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- Alexandria King on Too Much Knowledge Can Hurt Your Memory?
- Stefan on How I Failed at the Heisig Method of Learning Kanji (and how I’m getting back on track)
- Kaeru on How I Failed at the Heisig Method of Learning Kanji (and how I’m getting back on track)
- Language Learning Momentum | Kougakushin on Why Language Classes Don't Work
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Tag Archives: Learning
Heisig Idea: Trace, don’t Write
Through extended practise I’ve made a lot of progress with teh quality of my Japanese handwriting. In previous Heisig attempts I was careful to always have pencil and paper ready for all kanji reviews I did on the “Reviewing the … Continue reading
Too Much Knowledge Can Hurt Your Memory?
A study [1] has found that adults were better able to remember pictures of imaginary animals than real animals (they used pictures of real cats). Their theory is that when you have little/no knowledge of the subject you can approach … Continue reading
How I Failed at the Heisig Method of Learning Kanji (and how I’m getting back on track)
I’m about to begin my third attempt at learning the 2042 standard-use kanji using James Heisig’s method. My first attempt started on 17th January 2007, just after I’d returned from a 3 month internship in Japan, and the day after … Continue reading
Posted in Japanese, Kanji, Learning, Learning Tools
Tagged heisig, kanji, Learning, memory
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Why Language Classes Don't Work
At school we had to learn at least one language, I chose German. We’d have classes nearly every day and after six years I could hold my own in a conversation; not a bad result (well, worth a ‘B’).
These days I study Japanese, and when I started the first thing I did was get a book and CD to prepare for a 3 month stint working in Japan. I also got a book on learning the hiragana and katakana by James Heisig because it happened to be recommended on Amazon.
Talk about aiming low and underestimating the scale of the task! Even if I mastered the content in those two resources I’d still be stuck with virtually no knowledge of kanji (I’d be functionally illiterate) and would be confined to some pretty formulaic set conversations. Not to mention, these textbooks always hide the difficult Japanese from you so as not to scare you when you’re starting out.
The result was that I struggled constantly with learning the language and I learned an important lesson: you need input. You need to listen to hundreds, thousands of hours of spoken language. You need to read as much as possible. Drilling set phrases and words will only get you so far (perhaps about as far as I got, struggling as I did?).
After returning to the UK to start a PhD programme the first things I did was to look for a Japanese class. I quickly found a place that looked good (its sole purpose was teaching Japanese and was affiliated with the University of Manchester) and e-mailed the guy who runs the center. After arriving 30 minutes late he looked at the speeches I’d brought along (from my time in Japan, these were speeches to my colleagues, thanking them for their hospitality etc.) and told me that I couldn’t join the class as it was for beginners and so I’d be ‘disruptive’.
So, point #1 for why language classes don’t work: Continue reading