The Ergonomic Mnemonic.
It’s all too easy to spend unnecessary time and effort when you start studying kanji because there is so much you could be studying and the goal of kanji study is not entirely clear. Should you be writing each kanji by hand with proper stroke order? Do you need to start with the radicals first? And should you learn a mnemonic for each kanji?
There’s a lot of conflicting advice about what is effective or useful, but the answer becomes clear once you understand your goals.
If your goal is to read Japanese—which is the goal of most learners—then taking an approach meant to help you write Japanese is not in your best interest. Reading kanji does not require the same degree of mastery as writing kanji, so intensive study techniques like learning radicals, creating mnemonics, and handwriting kanji are often overkill.
While effective, these efforts help you go beyond recognition, which is all you need to read, and instead teach you how to reproduce each kanji, which is what you need to write. Because most learners don’t care about handwriting kanji, they inadvertently spend large and unnecessary amounts of their precious time learning to reproduce each kanji, which is orders of magnitude more demanding than the effort required to merely recognize kanji. In short, they are studying kanji the wrong way, which at best slows down their progress, and at worst, burns out their desire to learn Japanese altogether.
However, there are still times when it will be efficient to adopt some of the more intensive study methods to help remember and distinguish certain kanji. Specifically, it can be more efficient to learn the occasional mnemonic or write out a kanji when the recognition-based method for learning kanji falls short. So when does this happen?
To understand, let’s first review how the recognition-based method for learning kanji works.
The recognition-based method for studying kanji relies solely on a consistent study of flashcards. Flashcards help you practice kanji and build a recognition of them through spaced repetition. And the best kanji flashcards are those that will help you remember kanji the quickest. Such flashcards will teach you a single clear, distinct, and useful meaning to associate with each kanji in combination with example words that use the meaning of the kanji you are trying to learn.
For example, the Ashiba kanji card for 剤 shows a target kanji, and three example words that use the kanji:
Studying this card involves trying to learn/remember a meaning that is associated with the kanji 剤. Below the line separating the target kanji 剤 are some common words that use 剤 that act as a memory aid by helping make the target meaning concrete and understandable. After reviewing the kanji and the associated words, you will then check the answer to see if you got the correct meaning for 剤:
In the case of 剤, the keyword is “substance [esp. with chemical properties],” and the examples 洗剤 (detergent), 殺虫剤 (pesticide), and 覚醒剤 (stimulant) help you understand and remember the meaning of 剤 by providing context: a substance used for washing (洗) = detergent, a substance used to kill (殺) bugs (虫) = a pesticide, and a substance used to wake you up (覚醒) = a stimulant.
Studying kanji flashcards designed for the recognition of kanji, such as those provided by the Ashiba app, is the best way to learn kanji. This is because they contain the minimum amount of information required for you to distinguish and remember each kanji while not teaching you too much to slow you down or muddle your memory.
However, there are times when even a consistent study of flashcards will fail to help you remember a kanji-meaning pair. Whether it’s a poorly designed flashcard, confusing similarity to other kanji, or just your mind’s stubborn refusal to remember, you will invariably find that there are certain cards that you just can’t seem to learn and keep forgetting. When the usual methods fail—and only when the usual methods fail—you should resort to a more intensive study for such kanji.
For instance, it can be hard to remember to 剤 if you have already learned 済. And to make matters worse, you will have to learn 斉 as well! When you find yourself mixing up similar kanji or failing to remember a distinct or complex kanji, taking the time to write it out by hand, studying the radicals that it is made up of, or even learning a mnemonic will be necessary to help you efficiently learn these troublesome kanji.
Putting in some extra effort when you need it will actually save you time in the long run, because it will help your memory hold onto a distinct kanji-meaning association sooner. It’s much better to put in a few extra minutes to write out a kanji or learn a mnemonic than to keep forgetting it week after week.
But how do you know when you need to learn a mnemonic or start writing kanji out by hand? The trick is to track your study so you know when you are struggling to learn a particular kanji. Fortunately for you, Ashiba does this automatically. If you are struggling with a card, the Ashiba app will automatically flag it as an Akuma card 😈, and its appearance will forever change to a black background with red text, as shown by the kanji card 上 below:
Note: If you are using Anki as your SRS, Anki flags cards you are struggling to remember as “leeches”. Instead of changing the appearance of a card, Anki will suspend a leech so it leaves the study queue. This default behavior always bugged me as well-intentioned but misguided, because the solution is not to give up on a card, but to give it more attention. This feature is just one of the many reasons I created Ashiba as a standalone SRS and Anki alternative for learning Japanese.
When you see an Akuma card come up for review, you will be alerted that you are struggling to learn it. So when you see a black and red card show up, you will know that it’s time to put in some extra effort to keep your study as efficient as possible.
Whether you use Ashiba or another SRS, remember to keep your kanji study centered on flashcards instead of unnecessary intensive study methods. But when you struggle to remember a card consistently, don’t hesitate to write it out, learn the radicals, or create a mnemonic. Doing so will help you avoid frustration and continue your efficient learning of Japanese.