Now that I am learning Mandarin, I am more aware than ever when I teach children to read English that they are connecting the words they read with the words they have heard around them in spoken language their whole lives: they use the decoding clues of first letter, syntactical intuition, sense-making and recognized letter/sound patterns (etc. etc.) to help them make these links.
What happens when you’re an 外人 without this rich spoken soil to grow your reading skill from? Here’s one excellent answer…
Being an outsider learning to read Chinese characters, there is so little of the spoken language to connect 字 to AND, beyond the textbook’s pinyin romanization, Chinese texts don’t provide you with the support of an alphabet. How can I/you get some writing/reading mojo going in Mandarin? Here is an invaluable resource…
Though it is generally highly praised, not everyone likes Heisig and Richardson’s ‘Remembering the Hanzi’ series of books (just read the Amazon reviews), but really I do. Why?
- the memorization process really works;
- the writing works better than any other system I have yet tried;
- language sticks to the words I have learned when I come across it (as H & R predicted it would);
- I find that I am recognizing the characters in reading that I do (and therefore their meaning), even if I don’t know the mandarin pronhttps://heyihan.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=73&action=editunciation yet;
- with ANKI on my iPhone as a flashcard system for spaced repetition, it has been brilliant.
A little background…
Earlier this year, I found T.K. Ann’s ‘Cracking the Chinese Puzzles’ in the Booknow 2nd hand bookshop in Bendigo, VIC. Searching for contexting reviews online, I remember reading a message board where various boorish folk were bragging about how quickly they were learning characters – which kind of missed the point of aiming for understanding and meaning as the foundation of learning, I thought. Heisig & Richardson’s book (hereafter ‘Heisig’) was mentioned and I decided it was all a bit too involved for me yet.
Ann’s book proved interesting and encyclopedic but quickly felt like having a ton of information poured over me with no way to hold on to it. Ann had good intentions and vast knowledge but didn’t have a sufficiently good structure for me to use as a learner.
So why come back to Heisig?
It’s a few months later and I’m fumbling about with a memory palace system for remembering the pronunciation of words. Part of my motivation in learning Chinese has been to improve my memory. How can I better get the weekly vocabulary for my course into my head? I dread returning to the ‘write it over and over and over and over and over’ method I suffered with (ineffectively) when I did German back in the 1980s.
(Here is a blog entry about the memory palace technique that might serve as an introduction. (I am not yet convinced that this system is worth the the effort, but I did get into it for a few weeks.) Serge Gorodish’s post about it on his ‘Country of the Blind’ blog provides a detailed system for chinese pronunciation. Here’s the tables I created in response: memory-palace-tables-for-hanyu-pronunciation-public If you like the idea, you’re welcome to adapt them for your use. Again, I’m not sure that this works as effectively as I have found Heisig does, though initial results were encouraging. No doubt I’ll post on it in the future when I give it another tilt.)
As I played with the memory palace process, I wondered about how to extend this to characters?
Re-enter Heisig to the stage. And here’s what sold me: a very positive review on Amazon by my pinup, Harold Goodman. He’s the fellow who produced the Michel Thomas method Mandarin series of language CDs. I have gained greatly from his generosity of spirit. This is what he wrote in review of Heisig & Richardson’s ‘Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters’ on Amazon. It is very good advice. I commend it to you:
The best way to learn to write Chinese, December 17, 2008
I am the author of the Michel Thomas CD courses to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese. I was taught by Mr. Thomas how to insure success for learners without memorization, homework, anxiety and testing. I am interested in innovative ways to teach; innovative ways that have proven track records.
Dr. Heisig is justly famous for his previous books on how to learn to write the Japanese kan ji ( Chinese-derived characters). Writing the kan ji and original Chinese han zi ( characters) has been a major stumbling block for most students. Without knowing the characters one cannot be literate in either of these languages.
The genius of Heisig’s method is in devising an approach whereby he breaks the characters down into component parts and then systematically teaches the student to build them up again in a skillful way that results in the learner knowing the characters.
The first volume presents the most commonly used 1,500 Chinese characters. This will get you through 90% of any common Chinese text which is a nice place to start. The second volume, which is in the works, takes us through an additional 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000. With 3,000 characters the reader can tackle 99.5% of written Chinese.
One thing which is important to understand ahead of time is that this book does not encourage repetitive writing of the character being learned. Indeed, with Dr. Heisig’s approach one need only write the character one time. What we are doing here is learning English-language keywords that are related to each character. These are attached to mnemonics or little stories which help fix the necessary keyword(s) and primitive elements ( smaller particles necessary to write the characters). Thus, the concentration here is on learning material in English which will automatically produce a perfectly written character. There is also an emphasis on stroke order which pays off richly later on in one’s studies.
By concentrating on teaching and learning in English, the anxiety level is kept quite low.
In order to get the most out of this book I recommend reading the following pages first: Introduction, 105-107 (the best and clearest explanation of the method) as well as 260-261 ( the fruit of the method is finally revealed). Also, make the flash cards described ( p.47-48) and use them as suggested; from Keyword to mnemonic story to actual character and NOT the other way around. This approach will get you the desired result.
There are also two lists in the back of the book providing pin yin pronunciation for each character. However, Heisig does not recommend attempting to learn these the first go around.
This is the most extreme deviation from traditional teaching of Chinese characters ( han zi) that I know of. However, if faithfully followed you will learn 3,000 characters in record time and, more importantly, remember them.
At some point the mnemonic stories and keywords just drop away and you are left with the characters. You just have to understand this when you begin.
Don’t go too fast. Find your own pace and be gentle with yourself. Some days you will do more, others less. The important thing is to keep at it.
Until something better comes along this is the only book I would recommend for anyone desiring to learn Han zi.
This review is based on the Traditional character edition. However, the approach is the same. Whether you start with the Simplified or Traditional edition depends on your own needs. It is as easy for the beginner to start with one or the other. However, most people seem to find that once learned, it is far easier to go from Traditional to Simplified than the other way around. The reality is that at least 1,500 characters have been simplified with many being so simplified as to be almost unrecognizable according to Traditional radicals and other lexicographic devices.
If you are at all interested in reading anything published before the 1950’s from China as well as any materials from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and much of the history of Singapore, not to mention from other overseas Chinese communities, Traditional characters will be necessary. In addition, of course, Japanese kan ji use the Traditional characters. However, the choice is yours and the switch from one to the other is quite doable.
When Heisig’s volume turned up, I jotted the recommended page references onto the title page and read them all first. Thank you Harold. You (again) did me a great service. To help me get off to the right start, I wrote the method into my workbook:
The provocation for this particular post is that this morning I was using ANKI to review my memory of characters in chapter 10 and 11 of Heisig (#179-263). Those that I remembered faultlessly had been memorized exactly by this method. Those I faltered on I know had not got in because I was not in the right frame of mind when I worked on them. I very clearly remember being distracted and not following this method, but just reading the story and writing the characters without the settling, meditating, repetition, and explaining as I wrote. That’s what convinces me that this method works.
FYI, here’s how my workbook looks:
In short, Heisig’s book and method is excellent. It is paying off. Two examples:
- I was translating a children’s book for practice and the character 烦 appeared. I didn’t know how to say it yet but from Heisig I knew it meant ‘vexed’ (mnemonic precis = “It vexes me. My head is burning!”). This knowledge helped me understand what the sentence was saying. And now that I do know the meaning and have had a context of use (rather as Chris Lonsdale points out in his TEDx talk: see earlier post with his TEDs talk), I’m more likely to remember it is fán (or – using my personal memory palace – ‘Fred Astaire (f-) in the foyer (2nd tone) of my local library (-an) so vexed by a problem it’s causing his head to be burning!’).
- Another example is from my daughter. To aid her vocab memory she is placing cards around the house with characters and meanings on them. I don’t find them getting into my memory but yesterday I learned the character 厌 (detest) from Heisig and suddenly one of her cards jumped off the wall at me: 讨厌 tăoyàn (to hate).
I should also add that it would not be as effective (or the success measurable) without using ANKI or some technique of spaced repetition flash cards. Happily there are shared packs of Heisig’s hanzi that can be downloaded. A big thank you to the creators of them.
Let me finish by highlighting two KEY elements to Heisig’s method. They are the elements that makes the difference to me remembering or not. When I skip over them, I consistently find that I do not remember. When I patiently engage with them, the method works. I have to be mindful when I sit down to study if I am actually comfortable and focussed and in a state to be success with these elements. If not, now I get up and do something else.
The key elements in memorizing characters via Heisig (and the memory palace) is to really
- focus on the KEYWORD. When I don’t, I notice that I remember the idea or scene but I forget what it means. So, KEYWORD is king.
- Engage your imagination and not just my visual memory. Check that image of my notes again: these are the 1-2-3 steps up on my workbook. I don’t just contemplate a visual image of a vexed Fred Astaire in the library foyer with his head burning. I IMAGINE it. He is running about, obviously vexed, shouting with how he can’t get the dance routine right, trying it over and over, smacking his forehead, holding his head in two hands and shaking it until the friction causes flames to come out the top. Maybe I’m running around him with a fire extinguisher, vexed at my inability to put out the fire on his head?!! (Now maybe he is yelling ” 这 烦 我!!”) Take the time to imagine the mnemonic idea. Imagination trumps visualisation every time. Make it a colourful, absurd or outrageous story. Find a way to own it with your imagination and a little emotion. Then it sticks.
PS. Here are some tips from ‘Mandarin Segments’ blogger Greg on using Heisig.
PPS. Update December 2016: I have stalled in my learning of Heisig at around #300 due to work committments these last few months. However, the worth of the method continues to shine through. Currently I use the mnemonic method to help me memorise the vocabulary for the HSK 3 exam I am studying for. Without Heisig’s method (which I work into Anki flash cards) I know of no effective way to memorise and be able to use the 600+ 词 I need to absorb over the next couple of months. With Heisig (and Gabriel Wyner’s work), I am confident that I will be fluently reading a writing well before my exam.
heyihan 
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