Techniques for Learning JLPT Kanji
Monday February 6, 2006It’s February, and if I want to have the basics for the JLPT 2nd kyuu down by the end of summer, I need to learn a few dozen new kanji and words every week.
Memorizing all those kanji is a particularly tough task. All those on readings! Thus, I have adopted two learning techniques into my strategy for conquering the kanji.
Take advantage of homophones
One technique suggested by a popular JLPT study guide is to tackle new kanji by their pronunciations. I.e., learn all the あん kanji together, all the えい kanji together, and so on. That way, similar pronunciations become a tool for grouping words together in memory, rather than being a reason for confusion.
Last week, I studied 安, 案, and 暗—all pronounced 「あん」—and learned the compounds of theirs that might appear in the JLPT 2 test. Now, when I see one of those words, even in an unknown compound, I know how it is probably pronounced, and I can guess at its meaning.
Remember a character by its components
One thing most Japanese teachers and courses don’t fully grasp is the difficulty of rote memorization for adults whose native languages don’t use Chinese characters—so called hikanjikei learners1. It’s easier for me to learn a new German word than a new Japanese word, because I can spell the German word from letters I already know.
But wait a second—nearly every kanji character is composed of common components. Many of these components are radicals; others are kana, simple kanji, or kanji bits that get re-used a lot. I’m trying to learn kanji by breaking them down into pieces I’m already familiar with, and finding an obvious mnemonic whenever possible.
案 宀 (crown) + 女 (woman) + 木 (tree)
“idea”
投げる 手 (hand) + 几 (wind) + 又 (again)
なげる, “to throw”
In addition to letting me “spell” these characters from pieces I already know, the components in the second example even suggest the character’s meaning.
There are several kanji books out there that use variations of this idea. There are other learning methods as well; some books turn the whole character into a picture with an associated story, but I find learning that way a lot more trouble than just remembering the components.
There’s another aspect to this strategy that helps in remembering pronunciation, but I’ll write about that some other time.
1 Noguchi, Mary Sisk, Component Analysis of Kanji for Learners from Non-Kanji Using Countries
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