The Cunning Linguist

"Passed!" by Mr Wabu.

How do you learn kanji for the JLPT? Until recently I had thought learning each symbol and the various readings was the most thorough and effective approach. Then, since witnessing much better SRS results using sentences and words than individual symbols, I have been thinking about ways to apply a more contextual method to the JLPT kanji list.

I had considered entering example sentences from Jim Breen's amended Tanaka Corpus, searching the WWWJDIC for each kanji, but giving that a go it soon became apparent that it's just too labour intensive. It could be December before I get all the sentences in Anki, let alone study them.

Peter van der Woude's fantastic "JLPT Study Page" has vocabulary lists for the JLPT. "What if ..." I wondered; if you learn every item on the JLPT vocabulary list, will you have also covered every kanji on the JLPT kanji list at least once? Perhaps you won't know every reading perfectly, but you will recognise more real kanji-based words and will get a better sense of meaning. What's more, you'll probably cover the material quicker - because learning with context is more effective than learning pure facts alone.

So, one Excel macro later, I can now say that (based on Peter's materials) if you study the vocabulary list for JLPT levels two, three and four you will have seen the kanji on that level's kanji list at least once. There are some kanji on the level two and three lists that feature in the vocabulary of lower JLPT levels. But that's ok - if you learn the vocabulary for each level before progressing to the rest, this won't cause you an issue.

There are two exceptions to this (gotta love Excel macros!). They are:

京 - on the kanji list for JLPT3, is within a compound kanji on the JLPT2 vocabulary list

県 - on the kanji list for JLPT3, is on the vocabulary list for JLPT2

My JLPT study will now be based on Peter's vocabulary lists, as well as his lists of expressions and grammar examples. I think when you're trying to learn Japanese (or other character based writing systems) its easy to fall into the trap of thinking the characters are what is standing in your way, so the characters - in isolation - are what you need to work on. I definitely intend to keep my kanji deck with the on and kun readings, but I see that now more as a way of "filling in the gaps" for less common readings that I won't run across very often. In the meantime I think I'll get more value out of learning the more common readings, and that this will make more of a difference when it comes to the test.

Only time will tell whether this is the path to success! You'll be the first to know.