02: Natalie Cumming (Australia) - Studying Kanji
■Job Type: ALT |
■Prefecture: Oita |
■Years on Programme: 2004 - 2006 |
My advice for all JET particpants wanting to improve their Japanese is simple: learn kanji! The more you learn, the more Japanese you’ll understand and your experience of Japan will be all the richer. If Japanese is a puzzle, think of the easy pieces around the edge as hiragana and katakana, and the crucial ones in the middle as kanji. You can make a good start with the edges but you really need the middle bits to solve the puzzle and see the picture! While kanji may seem intimidating at first, the good news is that once you make a start your knowledge quickly builds and your learning speed increases almost exponentially.
But, I hear you say, the CLAIR Course, the JLPT and every textbook I look at teaches a different set of kanji! Where do I start? Look no further than the Japanese people around you. They studied kanji at school in measured doses, starting with the easiest 80 in kindergarten, and adding roughly 200 per year until they knew all 2000 of the daily kanji by the end of junior high school.
If you’ve passed Level 4 of the JLPT you are well on your way, and know about the same number of kanji as first graders. As the Japanese would say, 小学生に負けない！ Or rather, are you gonna be beaten by primary school kids? You, a university-educated adult with years of study experience, and an array of tools at your disposal - electronic dictionary, flashcards, the Internet, your keitai mobile phone! You should be able to learn at least double the amount of kanji of those cute little munchkins! Aim to learn around 400 kanji per year. Of course, if you’re a hard-working がんばりやさん and set your goals higher, you can go even faster.
The sooner you start, the better! Head down to your local bookshop today and find a workbook for the “Kanji Kentei” 漢字検定. It’s a standardized test that schoolkids take each year. If you’ve passed Level 4 of the JLPT you should be around Level 10. Just remember that you need to be able to write the kanji from memory, not just recognise it, so keep the kanji at a manageable level. Grab a Level 10 book and see how many of the kanji you recognise. The ones by Obunsha are particularly good, and include a liftout list of the kanji in that level and lots of practice exercises and tests. If you have Level 3 of the JLPT, aim for Level 8 or 9. When you pass one, move up to the next level, or challenge yourself and skip a level or two.
As an example, I took Level 10 (80 kanji) in May 2005 and a year later took Level 5 (1006 kanji). I’m happy to say I passed although I must admit my memory of April 2006 is a blur of flashcards and kanji lists posted to my toilet door! Still, the benefits have been enormous, not the least of which is being able to understand school notices, emails from friends, junk mail and signs advertising discounts in shops! I’m even reading my first proper book, which is lovely for me and gets a great reaction from surprised people on trains. The next Kanji Kentei is coming soon, so go buy a textbook and get started on that puzzle!
頑張ってください！
嘉明 菜多理
Natalie Cumming was an ALT based at Nakatsu Minami High School in onsen country, Oita, Kyushu.
Useful links from Natalie:
