The long path to Japanese Literacy.

This is a guide to my approach to learning kanji.

I'm writing this post because I've not been successful with earlier attempts to learn kanji, but now seem to be on course to reach a level of literacy in Japanese that had always alluded me. 

Something I learned on the Add1Challenge was this - when things get boring, change them ... it's all about consistency, so do what works for you right now, but don't be afraid to change things up when it gets tedious ... so I'm using a load of useful resources to learn kanji to keep moving forward ... even when it gets tough.

1. Remembering the Kanji - by James Heisig.

2. Memrise (Spaced Repetition Software)

3. Kanji Koohii - crowd sourced stories for Heisig's book.

4. Wanikani

5. Writing out 15 kanji ten times in a notebook every morning. 

6. Music - songs help me recall the story of the kanji.

7. Reading the kanji I see around me as I walk around in Japan.

8. Rewarding myself with a Tamashi Nations Star Wars figure at milestone moments.

Everyone who's learned kanji will have a unique story to tell. Some people will insist that learning kanji in isolation, without the multiple readings for each one isn't much use. I beg to differ ... for me, I'm no superman and trying to remember the character, it's meaning and its readings is a huge overload. YES, to be literate I do need to learn the readings, but all in good time ... if you live in Japan, you can certainly enjoy quickly gaining a gist understanding of the Japanese signs around you. In fact, it never fails to give me a buzz when I walk past a sign I've seen everyday and suddenly understand a little bit more of the message it's broadcasting. 

 I listen to other people, but I know myself better than anyone else ... and that makes me the best course designer for my own course to literacy. You will be your own best course designer too. Stage one of my mission ... to become kind of like a Chinese person coming to Japan, able to understand a lot of what is written around them, but not be able to say the words out loud!

So with that said, here's the lowdown on my journey ...

I tried using the Heisig method about three years ago, but I skimmed through the introduction in his book, "Remembering the Kanji" and I'd say that was a whopping great blunder.  So, for those of you who aren't familiar with the Heisig method, it's basically associating the kanji characters to an English keyword by remembering a little story. 

For example. You learn this character 泊 is associated with the keyword overnight. The three strokes on the left hand side, are associated with water, and the horizontally split box with a little spiky thing on top is associated with white. So I remember the association of the keyword, "overnight" with a little story from Breaking Bad - "Walter White cooked meth overnight". 

I quickly found that when I created my own stories to connect the kanji character with it's associated keyword meaning, I could remember it well enough to write it out or to recognize it and recall the keyword time and time again. In short, the story was the glue that made it stick in my memory. 

Some people claim you can learn all 2,136 joyo kanji in three months by taking the Heisig approach. I'm sure that's possible, you'd have to add about 25 a day to complete the challenge ... but I decided I'd split the whole mission into two three month challenges.  Three months is about right for me, six months of doing anything, enjoyable or not becomes a tedious chore ... so I needed to give myself some more frequent incentives. I decided that buying myself a Tamashi Nations Star Wars figure every five hundred kanji would keep me going during the toughest times. Sure, it has kept me on target, but the best reward to be honest, is simply being able to make more sense of the Japanese signs I see as I wander around in Japan.

I'm not only learning to recognize the kanji when I see it, I'm learning to produce it ... neatly ... as I'd like to be able to write beautifully too. Writing out, 15 new kanji ten or so times each morning takes me slightly less than an hour, and I sit listening to music as I write the characters. Often, I'm thinking of a story to associate the parts of the kanji with the lyrics in a song. My favorite example, was listening to "Sugar Sugar" whilst writing the character for "Honey" ... and singing along with my adapted version ... Honey ... you are invariably an insect in my house. The kanji associated with the keyword honey, 蜜, is made up of a roof, invariably and an insect ... so if I want to write that kanji, I just remember my little ditty and I can reproduce it straight from memory.

This method worked for me, and it still works for me, but I changed my approach around the time I reached the five or six hundredth character. I was chatting with a friend at work about learning Kanji. I know he'd learned the kanji years ago, and was excitedly telling him that things were really working for me. My friend was happy so much was sticking with me, but also warned that after about five hundred or so characters, it becomes more difficult to retain them long term. HE WAS RIGHT!

So, to keep those kanji sticking inside my head, I started using Memrise everyday to keep things stuck. Now one of the great things about Memrise, is that it shows me the characters I'm forgetting most frequently. Of course, being SRS (Spaced Repetition Software), it doesn't throw up the ones that are already totally glued into my brain ... so you do get a feeling that you're only remembering 70 to 80 percent of the kanji. BUT ... here's the thing ... you're remembering 70 to 80 percent of the kanji that are a little sketchy ... not sticky enough. I'm probably closer to 100% retention with 800 or so of the kanji that have really stuck in long term memory. 70% on the 300 or so that aren't firmly stuck isn't too shabby either come to think of it.

I also love the fact that there's the "Difficult" button when you're using Memrise's Premium service ... now, that's a quick route to viewing the kanji where my stories just aren't sticky enough.  

From time to time, I'll look at the kanji that just aren't sticking ... and I'll go onto Kanji Koohii. It's a great resource where lots of people have shared their stories for each kanji. It's worth noting that the best story is always a personal one, but Kanji Koohii gives me another perspective to rethink a story and then make it as personal as I can.  

So, once I'd reached my second major milestone, "being able to recognize 1,000 kanji characters", I thought I'd make a head start on learning the readings.  So, I started using a website called Wanikani. All said and done, it's a fantastic resource for learning kanji, including the readings. You'll also learn about 6,000 vocabulary words by completing the whole wanikani challenge. However, the downside is that it takes over a year, and at my pace, I estimate two years to complete.  Sure enough, that's not to be sniffed at ... after all, it takes Japanese people the best part of ten years to achieve the same level of literacy. 

That said ... being able to wander around making sense of a lot of kanji I see within six months is hugely rewarding. Who's to say that if I'd started with Wanikani, I'd have given up after a few months simply because it was paying me back with enough immediate gains.  

Now all things considered, where am I today. OK, I've reached 1,300 kanji in Heisig's book. On Wanikani, I'm on level 3 ... somewhere around level 20 (out of 60) I reckon I'll be able to read Japanese books with enough of a gist understanding to guess the meaning of more words than I need to look up in a dictionary.  So my plan now:

Mid-July: (2 months) Complete Heisig's 'Remembering the Kanji' book (volume 1)

Mid-2018: Complete Wanikani - Reach level 60.

End of 2019: Read a Japanese book every month.

In Summary, with this approach, I'm absolutely convinced I'll reach a level of literacy in Japanese where I can read newspapers, subtitles, books etc and be totally equipped to speak the language on topics that are a little inaccessible to me right now because I simply don't have the vocabulary. I'm also aware, that once you can read kanji well, you can guess the readings of a lot of new kanji - that's where I want to be.

Onwards and upwards then!