Re: Does anybody else think that learning to write kanji is over-prioritized in language classes outside of Japan?

Marc Adler wrote:
On Apr 1, 10:54 am, Paul Blay <blay.p...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Maybe that should have been

Wait. Is James your study partner or something? How do you know all
this stuff?

This is me guessing.

"I learnt the extra 700 needed to pass JLPT2
in six months (having passed JLPT3 the previous year), bearing in

That's quite a different statement from "I learned 1000 kanji in six
months."

300 different. The original statement struck me as capable of
misinterpretation, I don't know that my guess is right (it quite
probably isn't).

What contradiction? The 'already vaguely familiar' or the 'gave up
at 250' ? The former looks like a valid complaint, but the latter
doesn't have any relevance.

The contradiction between being able to "learn 1000 kanji in six
months" and being unable to master 250 in writing.

There is not contradiction there, at least as long as you interpret
'learn' as "recognize/read". The number of kanji I can reliably
write on demand is probably less than a dozen, the number of kanji
I can recognize/read is rather larger than that.

Boredom doesn't relate directly to difficulty. Tasks can easily be
both boring and difficult. On an absolute scale practicing how to
write kanji may not be that boring, but other stuff involving _reading_
words written in kanji is just more interesting.

Look, there might be geniuses out there who can go from zero to JLPT2
in six months. I've just never met one, so his comment naturally made
me suspicious.

It made me suspicious ... that his statement was being misinterpreted.
Though I'm not sure six months is that out of the question if he didn't
do anything _else_ in that time. I assume that most people learn
Japanese for some few hours per day. If they're doing it for 9 or 10
hours a day that's a rather different story.

> If he meant that he went from JLPT3 to JLPT2 in six
months, that's a completely different claim, and a much weaker claim,
too (which is probably why he didn't phrase it that way).

Either way, writing out the kanji is the fastest (and, yes, dullest)
way to learn them. It's true of any area of knowledge.

An equally basic truism is that people do and learn better when they
enjoy doing what they are doing. If for no other reason they they
are likely to stop what they're doing if they don't enjoy it.
.

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