Learning to write kanji

[paulwalth7002]

I'm curious if other students are teaching themselves to write Japanese in kanji. I read heisigs book RTK and have been trying to. It seems I tend to forget the words though pretty easily if I haven't written them in a while. Anyone have better luck?

[natsukoy9313]

paulwalth7002-san,
I know what you mean...kanji is not my favourite (although I'm Japanese.... it happens).
I'm also not really good at memorising new words when I study foreign languages. I need to keep writing the words
(and sometimes kanji) from time to time, and for me, it's the best.
When you learn new kanji, maybe you can creat your own way to remember them, like using some resemble image/picture?

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[choneb9359]

Hi everyone!

I am new to Japanese, so my learning methods are those that I used with my engineering stuff, which I found to work quite well. Space repetition works quite well when you need to remember stuff(There are several books on this, one was written by a guy called Tony Buzan). When you learn something separate them into different sessions. For instance, the first revision session should be done, say, 10 minutes after your first exposure to the content. The next one 1hr after that, and the next one 1 day after that. The way this method goes is towards the learner regurgitating the content: that is, you don't just look through the material in each session, you have to try to (in the case of kanjis) write it out. If you don't get it, refer back to the notes. Some will argue against the effectiveness of this method. However, there are so many methods out there that you could use.

The core factors, in my opinion, on learning anything are consistency and concentration. There's no point in doing something many times if you are not focused on the task. Conversely, there's no point in having a very intense session if you are only doing once in a while.

Hope you got something out of it
Chone

[mwbeale6642]

You might like to try skritter (www.skritter.com). You get to write kanji either on your computer with a Wacom tablet or on an iOS device using your finger. It's a spaced repetition system and includes writing, hence it seems to hit all your buttons. You have to pay a subscription (after a week's trial period), but I think it is worth it. It might be worth you checking it out.

[choneb9359]

Hi mwbeale6642 san
Thank you for sharing this! I also been interested in something like this, but haven't had the time to look for one. Currently I only use an android app called "Obenkyo" which also does something similar. But I'll definitely check this website out, since I already have a graphics tablet for my digital drawing work.

[mwbeale6642]

There's no android app for skritter, just iOS, so if you want to use mobile skritter, you either need to buy an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch (which you can get for about 169 pounds now which is not a lot of money in the grander scheme of things). I spend most of my time on the internet version (using my tablet), so I think that the lack of a mobile version for your android device wouldn't be a big deal.