Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course Review [Is It Worth Buying?]

Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course Review [Is It Worth Buying?]

Are you studying kanji? Are you struggling with it? Yeah, me too. Even though learning kanji can feel like a hassle sometimes and maybe even frustrating at times, it's great when you can understand more of what you're seeing.

Today we take a closer look at the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, a kanji mnemonic textbook
by Andrew Scott Conning.

🎥 IN TODAY'S VIDEO 🎥
00:00 INTRO
01:56 PROS
03:00 CONS
05:05 Kanji Learner's Course Flip-Through
06:45 PRICE
06:58 Who's It For?
07:22 Who Isn't It For?
07:48 My Kodansha Rating

#kodanshacoursereview #kodanshaklcreview #kodanshacourse

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CREDITS:

[TheJapanGuy]

What Japanese resource should I review next? Let me know in the comments!

[aLaMode]

It really feels like you're the only person who has reviewed this underrated kanji guide. It along with the Kanji Study app are indispensable to me. :)

[orti]

KKLC is hands-down the best resource ever created for learning Kanji, but it's an all-or-nothing endeavour as it's optimized to learn for real, not a small subset aimed at JLPT. Who cares if 誰 is the 2155th? You have to study all of them anyways, and it's wonderful.
I don't know if you read the full preface, but it explicitly says it's made to be a start-to-finish course even if you have previous experience, as it introduces mnemonic relationships and things that are used cummulatively throughout the book. It's an extremely important point that your review lacked/misunderstood.
It sure is great to look up things randomly, but it truly shines when studied the way it's meant to, although it's true that you need to be very disciplined.

Thanks to quarantine I studied it religiously from start to finish every single day for approximately 90 days at the fastest pace my mind allowed without getting exhausted (exhaustion will only hurt your learning rate and throw to waste those precious study hours), doing 28 new ones every day from monday to saturday, self-testing and reviewing the previous day ones before moving on to the new, and leaving sundays for full-week review with wonderful results. I kept a steady retention rate of about 95% until about 1300, then it dropped to ~70%, then came up again to the high 90's in the last 2 weeks when I discovered the truly optimal way for me (I wish I had realized since the beginning, but better late than never), and finally, after finishing this first round and doing a full-book review, I found myself forgetting about 350 out of the 2300 (~85%). So I made a new program including those sneaky bastards to review them and finally master the whole 2300 in the book, and man the reviews are a lot easier than seeing them for the first time, so in just two weeks or so I'll be done.
Why am I telling this? It's not to brag (not gonna deny I'm proud of it tho :P), but to be a testimony of it being totally possible, I've been studying Japanese for over 10 years and had never surpassed the ~500 Kanji mark, feeling mediocre and miserable.
The order and method is unbelievably important, and this book's is unparalleled, the masterful order and mnemonics literally changed my life, I went from below average to soon-to-be truly (sorry for the farfetched composites, my English isn't very good so I didn't find a better way to say it lol) in just 3 months. If that's not skyrocketting and proof of effectiveness I don't know what is.
If I can do it, so can you, keep it up everyone!!

[jahayrac]

I actually completed/ learned all 2300 kanji (in about 3 mo) and I also just learned the keyword first and then learned the readings through immersion. Full disclosure I tried twice and stopped before the 800 mark because I was already studying Japanese in college, plus, with kids I couldn't finish it. But I graduated this year and finally decided to tackle this beautiful beast and get it done. Do I know the readings for all? No. lol but I can "read" text and understand what's going on and then I can look up words to know the meaning and associate the kanji with a reading that way. With more exposure the readings get considerably easier as I differentiate between onyomi and kunyomi readings. I've been going through a frequency word list and it's sooo much easier now than when I first tried and the kanji meant nothing to me.

I thought it was awesome when you showed your example. 🙌 I actually had to pause the video and think because I recognized the 2nd kanji but didn't know right away like I did for 海. Then I just remembered that lone character in the middle between the shell and the spear and was like "Oh, 'Bandit!'... 🤔 "sea bandit? ' and then I'm like "duh, a pirate!" 🤣 that's such a great example and find for me. 😁

I love this textbook, it is such a great resource. I think you can take it as course but that depends on how systematic you decide to go through it as it does require some discipline. I did my own thing but the author has an updated guide (2020) on how to use his book on his website:

Thank you for posting your review it was fun and informative. ^_^

[Nikki_Catnip]

Thank you so much for this! Plus your humor and personality make it fun to watch! 💖

[Bluelaserbeam]

Woah no way, I recognize you from your South Park videos!

[LukerYT]

I've been at university for Japanese for 2 years now, but I bought this a month ago (along with a Pimsleur subscription) in order to help supplement any gaps I've had in the past tenure of learning. I've found the presentation to be really concise and promising, as well as the combination with the writing book + reading volumes to help me remember some of the vocabulary quite useful. However, my main gripe is definitely a self-inflicted one: I'm not a good self-tutor and I don't know exactly how to study it, even with a clear list of instructions preceding how to study it. I definitely hope to stick with it, as I'm looking to try and get a JLPT N1 grade by 2022, but I'd rather do it right than do it rushed. I think this book will be very decent in that regard.

[mattiperakyla]

i've been going through this book at a 75 kanji per day pace (keywords only) because turns out if i have a pretty good visual-spatial memory. highly recommend if you are good at memorizing stuff like this. if you were good at stuff like human anatomy, try this book.

there are some absolutely stinkers of mnemomics (of course making up 2300 is not that easy), but its easy enough to make up your own using the author's vocabulary of components, or in the worst case, the characters you have to memorize solely by their composition are rare enough that they stick in your memory.

4 1/2 points, highly recommend the book for a certain kind of learner

[taminah]

Hi, I'm new to this journey of learning Japanese. Your videos are helpful. Thanks

[Knubinator]

Assuming covid settles down by this fall, I'll be starting a Japanese language course in a university near me. They:re using the Japanese for Busy People Kana Version for the first class, and then Genki for the second and third class, after which they have an in house materials system they use for real world readings (newspapers, imported books, etc). What kanji learning system would you say would be good for JBP? I've already pretty much got hiragana, and about 50% with katakana, so I'm just trying to get a head start since I:m stuck at home all the time.

[pixelvapour]

Would anyone recommend using this book side by side with the Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary?

[xshineebubblesx]

Great review and breakdown of the book!

[ShyasShadow]

Love your vids😃I always wanted to go to japan.

[ripbellx]

Great video, I’m thinking of buying this book to work on my kanji.

[texx]

A find those meaning mnemonics in KKLC pretty useful, mostly because it doesn't resort to using obscure pop-culture reference or parts of english words to describe it which I mostly hate on WankiKani or several other books. But I really struggle with learning onyomi readings (kunyomi are mostly fine as those are not so similiar), do you know any other book that would have helpful mnemonics on that or do you advise learning each reading only within the context of given word?

[twixie__]

do i still have to buy a separate japanese vocab book if i buy kodansha kanji book?since kodansha has vocabs too 😅

[klaudiawaszczykowska]

Thanks for the complex review! :) But still, I am not sure if the book is a good choice for a complete beginner?

[angelosantos]

Is it necessary to buy the KLC graded readers?

[sonomute]

Thanks for the review, very useful. Could you compare this book with The kodansha kanji dictionary? I wonder if there's an overlap since both sound like dictionaries...thanks!

[carljohnson]

the learner's course isn't available currently....