Hacking the Japanese Proficiency Test: How to Dissect Kanji
japanesetesting.com
japanesetesting.com
James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji I gives you the tools to write the kanji and assign an english meaning to it (same manner as suggesting that grass that makes you feel better is medicine), with volume II showing the readings in common.
I've only gone through volume one, but that itself saves you a heck of a lot of time in that you can write characters without repeatedly practicing them - you just need to use some imagination in creating and remembering stories.
I learned to read by reading. Once you have a large enough vocabulary you do pick up on the on-yomi patterns a lot better. Of course knowing this earlier did help - I studied radicals and their meanings before entering university and we hardly touched them there - it was more about brute force rote memorisation.
So I can read Japanese (and write it to an extent), but still need more work in speaking it.
While I have a large reading vocabulary, my written is horrible, largely due to the fact that my job requires me to use a computer all day, so the amount of physical writing I do compared to the amount of henkan I do is severely lacking.
I've always wanted to sit down with Remembering the Kanji and try to get my writing skills back up to snuff. As someone who can read, but can't write, I wonder how much of a benefit Heisig would give me over some other methodology.
I think the biggest detractor against Heisig are some of his followers, ;) A lot of people seem to think that the stories that Heisig gives you are not mnemonics, but rather "meanings," and that by reading the first book you can then simply infer the entirety of kanji just by putting the radicals together.
I had a person on a forum I frequent say that even without knowing the meaning, he could infer that 社会 was "society" because it was "God, Meeting with the ground."
I asked him then why 会社 didn't have the same meaning, and he was rather silent about that one. ;)
In terms of actually writing the characters, Heisig effectively taught me how to write each individual component/radical, so I think my writing is pretty decent in that regard. If you are practicing heisig (book 1), you should also be practicing stroke order, or at least a way to compose the character that works for you.
Also I get performance anxiety when people watch me write for some reason.. :/
One of the nice things about using the reading trick that I talk about in the article up there is that it impresses the bejesus out of native speakers when a hard-looking kanji like 状態遷移系 comes up, and you can use the 旁 to pronounce the whole thing (even if you have no idea what it means laugh )
Except for the fact that I didn't look up the meaning until just now when you linked me. ;)
And I just finished an entire book based around 状態遷移系! (They explained it in the book, so while I knew what it was talking about, I had no idea what it meant in english. laugh
Let me know if you come up with anything good.
And I know exactly what you mean by people who think that RTK is the end-all be-all of learning kanji. While a lot of the stories and mnemonics might be useful, and knowing meanings is genuinely useful, it takes a lot more than that to master the language.
Do you work in Japan? I'm heading back to Tokyo in January, and would love to meet up with some HN people there.
I've done some of the DS games as well (100万 漢字検定 and.. some others..) but they never seem to stick with me because as soon as I finish using them, I'm back to typing on the computer and 馬鹿ing my ワープロ... or is that ワープロing my 馬鹿? Either way it's not a path I'm happy with.
Where do you work in Tokyo? I was just there for a cakePHP conference (but that's a post for another time)
Anyone taking the JLPT this year ? I'm skipping jlpt3 this year and hoping for 2 in the future.
On a startup related note. This site http://www.japonin.com/ has a really nice interactive chat for teaching. Will really improve your speaking. Would be nice to see other languages taking off using a similar design.
Also seems the lots of new language related startups are doing quite well... lang-8, smartfm, and japanesepod101 to name a few.
I do lament the lack of higher-level study materials though. Sites like Tae-Kim and studyJapanese, etc all seem to stop at passive form, with only a slight introduction to Keigo (about 3kyu or early 2kyu level)
I find very few sites that have enough materials to take their users past 1kyuu, which is one of the reasons why I started my site (and still need to get more content up there).
After taking 1kyuu, and starting to work at a Japanese company, I realized that 1kyuu is only the beginning. You really need a much higher level than that to fully participate in a Japanese work environment.
Which is why my next sites are set on the JTest (used to be the Jetro).
The majority of the "articles" (http://japanesetesting.com/articles) are simply sections from Tae Kim's guide copied verbatim.
Although at Tae Kim's guide is CCL'd and there is copyright notice at the end of each of the posts... it seems a bit wrong to have them in separate posts like this. Why not just link to Tae Kim's guide outright, once?
The main reasons they're there is: a) they are an amazing source of information for Japanese students. b) I'm currently in the process of creating testing and flashcard packs based around his methodology to supplement his site. c) they filled up space while I started getting original content up. ;)
The articles section of my site were originally an "extra" feature, with the flashcards and testing information based on popular textbooks (without copyright infringing) was the main purpose of the site.
Essentially 'Here's a bunch of study materials based on the textbook you're currently using.'
Of course, as people sign up, and I get more feedback, that's been changing a lot. People are very interested in the testing features, but they also seem to want more articles than I originally anticipated. I'm currently in the process of releasing new articles, (like the Kanji one above), but you're right that having the Lesson articles in with the standard articles seems a bit strange. Perhaps I'll create a subcategory for textbook-based articles (like Tae Kim) and original articles.
Thanks for the advice! I'm always looking for more feedback.
Speaking of which, to find the index of articles I had to edit the URL by hand; there doesn't seem to be a link to them from the submitted link.
There's a link on the right side, but you're right -- that's not very user friendly. laugh I'll put that at the top of my "To Fix" issues. ;)
Thanks to all the opinions, advice (and complaints) from people, I've made the navigation for guests much easier, and also standardized the login and signup methods.
Next I need to decide if I'm going to allow comments for guests...
It'd be really nice to do the 1, but my scores on the practice tests were embarrassingly south of 50%, and I totally bombed the 1 last year, so I'm doing the 2 this year to at least have some sort of piece of paper that says I've got some Japanese ability.
For finding partners, you might also want to try http://language-exchanges.org/ -- it's not a for-pay site, and doesn't have experienced teachers, but I've found it to be a good way to connect up with people.