, and gives me more motivation than a New Year's resolution was going to.
Fourth, I want to direct your attention to a previous post that I made about places to follow me and my travels in Japan if posting does get slow here. Allow me to update that list:
Pictures (and videos) on Picasa - high-quality pictures since January 2011, and going strong with over 40 albums now. I really love how I can easily upload videos into the same album as pictures, and even better than that how they automatically show up in Google+ so that I can tag, caption, and encourage commenting as I wish. I virtually stopped using Photobucket after 2010.
Videos on YouTube - interesting videos that I want to share with the world.
Statuses on Twitter - the easiest way for me to share my adventures, so I tend to use it the most. Unfortunately for many of you reading this, as my Japanese level increases so does the use of it in my updates. However, my Twitter feed goes to my Facebook too, so if the demand is there I will make the effort to translate my Japanese posts.
Pictures and videos on Facebook - to my Facebook friends, I hope you've noticed by now that I've been making a big effort to caption and tag every freaking thing I post there! If you want stories from Japan that's probably the best place to look, so please comment. :)
Fifth and lastly, this year is looking to be quite an exciting one, and it has something to do with my fiance Jasmin. ;) I'm looking forward to writing about it if I can keep on top of this schedule once and for all.
I'll leave it there for now. This blog isn't a failure yet! Hope to write a lot more in the coming weeks, especially if I'm continuing with my plan to leave Japan at the end of July.
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