Help me prove my friend wrong

[Komeiji Koishi]

If you put it that way, Esau, it shouldn't be too hard to learn the hiragana. I think I could start learning them soon, if it's that easy. Do you have any more tips for learning them?

[Esau of Isaac]

The way I generally learn kanji should probably work.

1.) Make a "set", composed of ~18-21 flashcards with a relevant kana on each, its backside showing proper pronunciation of it.

2.) Split your sets into three-to-four-card piles. Mentally label them as pile 1, 2, 3, etc.

3.) Move through the first pile as you would regular flash cards. Continue until you are confident that you'll guess all of them correctly continuously on account of the very few number of cards you're quickly reviewing.

4.) Set the first pile down and move to the second. Repeat step 3.

5.) Set the second pile down and move to the third. Repeat step 3.

6.) Merge the first and second pile into one larger pile, let's call it a "tower". Move through the tower. Set any you are able to perfectly recall the moment you set your eyes on them off to the side in another new pile, which we can call "review". Continue until you have the tower well memorized.

7.) Do what you did in step 6 with piles 3 and 4, merging them into a second tower and moving through them after you've gotten to pile 5, then removing ones you've got down well. Merge towers when appropriate.

8.) Continue merging and paring down until you have all the ~18-21 cards in the review pile. Review them, then set them aside and start a new ~18-21.

Finally, at the end of the day, you should have a large pile of flash cards. Randomly shuffle them and then move through them. Any that you have difficulty with set in one pile, and any you find very easy set in another. For the next day or two you can ignore the easy pile and concentrate on the hard pile by dealing three cards out randomly and memorizing them at a time.

tl;dr: You want to train yourself to efficiently memorize things you find difficult while not concentrating on things you've got down. Also use Anki when not doing this because it does all this for you. You won't have flashcards tailored to your specifications though, which can be a problem.

[Fruity Insanity]

Or you could just write down each letter 30-40 times... I did that.

And then I practiced reading. (Using worksheets, my FE12 import, and Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh cards. XD)

[Esau of Isaac]

Repetition is only good as long as it's working. In my experience, writing the character repeatedly doesn't teach you the character so much as how to write it. After the third or fourth time you do so you generally stop strongly associating the readings and pronunciations with the image itself. He needs to write them down if he wants to learn proper stroke order so he has some modicum of writing ability, but it can be a huge time waster to write them down dozens of times before moving on.

I definitely agree with the worksheets though. Genki I's workbook has some good startup material, I think, from what I recall when I started years ago.

Edited February 12, 2013 by Esau of Isaac

[CT075]

the best way is to actually use it

like once your vocabulary grows a bit start reading and keep track of the number of tiems you have to look something up (obviously read different things)

eventually things will stick