More on Heisig: How the hanzi/kanji are internalized

I wrote before about how I came to appreciate the Heisig method when applied to learning standard Mandarin, but I didn’t go into any detail about the cognitive steps of internalizing the hanzi into your active memory.

I think what most people (myself having been included) are put off by is the idea that you are going to be memorizing a short story for at the very least 3,000 hanzi (Chinese characters). It sounds like a very intimidating task. It’s an amazing feat, after all. But so is speaking a second language. Learning a new language is a monumental task, and not everyone has the motivation and persistence to do it. I’m not trying to scare anyone off from starting a new language, either. I’m just trying to give people realistic expectations.

What I’ve come to find out, though, is that going through Heisig’s Remembering Simplified Hanziis actually not as difficult as I had imagined. It’s easier than when I started learning kanji for Japanese, and the way your memory adapts to the terms is an interesting process.

What happens is that at first you’ll be repeating your own summarized version of “the story” in your head, which slows down the recognition process. Slows it down. Sounds counterproductive, right? But you do eventually recall it; at least you recall the meaning more often than when you are not using the Heisig method. So the initial step is a step up from the alternative.

The more you review the hanzi, the more condensed your “stories” become and the faster you are recalling the meaning, until you eventually realize that you’re not even thinking of the “stories” any more but are just recognizing the characters right there on the screen/page in front of you.

Let me highlight this with an example like I did in my last post.

Let’s use 胡 (hú) as the example. I condensed Heisig’s story into: “At the appearance of an old moon, people become RECKLESS lunatics.”

The next time I reviewed the card, I’d trimmed off a bit of the story so it was something like, “At old moons people are RECKLESS.”

When I came back to the term later it was even shorter: “old moon, RECKLESS.”

Now it’s just: 胡? RECKLESS!

I internalized the hanzi through the review process. Of course, that’s just the first step in learning the language; just the beginning of the overall system of acquisition. At some point (probably when I have about 2,500 – 3,000 hanzi in my active memory) I’ll start blasting myself with input – Books, movies, music, TV shows, blogs – All of it in complete, natural Mandarin.

Related posts:

• The benefits of the Heisig method
• Heisig and your SRS: Streamlining input
• Behind the name: Getting your name in kanji
• Kanji – The Layman's Best Friends
• Yet another story of super kanji to the rescue