Reviewing the Kanji

Fabrice Denis has designed a slick kanji flashcard site, Reviewing the Kanji based on Heisig's Remembering the Kanji and the Leitner cardfile system.

I've been using Reviewing the Kanji daily for almost six months now and the best testimonial I can give it is the fact I'm still plugging away at it. Given my mixed feelings toward Heisig's method, this is high praise for Fabrice Denis's implementation. I keep coming back because the site has such a clean design, is easy to use, works quickly, is somewhat customizable, and provides a way to share ideas with others lost in the kanji forest.

As I said, it is based on the Leitner cardfile system which has you review flashcards at different frequencies. Flashcards move through five stacks; each stack has a different review schedule: 1, 3, 7, 14, or 30 days. Cards that have made it through to the last stack will continue to come up for review every 60 days.

The obvious advantage of the Leitner system is that you spend more time focused on the kanji that give you trouble. The less obvious advantage is that less frequent review is supposed to help move the data from short term to long term memory. And yet, every couple of months those cards you thought you knew come back to haunt you from time to time just to see if you really learned them or if they need to go back to square one.

I like Reviewing the Kanji because it provides an easy way for me to review a little every day. And since the goal of the Heisig system is to be able to write the kanji, I find that I don't want to review more than about 30 kanji a day. But when you consider that there are more than 1800 kanji to learn, you could review 30 different kanji a day for two months without repeating yourself.

You have to register (name and email) to use Reviewing the Kanji. This enables the site to track your progress, keep your flashcard stacks up-to-date, identify kanji up for review, and keep the mnemonics and hints you've added for each flashcard.

You also have to be studying from Heisig's books. This site is called Reviewing the Kanji, not Learning Kanji from Scratch. It's a tool for an existing system, not a standalone system. I would never have gone back to Heisig's method were it not for Reviewing the Kanji. I don't trust his choice of keywords. And when I know the Japanese word, Heisig's English keyword often just leads me astray. However, as Fabrice Denis says, the most important thing is to be able to associate one concept with each kanji and not mix up ones similar in meaning.

As usual, despite being steady, my progress is slow. I've added only 615 flashcards and gone through 5516 reviews (counted each time a card is flipped). That's far fewer cards than other members with a comparable number of reviews. But I'm being very strict with myself. To cheat would only cheat myself. I've found that the best way for me to retain information is to use it...and in this case it means taking a pop quiz every day. Reviewing the Kanji provides a great pop quiz which makes for active learning.

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
April 16, 2006

Comments

Hello! Nice to meet you! I'm Japanese man studying English. I browsed your blog. You have original idea, I guess. Althogh I am strange to write blog in English, I write blog in English and Japanese. So native speakers who are visiting constantly point out the mistakes on my blog! They flatters me! I think I could learn from you. Have a good day! Japanglish Times from Tokyo Japan http://japanglishtimes.blogspot.com/

Comment by: japanglishtimes. Posted April 26, 2006 09:11 AM.

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