“Skippable” kanji in Quartet, like with Genki?

4 comments

1. I don’t understand your question. You can skip anything you want to skip, with the consequence that you won’t learn it. If you decide that something is not worth learning, then don’t learn it. Since you obviously need to know more than 657 Kanji or whatever in order to be able to properly read Japanese I don’t know how skipping any Kanji in a beginner textbook makes sense, unless learning how to read Japanese is not your goal I suppose. That being said there are various ways of learning Kanji and if you think that there is a more efficient way to learn them instead of through the textbook then obviously do that instead.

2. You shouldn’t neglect to learn Kanji. It is vital to learning Japanese. If you can’t read Kanji, you will never be literate in Japanese.

   The issue is that Genki (and presumably Quartet) are terrible ways to learn Kanji.

   You’re better off “skipping” it in Genki/Quartet. But you SHOULD still learn kanji concurrently via some other means such as RTK, WaniKani, or even just a vocab Anki deck.

   Edit: Also skipping learning the kanji via the textbook doesn’t mean you should skip the reading sections of those textbooks. The reading sections and exercises are quite valuable.

3. I think Genki wants you to learn all 317 kanji. Quartet has 657 kanji and shades the kanji that you ought to be able to write, but you should be able to recognize them all.

4. Let me suggest a different approach.

   There are lists where the kanji are ordered by the frequency of use (typically “use” = “use in newspapers”). So, for example, you learn person 人 before octopus 蛸.

   You get a lot of improvement quickly when using these lists. Of course, you would want to start at the beginning of the list.