#Sensei kanji how to#
#Sensei kanji pdf#

Still others suggest that consistency trumps any single “method” because everyone learns differently.Some are black, white and chock-full of discipline whereas others (literally) treat it like a game.Some emphasize the importance of hand-writing kanji whereas others swear by digital Spaced Repetition System (SRS) tools like Anki or Memrise.Some cut out anything potentially irrelevant while others are incredibly comprehensive.There are some pre-existing methods for learning kanji.

#Sensei kanji how to#

Kanji Mnemonics, or How to Learn Kanji by Picturing Grandma Doing a Headstand So, that in mind, here are a few concrete steps for creating solid mnemonics (plus a few pre-packaged programs you can follow that do the work for you). Putting the chunks together in order gives you a kanji. The story is encoded in order to help us remember key information (chunks). At a basic level, mnemonics connect kanji to a story that’s more memorable than a few random pencil strokes. Understanding these two ideas allows you to remember more kanji, for a longer period of time. This one memory is connected to different places all over your brain.Īssociation is the process of making these connections between something you want to remember and your senses, places you’ve been or strong feelings-things that are tangible and meaningful to you-because better-connected memories are more memorable. It probably involves many of your senses and might be shocking, painful or even vulgar. This is where the idea of association comes in. That sounds great, but these chunks will also be forgotten if they aren’t meaningful to you. This particular post will focus on two ideas: chunking and association.Ĭhunking is a way to remember a lot of little things by bunching them together.

If you want to learn more about the power of our memories and the tricks we can use to remember things better, I invite you to go take a moonwalk with Einstein. It’s compromised of many stages and there are even several different types of memories, but that’s beyond the scope of a 1200-word post. It’s essentially telling your brain: “Hey brain, remember this.” If you don’t make an active effort to convince your brain that kanji are worth remembering, then it’ll decide that you don’t need to know those random scribbled lines on paper. Simply put, the art of memory is convincing your brain that a given piece of information is worth remembering. The purpose of a mnemonic is to help you reliably access a memory. That being said, the problem isn’t really creating memories, but rather accessing those memories. It’s actually good to forget: Can you imagine remembering every single moment of your life? That’d be information overload! Forgetting things is so important, that it actually happens pretty much on a schedule. In fact, human beings are designed to forget things. Remembering something is just a matter of not forgetting it. (Download) How Mnemonics Can Help You Remember Kanji

#Sensei kanji pdf#

This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. Step 4: Give Your Learning a Boost with Pre-created Mnemonics.Step 3: Use an SRS Tool to Root Kanji into Your Long-term Memory.Step 2: Create Associations Between the Relevant Radicals and Kanji.

How Mnemonics Can Help You Remember Kanji.Then, we’ll find out how to craft memorable kanji mnemonics in four steps. In this post, we’ll discuss the usefulness of mnemonics and delve a bit into how our memories work. The scene above is my personal mnemonic device for remembering the kanji for 始める (はじめる) - to begin. Suddenly noticing you, she gracefully flops down, grins widely and announces: “Everything starts with a solid foundation.” Turns out that grandma’s been practicing yoga. Her mouth is at the base of the pedestal and her elbows are swaying back and forth for balance a bit higher up. Your grandmother, all 93 years of the woman, is balanced upside down on a solid ivory pedestal. MaKanji Mnemonics, or How to Learn Kanji by Picturing Grandma Doing a Headstand