Japanese Language Educators’ Strategies for and Attitudes toward Teaching Kanji

Abstract

The attitudes of 251 second language teachers toward kanji and their choices of instructional strategies for teaching kanji were explored in this study. Principal component analysis resulted in the identification of 6 statistically reliable domains representing underlying attitudes toward teaching kanji (cultural tradition, difficulty of kanji, affective orientation, aptitudes, usefulness of kanji, and expectation for the future of kanji) and 3 instructional strategies (context, memory, and rote learning). Descriptive statistics revealed that the most positive attitude was toward the "usefulness of kanji" and that the most common instructional strategy was "rote learning." Canonical correlation revealed a statistically significant correlation between 3 attitude variables-affective orientation, usefulness of kanji, and cultural tradition-and 2 instructional strategies-memory and context strategies. The results showed that: (a) the underlying attitudes toward teaching kanji and teaching strategies were multidimensional and complex, and (b) teachers who appreciated the cultural tradition in kanji and its practical utility tended to have a more positive affect and were more likely to utilize memory and contextual strategies for teaching kanji, although rote learning strategies were the most frequent among all teachers.

Tackling the Kanji hurdle: Investigation of Kanji learning in Non-Kanji background learners

“…This is very different from kanji. According to psycholinguistics, there are three aspects of informational processes involved in processing kanji: orthography (grapheme), phonology, and semantics (Shimizu, 2002). According to Shimizu and Green (2002), the use of morphemes rather than phonemes represents a significant departure from the language decoding experience of most Westerners.…”

“…According to psycholinguistics, there are three aspects of informational processes involved in processing kanji: orthography (grapheme), phonology, and semantics (Shimizu, 2002). According to Shimizu and Green (2002), the use of morphemes rather than phonemes represents a significant departure from the language decoding experience of most Westerners. This is certainly the case with kanji, by contrast however, hiragana and katakana are usually easily remembered by JFL students from alphabet based L1s probably because they are phonemic in nature, less visually complex, and the number of characters is much more manageable.…”

“…Bourke (1996) found that the most successful students in kanji recall tasks were the ones who used the highest number and widest variety of strategies. It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider all 56 different strategies outlined in SILK; however, as noted by Shimizu and Green (2002), conventional strategies for learning kanji often include rote learning, contextual, and mnemonic. We will therefore look at each of these in turn.…”

“…Yet, rote learning seems to be the principle method used by foreign learners to remember the writing of the kanji. In a study done by Shimizu and Green (2002), Shimizu found that the rote learning strategy was the most commonly used by students of Japanese for kanji study. Shimizu points out that part of the reason for the popularity of rote learning as a learning strategy might be due to the fact that many native Japanese teachers draw on their own experiences when teaching kanji and most of them learned by using rote methods.…”

“…Nevertheless, the growing popularity of this method should be sufficient evidence to suggest that for some people it is indeed an effective learning strategy. Shimizu and Green (2002) maintain that the important underlying concept of mnemonics as a learning strategy is the possibility of making the learning of new kanji more meaningful if they are presented within the context of a student's previous knowledge. This is consistent with the theory of elaboration and suggests further evidence to support the effectiveness of mnemonics as a learning strategy.…”