A thought about isolated kanji study

10 comments

1. In my experience, this common recommendation is a reaction to all the questions like “how do I know how to read a kanji in a word” or “why is this written like this, I thought this kanji meant that” or “is Heisig wrong about this meaning”, etc. These questions are relatively common, and they’re all from people who could have understood this a bit better if they had followed this kind of advice.

   KanjiDamage does exactly the kind of thing this recommendation is for. You get a kanji with some vocabulary and some supplementary information. You do NOT get a kanji and some made-up English word and that’s all, like e.g. RTK. Or a kanji and a made-up word and all the readings in one long list but nothing else.

2. If you feel like you need or want isolated kanji study with your vocab study, please go for it. I think the only real problem with isolated kanji study is that you can end up learning kanji that will take years to encounter in words. I personally spent my first year only going through RTK. It was not the best idea but at least I know kanji now 😀

3. I found isolated kanji study mostly useful when trying to learn to write kanji by hand. Having a keyword prompt for each kanji telling me to write it was a helpful way of practicing through flashcards. And learning those meanings probably would have helped with learning vocab, even though for me I learnt individual kanji after knowing a good couple of thousand words and their associated kanji already.

4. When you learn a language, any language, there are a number of tools you can use. Some of them have been proven, statistically, to be more efficient than others.

   Statistics do not apply to individuals.

   Let me repeat.

   *Statistics do not apply to individuals*.

   Only language learning communities often get super obsessed with finding the scientifically proven best way to study and sure, read about those. But also keep in mind that second language acquisition is a very small field of study. There’s a lot we don’t know, a ton of studies where we observe an effect but do not get even close to answering *why*, and without that why we cannot explain outliers – people that do well on an ‘inefficient’ method, or do poorly with an ‘efficient’ method – beyond just writing down some guesswork.

   The best way for you to study is whatever way that keeps you studying. If studying individual kanji helps you out, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t. Anyone who tells you that you study wrong can go take their uninformed opinion elsewhere.

5. lol I just gave advice to someone today to not worry too much about isolated Kanji study, so I feel a bit called out. I still stand by that opinion (for now, it may change) though.

   I’ll try advocating for isolated Kanji study now though because I’m currently doing it as a different approach. I feel like isolated Kanji study helps a lot with remembering how words are pronounced, and gives a much better chance at correctly pronouncing an unknown word after reading the Kanji for it. I am now much less likely to confuse the reading of a word when I know the readings for the individual Kanji. For example, I may have flipped the reading in the past and read it in reverse.

   So far, I feel it’s much better for comprehension and reading skills, but I’m still not sure if it’s worth all the time and effort it takes to write a Kanji with the various popular readings and words associated with those readings (which is the method I’m currently doing).

6. I highly advocate that people study in what ever way they find interesting and seems to work for them. I think personal exploration in study methods is great rather than simply following what people say is “the most efficient”.

   But hey if you have choice paralysis maybe the advice of more experienced learners can help you start your journey.

7. Obviously knowing the Joyo kanji in detail is valuable, and if it was easy I’d recommend it to all beginners. Unfortunately it’s quite a slog to go through something like RTK – enough of a slog so as to put off many people from learning the language.

   Advising that an easier route is to learn kanji through vocab, simplifies the advice and encourages beginners. That mountain of information can be assimilated more slowly whilst learning other useful stuff.

   Personally I advise that beginners learn kanji through vocab, but it’s not a binary choice of vocab or isolated kanji. When I come across kanji I don’t know in vocab (or frequently come across the same kanji in different words) I look up the details of the kanji.

   So you are right in that learning both is valuable, but I’d always put the focus on vocab first.

8. I personally learnt kanji in isolation then later realized i was wasting my time because I couldn’t read anything.

   I tried to just learn vocab in kanji form but forgot the meaning and reading a lot.

   Now im learning kanji individually but also with some common words that use them and its going well. I find the words help me remember the readings of kanji in them. The kanji helps me remember the form and combination of kanji meanings that make up a word.

9. I’m not quite sure where on the spectrum WaniKani would land, but I’ve found that it for the most part helps me remember the semantic meaning of each kanji, and learning the vocabulary words helped more with the readings. This was especially true for kanji that are similar to one another: I was more likely to be able to differentiate them when I saw them in vocabulary words.

10. I think we can all agree that kanji is a big barrier to entry for non-kanji native learners. So you have to be motivated no matter what method you choose.

    Would I recommend learning kanji without learning vocabulary in parallel? No.

    Would I recommend learning vocabulary without learning the individual kanji? If you are beginner? Hell no. But only to a point…

    As an intermediate kanji learner, I can confirm learning individual kanji has been instrumental in building my understanding of how the language works. And quickly at that. The quicker you get rid of that barrier, the quicker you will conquer one of the biggest barriers to entry.

    I believe the debate should not be is kanji study important (it is super important), but to what point should we focus on individual kanji study prior to transitioning to a more organic method of learning through reading. I think that is more debatable.

    I think it’s sad when somebody says they have been learning kanji for years and still can’t read or speak Japanese. The point is that learning kanji is a means to an end. Don’t wait until you’ve learned all the kanji to begin reading or speaking. That doesn’t make sense.