Kerilee Grames and Dr. Robert A. Russell, Asian and Near Eastern Studies
The Japanese language has a reputation of being difficult for native English speakers to master as a second language because of kanji, a complex, character alphabet that the Japanese borrowed from China. One of the greatest struggles for teachers of Japanese as a second language (JSL) is knowing when to introduce these foreign characters to their students. As a student who has struggled to learn kanji, and one who intends to also teach it, I proposed to study the research that has already been done in this area, to observe teachers of JSL in both Japan and America, and to examine current Japanese texts to determine the authors’ philosophy on when to teach kanji.
Research indicated that there are strong arguments for both the delay of studying kanji and for beginning the study of kanji from the start. Advocates of time lag believe that there should be a lag between the time that students begin studying the spoken language and when they learn to write the characters. They reason that pronunciation is critical to understanding the meaning of a character and a lag in time is the way native Japanese speakers learn their own language. Time lag allows students to build a foundation in the oral/aural aspects (pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar) of the language first. With this foundation, the students can then focus entirely on orthography without anxiety over memorizing vocabulary and grammar.
Linguists who believe in conceptual learning–learning the spoken and written language simultaneously–argue that the meaning of the characters is independent of their pronunciation; therefore, fluent readers can read without relying on sound. For example the meanings of kanji have remained constant throughout history while the pronunciation has changed, and Chinese speaking people that speak different dialects can read the same document (because the meaning is the same). As a result, students are taught to master the radicals–or basic units of meaning in a character–while studying the spoken language, because the radicals are considered to be more important to understanding the meaning of a character than the pronunciation.
The professors of Japanese at Brigham Young University (BYU) introduce kanji in the second semester after the students have established a foundation in vocabulary. Interestingly, in Japan, teachers of JSL introduce Kanji right from the start. Despite time lag in their own study of the script, they believe it is best for foreigners to learn kanji from the start. However, one of the reasons for doing so is because students of JSL in Japan have the advantage of being surrounded by kanji outside of the classroom. Teachers help students learn to recognize characters as soon as possible so they can reinforce their learning as they walk the streets of Japan.
Authors of Japanese texts are just as divided in their opinions of this issue as the teachers of JSL. There were as many texts that introduced kanji starting in chapter one as there were texts that waited to introduce kanji until later in the text, or even waited until another volume of the text.
Only a few experiments have been conducted with the goal of finding a conclusion to the question of time lag. One such experiment was performed by Sachiko Matsunaga who asked native speakers of Japanese to read 6 articles. Within 4 articles, certain characters were replaced by incorrect 112 characters. The first type of error consisted of a character replaced by another character with a similar radical but different pronunciation. The second type of error consisted of a character replaced by another character with a different radical but the same pronunciation. Matsunaga used a device which tracked the eye movement of the readers and indicated when they recognized an error in the article and found that the readers recognized the first type of error most frequently. This indicates that the readers were using pronunciation to understand the character, because the errors with similar radicals but different sounds were easier to distinguish. When the error was in the radical, the reader was not disturbed by the mistake because they were understanding according to pronunciation. Matsunaga concluded that teachers should stress sound not radicals; therefore, there should be time lag in studying kanji in order to focus on pronunciation (1).
One of the drawbacks to this study however, is that it was done with native speakers of Japanese. Dan Dewey, a student at BYU conducted an experiment to gauge the effects of time lag on nonnative speakers of Japanese. He gave a kanji recognition test to students at BYU and students at Middlebury. The students at BYU had a much later introduction to kanji than those at Middlebury. The students took the tests on computers which gave a set of 6 characters that they studied for 5 seconds. There was a one second pause and then they were given another set of 7 characters. The students had as long as they wanted to identify characters that they had seen in the previous set. Dewey found that the students at BYU performed better in the character identification sequence than the students from Middlebury and concluded that time lag was effective (2).
These two experiments both point to time lag as an effective way to teach JSL. However additional investigation needs to be done in order to draw a solid conclusion. While there are still many questions, this research exposed me to the various opinions regarding the introduction of kanji in JSL and expanded my knowledge in the subject which will allow me to do further research with my students in the future.
References
- Matsunaga, Sachiko. Role of Phonological Coding in Reading Kanji: a Research Report and Some Pedagogical Implications. Honolulu: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii at manoa. 1995
- Dewey, Dan P. 1997. “Kanji coding strategies of native readers and non-native readers with various backgrounds”. Thesis, Brigham Young University.