Struggling to Learn Kanji? Use Imaginative—Not Visual—Memory
Does this sound familiar? You stare at a given kanji (漢字・かんじ, “Chinese character”) for a few minutes, trying to will the strokes into memory. You write the kanji out a few dozen times, hoping the muscle memory and repetition will help it stick in your head. You move on to the next kanji, and repeat the same process. You flip the page over and try to write the first kanji again without looking at the model. What the heck! Where did it go!? At this point, most learners then blame themselves, assuming they simply “have a bad memory” or “aren’t studying hard enough.” The truth is that the problem lies not with your memory or motivation but with your method. Unless you have a photographic memory, this “visual memory” approach is simply not an effective way to learn highly complex information like kanji. So how should we learn then? The answer is “imaginative memory.” Read the article to see what it is and how to use it.
