I had a thought that now would be a good time to write in a little intercession post, and low and behold, it's been precisely 3 months to the day since I started this blog! With over a dozen movies under the belt, can I say this method has helped my ability to read and retain Japanese on-yomi? The answer is a resounding Y E S!!!
I remember reading on a forum (perhaps the RTK ones) something about how "the only good way to memorize on-yomi is through vocabulary. I couldn't disagree more! At least in my experience. For example, sometimes I have tried to remember them via cross-referencing vocab in my mind However, since they're all compounds, (2, 3, 4 characters) they are easily confused this way! If I think, ok, it's the けい from 経験... but god, which kanji was pronounced けい again?!? It can lead to lots of problems. And, as is the whole PURPOSE of the life-changing book "Remembering the Kanji," I wanted to break out of just boring, repetitous rote memorization. Yaaawwwnnn.
Some tips in execution of the method that I've worked out recently:
-Whenever you find a scene where you want to associate the image with a character, pause the movie. Watch that scene while writing the character and repeating the on-yomi to yourself 10 times or so. Remind yourself of it later, after the movie is finished.
-Don't worry about learning every character! As I've mentioned before, partial retention is all we are going for here. Naturally, some templates (lists of on-yomi groups) will contain not so memorable stories from not so memorable scenes. When the vocab comes up (I do 100+ flashcard through anki a day, myself) take a look at the template, remind yourself of the scene. Eventually, it will stick! And, as with RTK, eventually the story/movie scene will be long forgotten, whilst you retain the on-yomi!
I know this site only has a handful of followers, but for those who are trying this experiment with me, keep it up! I plan to keep this going strong as long as possible.
Over and out,
-Ben
P.S. Star Wars is next, I think. ;)
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Please keep up with the good work. I finnished RTK1 one month ago and I am striving to learn the On-yomi using KO2001. I got interested in the movie method because I have some trouble with my short term memory retention to on-yomi and vocabulary and it seems that the movie method might be better to handle this problem.
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