which is better

[cenic]

pronounciation is important and you can't get that studying by yourself

The first quarter I took Japanese, several weeks into the quarter, I could barely read aloud because my pronouciation was horrible. I had a chinese student suggest I quit studying because of my mushmouth Japanese.

[QwertyJPC]

[QwertyJPC]

This is what happened: In both of the Japanese classes I have taken so far, we used this old book, "Learn Japanese" which used primarily romaji with kana. There was no workbook connected to this book. In my first semester of Japanese we used a separate kana learning workbook written by my current Japanese 102 teacher, Mr. Shimazu. During that time, we did not fill out the entire book until the last month of instruction, which was hard for me. It was worth the trouble then, because now it is easier for me to recognize kana.
We did not even touch kanji characters until the last day of the first semester
and throughout the second semester. There was absolutely no kanji characters covered in the first semester's final! The "Learn Japanese" book we used in the second semester still used romaji but also used kana. There was no workbook used in this class.

During my time in the second semester class, we heard of the first semester class switching to the new book, called "Genki I". They had the following things in that book:

1.Romaji in the 1st two chapters.
2.no romaji with kana and an english translation of transcripts in the 3rd and preceding chapters.
3. KANJI covered in the third chapter and beyond!

I did not know about these things in Genki I until I had purchased it for myself...remember the earlier post I made about buying Japanese thingys?

In our second semester class, we still used "Learn Japanese" book. the head professor, Dr. Inaba did not want us to switch to that book for our class.
what he did was approve the book for the next semester class. YIKES!

Now fast forward to now.
There is so much trouble going on...remember that kana workbook I told you about that Mr. Shimazu wrote? For his first semester class, he is already making them do all of the exercises in the entire book in the first three months...They also are learning more kanji than we did in the first semester!
CRAP!

What do you guys think? Should people be pushed to learn not only kana, but kanji in the first semester? Well, in my opinion, I think it is better to learn kana right away, rather than use that crappy romaji-only book "Japanese for busy people". But kanji right away? That's just soooo sad for the new first semester! There is sooo much pressure on them...and I feel afraid for my third semester, since my kanji skills are really bad! (I was getting A's on my kanij quizzes last semester, but now I barely remember 20 characters by heart now...)

The good thing is, my Japanese 102 teacher is offering to help me with Genki I during his office hours.

[Charles]

What do you guys think? Should people be pushed to learn not only kana, but kanji in the first semester? Well, in my opinion, I think it is better to learn kana right away, rather than use that crappy romaji-only book "Japanese for busy people". But kanji right away? That's just soooo sad for the new first semester!

My university did an experiment to deal with this issue. Two first-year class tracks were separated and all students were kept in separate class tracks for 2 years. Both tracks used the same textbook, but one version was rewritten to only use romaji only in the first semester, introducing kanji & kana in the second semester. The other version was the standard text using kanji & kana from the start. The two textbooks converged at the end of year 1, they covered the same material, but at different paces. Thus it was assumed that they were testing HOW the material was covered (kana vs. romaji).
They found that at the end of the first year, and at the end of the second year, on average, students from both tracks had almost identical levels of proficiency. This was construed as evidence that they should use kanji & kana from day 1. There was significant correlation between high-proficiency and high effort. Students who worked harder got better grades and attained better proficiency. My personal conclusion was that it doesn't really matter what method you use, it DOES matter how much effort you put into it.

Alas, the study was probably fatally flawed. The separate tracks were cross-contaminated. Both tracks interacted via study groups, the romaji track saw the kana track doing their exercises, and many students did a little extra kana study separate from their classwork. But this reinforces my conclusion: you get out of a class just what you put into it.

[Adhesive]

At first, learning kanji was a daunting, painful task for me. In fact, I thought it was absurd to even be asked to remember any of them on an exam. But as I progressed in my Japanese studies, I began to realize how enjoyable it can be to memorize them and comprehend written Japanese as it's meant to be read. And as Charles said, the kanji you learn early on will be repeated in other kanji, so it gets easier over time. I would add that once you have a pretty good foundation in kanji, you will start to assimilate new words by recognizing the constituent kanji that comprise the word (in other words, you'll "see" the meaning of the word even if you haven't come across it before). That's when you know you've reached a higher plateau in your language skills.

Good luck.

QFT

[maninjapan]

From my own experiences - I found the best way to remember and use kanji is simply keep practising - force yourself to write in kanji and not -kana where appropriate.

keep a diary
write letters to J-pals
read J-books

just keep using it