Harisenbon wrote:Do you think that Heisig would be good to learn the writings of Kanji that you already know the readings/meanings of? Or would rote memorization of the writings (like in elem school) be more productive?
I guess that would depend on your learning style. Although I've had friends who swear by it, rote memorization has proved completely worthless for me, personally. As a result, I've been using the component analysis system to remember
only those kanji which I cannot consistently write from memory (without mixing them up with other, similar characters).
Personally, I've had the same problem as others when looking at Heisig, because much of my current knowledge of how the kanji are
actually put together (based on character etymology and the like) conflicts with his mneumonics. I've found
Kanji ABC to be truer to the actual meanings and evolution of the characters.
Perhaps the most accurate would be Henshall (although I've recently made the switch to an etymology dictionary written by a Japanese scholar, and the two conflict quite often - makes you wonder if anyone knows what they're talking about

), but I've found that relying solely on etymology lacks the structure of a 'system' like
Kanji ABC or Heisig's book.
Of course, I've also very recently stumbled upon an interesting book called
Kanji Mnemonics: A Manual for Learning the Kanji. The sample I've seen for the book shows that it is similar to Heisig (grouping kanji with similar components, providing small stories to remember the character by, etc.), but also goes beyond Heisig by including readings and sample vocabulary words for each character. For those of us who already know a lot of characters, this might be a better alternative to Heisig.
And another good thing is, it seems it's only available at TheJapanShop.com!
