i just use the white rabbit press flashcards. they're pretty good and each flashcard also lists the 6 most commonly used compounds for a kanji. that's really useful in my opinion. also they have them for all jouyou kanji so that's pretty awesome as well.
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Anonymous2009-02-20 22:48
Flashcards are useless. Why? Let me put it this way: Train as you fight. How do you train as you fight when it comes to a language? You either speak, listen, or write. Seeing as you cannot speak or listen to visual kanji, you will need to write them.
Flashcards can be great for crunching kanji, but in the end, it will be totally useless as you will forget readings if you never write.
A bad method of learning kanji is to try and force your mind to remember readings. Do you think the Japanese do this? No, they do not.
Take for example 人. Not including irregular readings, its 訓読み is hito, and its 音読み is nin and jin. If a Japanese person was to be asked for all the readings of 人, they would think hito from 人々, jin from 人類, and nin from 人間.
Obviously I dumbed down the example extremely by using the kanji 人, as finding a Japanese person over the age of 8 that can't tell you those 3 readings immediately after having been asked, is completely impossible, if you don't include mentally retarded, deaf, mute, deaf mute and blind people.
TL;DR: Stop using flashcards, and write. Learn compounds.
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Anonymous2009-02-21 6:57
>>6
duh did you even read my post, smartbrain? how many kanji have you mastered? like 200? white rabbit flashcards are an essential tool for memorizing the jouyou kanji. i have been using them for a long time and theyre absolutely awesome.
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Anonymous2009-02-21 10:35
>>7
Yeah, I read your post, and I disagree. The only essential tool for learning kanji is to write. I have been doing that for a really, really long time (read: Since I was old enough to hold a pencil).
PS: Even if you only learn the jouyou kanji, there's still going to be lots of stuff you can't read. But if you're content having the literacy of a child, that's cool too, I guess.
you are both right
you should be using flash cards, but also writing them out with your finger in the air, or on your leg (something to that extent), while using the cards.
to use an example like 8 did, ask a Japanese person how to write a difficult kanji. i almost guarantee they will first write it in the air with their finger and then tell you how to write it
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Anonymous2009-02-25 19:48
>>9
writing material is cheap, screw air fingering
Is there any reason to memorize the meanings of the kanji? I've been just ignoring them for now, but I feel that later on maybe meanings come into play. So basically learn meanings of kanji or not?
>>13
Learning to recognize each kanji would greatly help improve your reading skills later on, but I'd recommend you learn meanings of at least the most basic ones.
When I was a primary school student, I learnt 1,006 kanji characters with so many handwriting worksheets.
From promary school to high school, there was kanji test a week.