I don't really now what to write as an introduction,so I will get straight to the point.
Core 2000
[+]Core 2000 will not only teach you kanji but compounds too
[+]it will teach you how to pronounciate the kanji and on top of that even the hiragana transcription
[+]Core 2000 will give you a sentence with the kanji as an example
[+]it is really easy to review already learned kanji with iKnow
[-]the iKnow application isn't really cut out for learning things,so it's rather hard to learn the kanji efficiently.
[-]the example sentences are probably not much of a help,because you don't know the majority of the words/kanji
[-]learning it with iKnow is a royal pain in the ass:no mnemonics,that can help you to remember the kanji,only images.The only way to really remember them is to reapeat them over and over again over a very long period of time
Conclusion:
I really tried to learn kanji with Core 2000 ,but now I realized that it was a complete waste of time.
I am one of those persons,who hates to learn monotonously,if you are one of those people too and/or are a complete kanji beginner,then stay away from Core (I don't mean to say Core 2000 is bad!Core 2000 certainly is a nice "tool" for learning the kanji,but only if you are at least on intermediate level),you should try to get the basics with RTK and improve the knowledge you gained through it with Core 2000.
I am one of those persons,who hates to learn monotonously,if you are one of those people too and/or are a complete kanji beginner,then stay away from Core (I don't mean to say Core 2000 is bad!Core 2000 certainly is a nice "tool" for learning the kanji,but only if you are at least on intermediate level),you should try to get the basics with RTK and improve the knowledge you gained through it with Core 2000.
I'd make learning words and Kanji two seperate issues on smart.fm
ReplyDeleteI agree with the randomness on iKnow, it's not possible to learn the Kanji in an order that makes any sense - you just get to memorize them to some success, and at some point, it may become a painful process. :)
I use Core2000 too, but only for the vocab, not the Kanji. "Remembering the Kanji" in conjunction with the website "Reviewing the Kanji" is said to be quite a good way to do that. I can't really comment on that, but let me just say, that "Remembering the Kanji" in English contains words I never heard of, atleast the English version, so it makes me learn 2 words instead of one, one of them English -.-
yeah some of Heisigs keywords are rather idiotic,for example:
ReplyDelete旬 (heisig used "decameron" as a keyword for this kanji,that is a word a lot of people,even native speakers,didn't know.It would be way easier to remember it with a key word like "ten-day period".But fortunately those are only exceptions.
The combo kanji.koohii.com and RTK is(in my opinion) the best way to remember kanji.
kanji.kanji.koohii.com gives you hundreds of mnemonics,a own review function.