Any tips for remembering kanji better? Some of them are super easy for me...and others won't stick… - Feed Post by VanillaQiwi
Any tips for remembering kanji better? Some of them are super easy for me...and others won't stick no matter how often I repeat them... orz
posted by VanillaQiwi
Comments 14
Hey! Try making little stories for each of them.. for example;
男 means male. So a little story to remember this one could be "It's a guy leaning on a bar checking out hot ladies".
食 means eat/food. The picture looks like a guy in a hat putting something into his mouth and try and remember it that way.
Hope this helps a little. Also look up mnemonic devices.
Thanks a lot! This technique doesn't work for me though....I don't know why, but I'm either too uncreative for this or my memory is too bad to memorise a story for each and every kanji.... I've tried that technique before but it never worked out... D: But thank you, really!
Do you happen to have another technique?
RTK + flashcards.
Just like Adonikam told, it´s really a good idea to associate a kanji to a story. Heisig´s RTK book gives you these stories, so you just have to remeber them (easier than remembering some meaningless weird symbol)- Ah another tool I use is a little-known iPhone app called "Kanji Flip" which is maybe $2 and is pretty much flashcards. Same thing as Anki but you don't need to set it all up.
I use this app called memrise and it has an online version to study the readings for kanji- they give user submitted mnemonics in order to remember them if you can think of one for yourself.
- Oh, I forgot to mention that the flashcards I like to use are only via apps. I think it´s a good idea to use one that can download decks from Quizlet, there you can find a number of sets that follows the RTK/Heisig chapters.
- Thanks a lot! I will have a look at the things you suggested! Hope something will help me memorise them better :)
Anki is a really good flashcard program and you can use it on your computer or phone.- Yeah, I have used Anki before, it really is useful :)
Say, do you guys learn every reading of each and every kanji or do try to learn kanji in actual words? Like...for example 先生 instead of 先 and 生 separately? - It depends, I use about 8 different things to study with and sometimes I learn them separately and then sometimes I learn them together. But normally they offset each other like I learned 新聞 (newspaper) before I learned the kanji for 新 (new) and 聞 (hear) but I can remember it much easier now that I know what newspaper is made up of and in addition I'll remember (at least one of) the readings for new and hear for other words as well. I guess it's really preference.
- Ah okay, thank you! That is kind of similar to how I am learning them right now. It's always a nice feeling when you can correctly guess the meaning of a new word because you know some of the kanji from elsewhere :D
- indeed, I still get too pumped when I'm listening to japanese music and I can actually understand one sentence in the song xD baby steps
- Ohhhh that's actually pretty rad! Totally a reason to get pumped!! :D
