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Five Kanji a Day!

  Tags: Kanji | Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
15 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
Travod
Newbie
United States
Joined 4346 days ago

17 posts - 20 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 15
09 July 2012 at 2:34am | IP Logged 
To prepare for my Japanese SAT Subject Test on November 3, 2012, I need to learn a lot of kanji to be
able to even read the passages I'll be tested on. Last year I took it and bombed horribly, so I'm
starting early this time!

So starting today I'm going to try and learn five kanji a day and get through my list (which has around
150 kanji on it, picked them out by going through my new kanji book and deciding which might be
useful). I already know anywhere from 50-100 kanji from school (I've never counted, so whatever).

Method: Use the book "Japanese Kanji and Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System"
and jisho.org for stroke order, readings, and meanings. Basically I'm just going to write them 20
times and see if they stick. So far it's working.

July 8
起、走、売、歩、寝
Wake up, Run, Sell, Walk, Sleep
1 person has voted this message useful



Travod
Newbie
United States
Joined 4346 days ago

17 posts - 20 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 2 of 15
09 July 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged 
July 9
駅、屋、家、帰、待
Train station, Store, House, Return, Wait

And I successfully remembered yesterday's kanji!
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Travod
Newbie
United States
Joined 4346 days ago

17 posts - 20 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 3 of 15
10 July 2012 at 10:43pm | IP Logged 
7/10
教、取、習、古、新
Teach, Take, Learn, Old, New

I'm thinking every ~20ish I should take a day off and just review what I've done so far.
1 person has voted this message useful



ericspinelli
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 5543 days ago

249 posts - 493 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Italian

 
 Message 4 of 15
11 July 2012 at 7:19am | IP Logged 
I did what you are doing when I first starting learning Japanese and I think it's a
flawed approach. To be clear, learning by writing and doing a set number a day is
fine, but it's important to learn kanji in the context of words. Instead of

"教、取、習、古、新 = Teach, Take, Learn, Old, New"

you should learn

"教える、取る、習う、古い、新しい = Teach, Take, Learn, Old, New".

Even if you already know the words, it's important to learn and practice proper
okurigana usage (the hiragana that shows verb/adjective inflection). For example, "おし
える, to teach" and "おそわる, to be taught" use the same kanji 教 but are distinguished
by okurigana: 教える and 教わる.

For your reference, I wrote a post about the method I developed for learning
vocab/kanji. Doing exactly the same may not work for you but it's food for thought.
link
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4425 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 15
11 July 2012 at 6:44pm | IP Logged 
Are you learning to recognise the kanji or the readings too?

Have you seen this website: http://kanji.koohii.com/ (Reviewing the Kanji).

You basically learn to recognise the component parts of each Kanji and associate each
with a keyword. It doesn't teach readings, the idea is to learn what each Kanji looks
like and then when you see them used in context you pick up what they mean. (Basically
it's like learning the letters of the alphabet plus their "names", except the alphabet is
reasonably large ...).


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Travod
Newbie
United States
Joined 4346 days ago

17 posts - 20 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 6 of 15
12 July 2012 at 2:40am | IP Logged 
7/11
安、悪、暑、寒、楽
Cheap, Bad, Hot, Cold, Fun

Yes, these are all words I know and I'm making sure to also learn which part of the words the kanji
represent, like “安” in "安い”

And since this is mostly for the purpose of being able to read them on a multiple choice test (in the
context of a reading passage) I'm not learning every possible way the kanji can be used (like the
difference between teach and be taught) because it's only going to be asking for the most basic of
definitions.

Even simpler, I don't /really/ need to know how to read them but just recognize them when reading a
story (though I'd hardly call them stories, they are either advertisements, notes, or short journals, etc)
.

It's going to be a while before I really put all these kanji to use in writing because my mind is still
stuck on the idea that writing ならいます is so much easier to write than 習います :P

I will look over your links and try different approaches. Thanks for posting, I was starting to think I
was alone!

By the way, here's a few samples of the passages:

http://bit.ly/Lan45g

Edited by Travod on 12 July 2012 at 3:00am

1 person has voted this message useful



dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4425 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 7 of 15
12 July 2012 at 8:00pm | IP Logged 
Travod wrote:

Thanks for posting, I was starting to think I
was alone!


I thought that when I first started frequenting this forum, but if you look around
there's plenty of Japanese Learning Logs.

Travod wrote:

By the way, here's a few samples of the passages:

http://bit.ly/Lan45g


Thanks. That's part of the reason I hang around this forum and the RTK forums too:
plenty of links to new materials :-)


1 person has voted this message useful



ericspinelli
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 5543 days ago

249 posts - 493 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Italian

 
 Message 8 of 15
13 July 2012 at 3:11am | IP Logged 
Travod wrote:
this is mostly for the purpose of being able to read them on a multiple
choice test... Even simpler, I don't /really/ need to know how to read them but just
recognize them when reading a story

If your goal is to actually learn Japanese, meaning you'll be continuing your studies
and not just using a high SAT II score on your college app, you should learn to read
them properly from the start. As you said, you don't need to learn every associated
word/pronunciation now, but you'll get more mileage out of 寒い=さむい='cold' than 寒
='cold'. After the first 100 or so, kanji meanings become more vague and there are few
1-to-1 correspondences.

Travod wrote:
my mind is still stuck on the idea that writing ならいます is so much
easier to write than 習います

I'm of the opinion that Japan could do away with kanji as Korea did and function just
fine, but we have to accept that for cultural reasons they probably never will. That's
just something we have to deal with.


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