Speak Japanese Fluently promises to teach the student to “Speak Intermediate Level Japanese Fluently within 30 Days or Your Money Back.” That’s a big promise, but one that becomes more understandable as you read more about the program.

First of all, the makers of Speak Japanese Fluently did not design it for beginners. A husband and wife team put the 32 lesson package together for continuing students of Japanese who already know some of the language, but are ready to move on and learn to speak and understand the language as native speakers do. This is something that normally is virtually impossible to do unless you live in Japan and immerse yourself in the culture.

The authors are well qualified to teach conversational Japanese. Nicholas Kemp’s native language is English and he had to learn to speak Japanese fluently when he moved to Japan to live with his wife, Kaoru Sensei. What they learned together about teaching and learning Japanese, they applied to their successful online tutoring business. This audio-visual CD program is an outgrowth of that business.

Speak Japanese Fluently is an audio-visual program, which is always helpful when you’re trying to learn a language. For that reason alone, the program is probably well worth its current (March 2010) discounted price tag of $47.00. The current promotion also includes a “Read Hiragana Fast” CD, a downloadable MP3 version of the lessons and a set of their JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) flashcards. If you want to take your Japanese language skills to the next level, this program is well worth investing in, especially since it offers a money back guarantee.

Speak Japanese Fast is a Japanese learning program with a twist. Unlike most Japanese teaching systems, the creator of this system applies techniques he learned from the works of memory expert, Harry Lorayne to the study of Japanese. In order to decide if this course is for you, you need to first know who Harry Lorayne is and what he teaches.

Harry Lorayne became famous as a magician before he became a well-known memory expert. One of the card tricks he was most famous for was the ability to memorize, in order, all the cards in a shuffled 52 card deck in seconds. He then went on to co-write The Memory Book with basketball legend, Jerry Lucas. The basic technique he teaches is word association.

The concept of word association is not difficult to understand. It is much easier to memorize a word if we can associate it with something else. An example of this is given on the Speak Japanese Fast homepage in a short video clip. The clip begins, “The Japanese word for hill is ’saka’” accompanied by a drawing of green hills. Then a cartoon drawing of a little boy playing soccer on the hill appears with the caption, “Imagine a small boy playing soccer (saka) on a hill.” Finally, you are assured that you will never forget that the Japanese word for hill is “saka.” It works.

You might ask yourself why you should buy Speak Japanese Fast when you might be better off purchasing The Memory Book. The reason is because word association works brilliantly, but you need to make the associations first. This program has already done that for you, so you can jump right into memorizing Japanese words fast, as promised.

The current (March 2010) price of Speak Japanese Fast is $49.95. Given the efficacy of the Harry Lorayne inspired teaching technique, it is safe to say that it’s worth the price as it is. The creator of the program also throws in Bullet Hiragana and Katagana programs and other free extras, so it is no doubt good value for the money if you use it as an adjunct to more comprehensive Japanese learning programs. As a stand-alone learning program, though, it may be too limited in scope.

Takanori Tomita, the creator of Nihongo Japanese, learned how difficult it is to learn a new language when he moved to Australia at the age of fourteen and had to learn English from scratch. Upon returning to Japan, he undertook a dual career in translation and online Japanese teaching. Nihongo Japanese is the result of his many years of learning and teaching foreign languages.

Most language experts agree that you learn more quickly by listening and repeating common sentences than by learning the mechanics of a language. Children learn their native language in small word and phrase parcels first and then naturally and organically learn to string complete sentences together until they become fluent.

Takanori Tomita agrees with this principle and this is how he teaches the language. The lessons are broken down into step-by-step components to facilitate the learning process. Each lesson in Component 1 begins with a conversation between two cartoon characters. The illustrations help you to make the neural connections associated with real-life conversation. After memorizing the sentences, you move on to the vocabulary section, which elucidates and expands on what you learned before. There are supplementary notes included, where necessary.

In the final stage of Component 1, you are given writing exercises to round off your learning. These writing lessons are somewhat unique in Japanese teaching programs. Often, speaking and writing Japanese are divided into two different courses and the writing component becomes overwhelming for many students. Presented in this way, the writing is more easily absorbed and also serves to reinforce your vocabulary learning.

Component Two includes MP3 audio files for listening and learning when you’re away from the computer. Components 3 and 4 are pre-recorded online videos in which a number of native Japanese speakers teach you Japanese in a relaxed, informal atmosphere.

The creator of Nihongo Japanese boasts that he teaches “street level” Japanese. This is one of the real strengths of his program, especially for younger learners who might be put off by a more academic style Japanese learning program. At $77.95, it is good value, especially if Takanori Tomita’s teaching style and methods appeal to you.

As the name implies, Bullet Japanese is a speed learning program. The developer of the Bullet system certainly doesn’t waste time making some very big claims for his program. He claims to be able to teach you how to memorize up to 100 words of Japanese in one hour. It is such an outlandish boast, you could be forgiven for closing your browser window and looking elsewhere for your Japanese learning software. That might be a mistake, though.

Back in the days when Johnny Carson was host of the Tonight Show, a magician and memory expert named Harry Lorayne appeared on the show. He amazed the audience when, after quickly asking each of them their names, he remembered them all. David McGimpsey, the creator of Bullet Japanese, applied Harry Lorayne’s memory principles to his own learning of Japanese when he moved to Japan and had to learn the language in a hurry.

To his own surprise, McGimpsey learned Japanese in record time. His friends and co-workers were so surprised, they asked him how he did it and he began teaching them. He then created the Bullet Japanesecourse.

For David McGimpsey to say that he can teach you to learn 100 words of Japanese in one hour and 1000 words in ten hours is still an outlandish claim, but he must be confident, because he offers a 21-day trial for only $4.95 (as of March 2010). After that, you are billed the remaining $30.00. If you are disappointed, you can still get a refund within 60 days. An offer like that is worth looking into. If you can learn just half as many words per hour as he says you can, that’s still a lot more than most people can learn in a day!

Anki….

<Anki> is a free to download piece of flashcard software. Based on the principles of <SRS – link to Wired article> or, <Spaced Recognition Systems>, Anki intelligently scehdules flashcard repetitions based on your rate of success or failure of previous reviews, taking the work out of having to decide what to review, and when. Successfully complete consecutive reviews of a card, and the length of time between reviews will increase exponentially, the idea being that, as a card becomes more reinforced in your mind, you can remember the card for a longer time. Fail a review, and you`ll start at the beginning of the curve again, requiring a review after less than a day. This intelligent method of scheduling means that the data you put into the system will always be display just before, or just as you forget it, maximising learning efficiency. It should be added however that Anki needs to be used daily to really experience its full benefits. Take too many breaks away from it, and it messes with the intelligent scheduling effect.

Anki actually doesn`t care what data you put into it, you can use it to learn anything, school notes, cocktail names, capital cities. Many people use it for different things, though it seems the most popular use of it is for language learning. Within the software, you can download pre-prepared decks, including a large number of Japanese decks. The previously mentioned <Heisig method> is downloadable as a deck, and works especially well with this software.

Anki, (and the other popular SRS reviewers <Supermemo>) are free to download. A web based SRS reviewer <SuruSuru – http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-surusu> is also available.

“10,000 Sentences”…

<10,000 Sentences> is a method advocated by Khatzumoto of <AJATT> for learning grammar, vocabulary, and everything else all at once, rather than trying to learn it in bits, like most books advocate. The thinking behind this is is that the rules of grammar, all the bits that put a sentence together, are far too difficult to learn in isolation, and the problems contrived to teach the points are usually unrealistic and lead to stilted Japanese. Rather than taking this traditional approach, if you can gather 10,000 sentences of information that you are personally INTERESTED in, and want to understand, and if you bombard yourself with enough of it, eventually, the grammar, the words, everything will start to sink in as a whole, and natural Japanese will result. Being interested in the content is important for motivation; choose boring stuff, and the brain will shut it out.

Again, 10,000 sentences is a technique that has a great marriage with Anki, which takes the effort out of scheduling the reviews yourself, and keeps your learning efficient. Plenty of sentence packs are available through the anki software to start you on your way.

www.readthekanji.com

<www.readthekanji.com> is a website for learning Japanese words. The site provides an incredibly clean and fast interface, as well as organising it`s words in line with the current <JLPT> levels to help with learners attempting to tackle these exams. In this software, a word pops up in kanji, along with an example sentence, and you must then type the word in a box underneath. This software confers a number of benefits to the user:

- Like SRS`s, this software provides some intelligent scheduling in order to both add cards to the current learning pile gradually, and to increase/decrease reviews depending on your success or failure rate.
- Each example sentence provided gives a realistic sample of Japanese, as well as a naturally translated English version to check it against. Being able to see the word in the context of a sentence really helps with cementing the meaning and nuance of the word in your head.
- Can be used to learn kanji of different JLPT levels, and even hirigana and katakana if you are a beginner
- Provides beautiful statistics in order to measure your progress over time, over both the JLPT levels, and across a grid of all <Joyo kanji>

This site really takes a lot of the effort out of learning kanji and is a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, it is no longer free (although accounts created prior to charging will be honoured as free), but it is really worth the $10 signup for a lifetime membership (and additionally, you can get the hirigana, katakana, and JLPT4 decks as part of a free trial).

MSN/Chat/Sharedtalk

Rikaichan

<Rikaichan> is a pop-up dictionary plugin for Firefox, and is quite simply indispensable to the Japanese learner who is yet to have an extensive vocabulary, or even for the experienced learner who doesn`t wish to disturb the flow of his web-based reading with opening up other applications or looking in paper dictionaries. With this plugin, when viewing a web page through firefox, as you hover over any Japanese text with your cursor, rikaichan will select any possible combinations of words it detects on the cursor, and pops up in a blue box possible dictionary definitions of the selection. This allows the user, with a decent understanding of Japanese grammar, to read almost anything put in front of him, even with quite a low level of vocabulary. Forward emails to gmail, or documents to google docs, and you can also read them with rikaichan through firefox.

iPhone/Kotoba/readthekanji

The missing link in the iPhone learning experience is Japanese Handwriting Recognition…

My Japanese Coach (DS)?

Japanese Learning on the Move

By all accounts, the iPhone should be a seriously useful piece of kit for the Japanese learner with it`s portability and touch screen functionality. However, it doesn’t quite seem to have the killer apps required to make it a truly useful piece of kit. However, it still has a few useful applications, which are discussed below.

What It Can Do

Readthekanji/Surusuru

Of course, with its built in Safari web browser, the iPhone can access web-pages and thus the Japanese learner can use any web based applications he has in his learning tool-belt. In personal experience, this would include readthekanji.com which works decently, if not brilliant, on the iPhone. The layout isn’t exactly suited to the iPhone’s resolution, and the user finds himself scrolling around a lot to see all of the information. Presumably the SRS application SuruSuru will also work through the iPhone too.

StudyArcade

StudyArcade is an SRS application for the iPhone, available through the app store. You can connect to your online Anki decks with this, thus giving the ability to share a deck between a PC application and StudyArcade on the iPhone. However, when the writer tried this several months ago, a few syncing problems between the phone, PC and online Anki account were present, causing both the iPhone software to crash when trying to sync large amounts of information (like present in a Heisig/Kanji deck) and also caused some loss of progress/review information in the deck attempting to be synced. Several months have passed since this event, and the software may well have improved in the meantime, but proceed with care.

iAnki

Anki is also available through the iPhone through a web browser, using the iAnki plug-in. Running Anki in this manner however is far from the elegant experience provided by the desktop version. Also, the process you have to go through to set up the application and plug-in is not completely trivial. Anki is definitely something that would benefit from having a dedicated port provided for the iPhone.

Kotoba

The iPhone provides quite a large number of Japanese dictionaries in the App Store, Kotoba is the best this writer has found to date. As well as being free, Kotoba provides a number of great features:

- A relatively neat interface in which to display results, provides lots of similar and alternative results to search through
- Multi-language support, giving results in French, German and occasionally other languages
- Native application integration with tatoeba.org, which provides example sentences to show word use in context
- A kanji decomposition, showing the individual kanji of a compound word, the keywords associated with the kanji, and the On/Kun Yomi readings of the kanji
- A cork-board to attach kanji you want to study later to
- Individual kanji look-up, including stroke order, radical, frequency, and a raft of other information (including Heisig number and other external learning scheme indexes)

What It’s Missing

The biggest missing link in the iPhone learning experience however is Japanese Handwriting Recognition. For some reason, Apple have chosen to not add this in yet, while they support Chinese handwriting recognition. It could be argued that the market in China is bigger, hence it makes more sense for them to support their market. However, Apple have tackled the hard part of the problem, which is the algorithm to detect characters successfully. Surely to turn the Chinese support into Japanese support, they would only have to delete the characters that are present in Chinese, but not in Japanese, add the characters in Japanese that aren’t used in Chinese, and then modify the frequencies to represent each character`s frequency in Japanese better? In any case, if enough people request the functionality from Apple, they might be more inclined to produce this functionality.

Japanese Handwriting Recognition would be a real killer app in the Japanese learners arsenal. It’s still very difficult and slow at an intermediate level to look up Kanji you don’t recognise as you are forced to take the radical look-up/stroke count route in a dictionary. Handwriting recognition on a touch screen like this would allow learners to rapidly enter kanji, even on the move, to look up words they didn’t recognise. Couple with a “pin-board” style app to save the kanji inputted for later digestion, and the iPhone would turn into a great device for the Japanese learner. This and a Heisig look-up mentioned in would massively increase the iPhone’s usefulness to the Japanese learner.

So there you have it, a series of techniques and applications available to the Japanese learner. Most of them are free and readily down-loadable, so get out there, download the software, and start learning!

The last post provided a couple of applications to start bringing your Japanese learning into reality, with a useful SRS application to review kanji, and a web-based application to help build word power. This article shares both more ways of bringing your Japanese learning into the realistic domain, and introduces an application to help you read real Japanese on the web, either in email, or on web pages.

Sharedtalk

Chat programmes provide a great way to start putting your learning into practice. Despite putting a lot of effort into studying, it can still be quite scary to enter realistic situations with Japanese, and the endless possibilities that you can encounter in “the wild” with the language. To start with, it can be useful to start practicing via chat programmes, as this both gives you time to consider a response, and also allows you to look up words you don’t understand, providing the chance to have realistic conversation, even at a lower-intermediate level. Even at higher levels MSN is useful as a way of increasing reading speed and word power, with less of a danger of miscommunication.

Sharedtalk is a site that provides both a chat client, as well as a “meeting place” for language exchange. Language exchange is the process of two or more people meeting each other, with the aim of sharing their native languages and getting the chance to speak with someone who uses another language. Usually, the people who take part in language exchange are in the same boat as you, and are pretty tolerant of your language ability, no matter how rough it might be. However, it is important to match with someone of a similar language level to yourself, otherwise you might find yourself only speaking your own native language! Sharedtalk isn’t the only language exchange site out there, but being free, and providing a nice interface, it`s definitely one of the best.

Rikaichan

Rikaichan is a pop-up dictionary plug-in for FireFox, and is quite simply indispensable to the Japanese learner who is yet to have an extensive vocabulary, or even for the experienced learner who doesn’t wish to disturb the flow of his web-based reading with opening up other applications or looking in paper dictionaries. With this plug-in, when viewing a web page through FireFox, as you hover over any Japanese text with your cursor, Rikaichan will select any possible combinations of words it detects on the cursor, and pops up in a blue box possible dictionary definitions of the selection. This allows the user, with a decent understanding of Japanese grammar, to read almost anything put in front of him, even with quite a low level of vocabulary. Forward emails to gmail, or documents to google docs, and you can also read them with Rikaichan through FireFox.

“10,000 Sentences”

10,000 Sentences is a method advocated by Khatzumoto of AJATT for learning grammar, vocabulary, and everything else all at once, rather than trying to learn it in bits, like most books advocate. The thinking behind this is is that the rules of grammar, all the bits that put a sentence together, are far too difficult to learn in isolation, and the problems contrived to teach the points are usually unrealistic and lead to stilted Japanese. Rather than taking this traditional approach, if you can gather 10,000 sentences of information that you are personally INTERESTED in, and want to understand, and if you bombard yourself with enough of it, eventually, the grammar, the words, everything will start to sink in as a whole, and natural Japanese will result. Being interested in the content is important for motivation; choose boring stuff, and the brain will shut it out.

Again, 10,000 sentences is a technique that has a great marriage with Anki, which takes the effort out of scheduling the reviews yourself, and keeps your learning efficient. Plenty of sentence packs are available through the Anki software to start you on your way.

In the next blog post, ways of studying Japanese on the move with the iPhone will be discussed. Good luck gathering and learning 10,000 sentences, and don’t forget to download Rikaichan to help with your reading!

I previously wrote on a technique to aid memorization of the Kanji used in everyday life in Japan. In this post, two applications will be discussed. First, a flashcard application to put Heisig learning into practice in the most efficient way possible (and indeed, any other Japanese learning you might decide to do too). Secondly, a web based application that will help take your learning from the useful, but abstract principles of Heisig into the more realistic realm of learning real words and vocabulary, again with scheduling algorithms that will help make your learning as efficient as possible.

Anki

Anki is a free to download piece of flashcard software. Based on the principles of SRSes or, Spaced Recognition Systems, Anki intelligently schedules flashcard repetitions based on your rate of success or failure of previous reviews, taking the work out of having to decide what to review, and when. Successfully complete consecutive reviews of a card, and the length of time between reviews will increase exponentially, the idea being that, as a card becomes more reinforced in your mind, you can remember the card for a longer time. Fail a review, and you’ll start at the beginning of the curve again, requiring a review after less than a day. This intelligent method of scheduling means that the data you put into the system will always be display just before, or just as you forget it, maximising learning efficiency. It should be added however that Anki needs to be used daily to really experience its full benefits. Take too many breaks away from it, and it messes with the intelligent scheduling effect.

Anki actually doesn’t care what data you put into it, you can use it to learn anything, school notes, cocktail names, capital cities. Many people use it for different things, though it seems the most popular use of it is for language learning. Within the software, you can download pre-prepared decks, including a large number of Japanese decks. The previously mentioned <Heisig method> is down-loadable as a deck, and works especially well with this software.

Anki, (and the other popular SRS reviewers Supermemo) are free to download. A web based SRS reviewer, SuruSuru, is also available.

Readthekanji.com

Readthekanji.com is a website for learning Japanese words. The site provides an incredibly clean and fast interface, as well as organizing its words in line with the current JLPT levels to help with learners attempting to tackle these exams. In this software, a word pops up in kanji, along with an example sentence, and you must then type the word in a box underneath. This software confers a number of benefits to the user:

- Like SRSes, this software provides some intelligent scheduling in order to both add cards to the current learning pile gradually, and to increase/decrease reviews depending on your success or failure rate.
- Each example sentence provided gives a realistic sample of Japanese, as well as a naturally translated English version to check it against. Being able to see the word in the context of a sentence really helps with cementing the meaning and nuance of the word in your head.
- Can be used to learn kanji of different JLPT levels, and even hirigana and katakana if you are a beginner.
- Provides beautiful statistics in order to measure your progress over time, over both the JLPT levels, and across a grid of all Joyo kanji.

This site really takes a lot of the effort out of learning kanji and is a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, it is no longer free (although accounts created prior to charging will be honoured as free), but it is really worth the $10 sign-up for a lifetime membership (and additionally, you can get the hirigana, katakana, and JLPT4 decks as part of a free trial).

In the next post, a couple of other killer applications to help with your learning, and the 10,000 sentences method of learning will b discussed. Until then, enjoy using Anki and readthekanji.com to improve your Japanese on a daily basis. Remember, if you know more than you knew yesterday, then you are improving. Good luck!

Introduction

Japanese is difficult, from the sheer number of kanji needed even to read basic materials such as menus and train schedules, through to the alien pronunciation, to the esoteric sentence structure and impenetrable grammar, to the myriad politeness levels needed to not cause offence, things are not easy for the Japanese learner.

However, these days there are a wealth of resources available to the Japanese learner to help with the process. A whole suite of methods, learning techniques, software programs and the like are available online for use by the Japanese language learner, often free of charge, or on a donation basis. People who have succeeded in tempering and mastering the language enough to work in roles other than English teaching now regularly blog on the Internet and share their techniques, advice and tactics on how to succeed. More crucially, the Japanese language seems to be shedding its cloak of mystery and intrigue (perpetuated by the Japanese themselves) as an “impossible language for foreigners to learn”, and turning into a viable and feasible language for everyone. It has never been easier than now to consider studying Japanese as a second language.

Over these net few blog posts, a handful of these modern techniques and software available to the Japanese learner will be discussed, as well as some thoughts and opinions into their effectiveness. Like with everything else, there is no silver bullet to successfully becoming fluent in Japanese. However, these days, there are plenty of killer apps available in order to make your learning experience as efficient as possible. With a series of different methods under your belt, enough grit and motivation, and plenty of hard work, it is possible to crack the Japanese language and reach a high level of proficiency.

Here is a list of some of the methods, pieces of software and techniques that will be discussed over the next series of posts:

Heisig – A Mnemonic Learning Technique for Kanji

Anki and Spaced Repetition Systems – A intelligently scheduled flashcard system

“10,000 Sentences” – Khatzumoto of AJATT’s preferred method of learning grammar, vocabulary and whatnot all in one go, instead of over-analysing the language.

MSN/Chat/Sharedtalk – Chat programmes are still a great way of assisting your learning. They provide a semi-real time environment to supplement your learning and build your confidence from purely academic/study into more realistic conversational environment

Rikaichan – A pop-up dictionary plug-in for FireFox to assist reading

Readthekanji – A beautifully designed and useful website to build vocabulary and kanji reading/typing confidence

My Japanese Coach – DS Software developed to help Japanese learning

Learning Japanese is a large undertaking, but its far from impossible! Many of the characteristics of the experience of learning Japanese are somewhat similar to learning a musical instrument, from the repetition elements, to the timescales involved, to the differences between private study (software repetitions) and public performance (speaking in public with Japanese people). And plenty of people have managed to learn a musical instrument successfully.

Of course, like with every undertaking of this nature, its important to consider what do you want to achieve with Japanese and what is your end goal. If it is a survival to intermediate level confidence, suitable for finding your way around Japan, ordering at restaurants, feeling confident booking tickets for transport and the like, you probably don’t need every technique and piece of software described. However, if your goals are to work and live in this country in a professional context, then a high level of Japanese is often required and this will require developing strong skills in all areas, from reading to writing, from listening to speaking. But with the introduction to the various software and techniques provided in this blog , and some hard work, it is more than possible to develop your Japanese quickly and effectively.

The next article will cover the Heisig Method, a powerful method for stuffing all them masses of kanji into your head without forgetting too many of them! Until then, happy studying!

Heisig is a powerful mnemonic Kanji learning technique, invented by James W. Heisig in order to expedite the process of “how not to forget the meaning and writing of Japanese characters”. In his seminal book, Remembering the Kanji, Heisig advocates ditching visual memory, and endless rote learning of kanji (the most common and traditional methods for kanji learning) to tackle the huge amount of symbols present in the Japanese language, and to focus on using imaginative memory by starting with kanji radicals and making simple stories to remember them, before using these smaller components and stories and weaving them together into increasingly complex stories in order to remember the more complex kanji. In this manner, the stories stick in our brains much more powerfully and lastingly than if we simply attempt to remember them by rote, visual memorisation.

Heisig also advocates a divide and conquer strategy with learning kanji. Rather than trying to learn one kanji, and all the associated facts, compounds, pronunciations e.t.c. with that one kanji, he recommends learning only one single fact associated with each kanji, one single keyword that most concisely describes the ranges of meaning associated with that kanji. Once one of these is associated and remembered with all the 2042 kanji listed in his book (all of the Juyo kanji, followed by several dozen more kanji that are either common as components of other kanji, or commonly used as name kanji), it should be easier to “bolt-on” extra facts for each of the kanji; the pronunciations, the compounds it is part of and so on needed to use that kanji as part of the whole language.

While on it’s own, this method isn’t going to make you literate in Japanese, what it does provide is an ability to comprehend Japanese text similar to that of a Chinese person reading the language for the first time. That is to say, a general “feeling” and “sense” of the text. It`s well known that L2 learners of Japanese that come from another kanji based language (e.g. Chinese) learn Japanese in a far quicker time-frame than those coming from other, non kanji character-set, so this method should also in theory speed-up the learning process further down the line.

Heisig not only provides the details of his method in his book, but also provides his personal “path” through the method, that is to say, the component breakdown he used to remember all the kanji, as well as the order he used to build up the increasingly complex stories. He also provides his own imaginative mnemonics for the first several hundred kanji in the book, before starting to slowly wean the reader off his own created mnemonics, and thus forcing the reader to start creating their own, personal stories for the kanji.

Heisig is effective for a number of reasons:

1) Confidence building – The Heisig method builds confidence in the ability to tackle kanji. Before Heisig, kanji seems something of an impossibly large and difficult hurdle which is insurmountable. What Heisig does is give some scope to the language, breaking the task down into a system and series of steps for tackling the difficult problem of remembering them all.

2) Word Mnemonics – The Heisig method introduces the kanji at the individual level. While most of the words in the Japanese language, outside of verbs and simple nouns, are made of compounds of 2 or more kanji, in a similar way to building up the stories for the kanji out of components, it is possible to build stories to remember compounds, based on the keywords present in the individual kanji in the compound.

3) Speed Reading – The Heisig method generally helps with the process of moving your eyes over a page of kanji, from quicker recall, to giving an gist of the meaning of words you haven’t seen before.

4) Radical familiarity – Heisig introduces Kanji at the radical level, and builds up stories from kanji components. While the “radicals” used in the kanji mnemonic stories don’t quite match the official radicals in the Japanese language, the method does give you an appreciation as to how complex kanji are built up from more simple components. Also, a familiarity with the kanji at the component level helps the brain with categorising more complex kanji not inside the book as and when you see them.

The missing component in my opinion with Heisig is a “Heisig software look-up” application, something that processes an English keyword into a Heisig kanji. For example, you could type in “exit” and on hitting enter would be presented with “?”

In my opinion, this would further increase the utility of the Heisig method, allowing it to not just act as a method to “not forget the meaning of the kanji”, but also giving it utility as a powerful input method for those who have tackled the book and method. Combining this with the iPhone would be great, allowing the Heisig learner to look-up unknown compounds on the move. So if there’s any budding software developers out there reading this looking for a project to carry out, this would be a good one!

The next post will cover the clever, schedule organising SRSes and their ability to optimise your learning pipeline. Until then, good luck with Heisig!