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Category Archives: heisig

Recalling Japanese or Using Japanese?

In my opinion, the biggest challenge for learning Japanese is not whether you have the best teachers, techniques, methodologies or other nonsense.  It is your interest.  Real “discipline” come from interest, not will power.  Real dedication comes through interest, not self-flagellation to maintain focus. And so the question that I ask whenever I see someone struggling [...]

Posted 07 August 2008 † Khalid § studying ‡ Comments °

Learning Kanji From Context

Tae Kim has a great final post up on the “Remembering the Kanji” books. The best part isn’t when he discusses the merits of RTK but when he describes the process he went through in learning Kanji. I may have mentioned this before but I never studied kanji; I studied the words that are made [...]

Posted 31 January 2008 † Khalid § kanji § studying ‡ Comments ° Tagged: , ,

Starting with Heisig

Keep it simple. It’s amazing to me how many people learning Japanese do everything within their power to not read anything in Japanese. As though there is this magical point when they have memorized enough Kanji, drilled enough vocab, and crammed enough grammar, reading fluently will spontaneously occur. Now, to be fair, reading Japanese requires [...]

Posted 01 December 2007 † Khalid § fluency ‡ Comments ° Tagged: , , ,