Best way to memorize kanji and their meanings?

[pubju]

Hey,

Does anyone have any tips for memorizing the kanji / meanings? At the moment, I'm just staring at the kanji, then reading the reainds, looking back at the kanji, reading the readings .etc, then drawing them a few times and moving on

But I found that I'm starting to forget some of the kanji that I learnt a few weeks ago

Is there a better way to memorize them?

[richvh]

Search around and you'll find plenty of threads on just this topic.

My advice: learn kanji in context.

[furrykef]

I find that a spaced-repetition program such as Mnemosyne or Anki helps a lot, but you may need more than just that. If you're actually using the kanji, it may not be so bad, but it doesn't work well with a "kanji first" approach unless you're using a system like Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.

[Yudan Taiteki]

Hey,

Does anyone have any tips for memorizing the kanji / meanings? At the moment, I'm just staring at the kanji, then reading the reainds, looking back at the kanji, reading the readings .etc, then drawing them a few times and moving on

But I found that I'm starting to forget some of the kanji that I learnt a few weeks ago

Is there a better way to memorize them?

It's because you're not connecting them to anything concrete. What you're doing is basically taking a whole bunch of random shapes and trying to connect them to equally random English words and Japanese sounds (some of which are not even words). As richv says, learn them along with context. You have to practice reading Japanese sentences and paragraphs otherwise you will not be able to remember the readings and "meanings".

[AJBryant]

Hey,

Does anyone have any tips for memorizing the kanji / meanings? At the moment, I'm just staring at the kanji, then reading the reainds, looking back at the kanji, reading the readings .etc, then drawing them a few times and moving on

But I found that I'm starting to forget some of the kanji that I learnt a few weeks ago

Is there a better way to memorize them?

Yes.

DON'T memorize them.

Learn WORDS. Words are written in kanji. That's part of the vocabulary. Don't learn kanji as isolated things -- they aren't.

Tony

[pubju]

well, its part of the course im doing (uni), we are using the Basic Kanji Book and we are just going through the lessons learning the kanji, but we arent using the kanji in class... :-/

so its kinda hard to learn them in context unless i make my own sentences up or something

[Yudan Taiteki]

If you're using BKB, what's the problem? Can't you just do the exercises in there? If you do both volumes of BKB you get a good basis in 500 characters, which is a good start.

[HarakoMeshi]

Just quickly, the way I am doing it is I studied RTK1, and then after I started 2001.Kanji.Odyssey which introduces kanji in sentences, so you learn the readings along with vocab, in context. The kanji are introduced in gruops that helps learning them.

2001.K.O is similar to the Kanji in Context material, but its approachable at an earlier level and just generally easier to use. Doing RTK1 is not essential for using this material, but it helps to go through it quicker, I'd say.