A reader for basic-level learners who are already familiar with hiragana and katkana. The book includes 500 individual kanji, and over 1000 compounds are introduced and explained.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
With long careers in computers and education, Martin Lam and Shimizu Kaoru were commissioned by King's College at the University of London to develop this kanji course for adult learners.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword
This work was aimed at the MBA students learning Japanese at King's College, London--hence the choice of themes covered in the twelve units. It was designed with hypertext in mind--that is, an electronic version which would enable the learner to access, from the screen, explanations of characters or of grammar points in the displayed text. We are most grateful to Dr Vanessa Davies, Director of Language and Communication at King's, for her encouragement and support for our work, which has been produced, initially, in hook form. The British author is also indebted to a succession of motivated teachers, and especially to David Bentliff for his generous advice. Apart from the future use of hypertext the rationale of this mainly self-contained reader for learners of Japanese can be summarized in four points:
First, the authors think it is shortsighted to begin, as many Japanese primers do, with expressions wholly in hiragana. The learner who continues along this path will never be able to read real Japanese, or will have to retro-fit the characters--which will be frustrating. Some other books expect the learner to master quite difficult kanji from the outset. Here, we begin deliberately with simple kanji and progress to more difficult shapes.
Second, we explain the construction and, where possible, the origin of each kanji as we meet it, emphasizing the role of the radicals in mediating the meaning, and of semantic/phonetic family relationships between kanji. (For reasons of space this aspect will await fuller treatment elsewhere.) Nearly all the kanji are in the primary school list.
Third, we explain the grammar points of each unit as they arise, avoiding technical terms so far as possible. The indispensable terms are included in an Alphabetical Reference Grammar, to which are also attached Tables of Verb and Adjective endings. Fourth, we give the learner an opportunity to reinforce his or her acquisition of the words and grammar of each unit by means of sentences and themes to be rendered in Japanese. We attach to these a transformation, based on simple rules of thumb, to help the learner to adapt to the Japanese sentence structure.
The work is designed for self-study or for use in class. In either case we recommend that several sessions should be devoted to each unit--but not past the point where the learner becomes satiated. Better to rely on the rule that one does not fully master Unit 1 until one has finished Unit 3. Again, no learner can be expected to know and recognize a kanji or a point of grammar after one meeting. It will take a while for a mnemonic network to build up in the student's memory, and there have to be lapses on the way.We have deliberately duplicated some of our kanji and grammar entries in successive units so as to allow for this normal iterative learning process.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not good in book form!!!,
By
This review is from: Kanji from the Start (Paperback)
After going through the first three lessons diligently I was confused as to why I found this book so hard to learn from. Then I re-read the Foreward and figured out why:"...It was designed with hypertext in mind - that is, an electronic version which would enbale the reader to access from the screen explanations of characters or of grammar points in the displayed text." In other words, it was created for a MBA course at Kings College and was meant to be used on computers. However, hypertext obviously doesn't work in the book and no CD is included. This means that the lessons start out with a majorly difficult story in Kanji and then you get explanations later on of what the Kanji mean and how they are formed. I personally learn better from flash cards (or just from reading the subway signs). I have lived in Japan for 3+ years, and I personally would not recommend this book. The only reason I gave it more than 1 star is because the few Kanji explanations I saw (after struggling through the text) were somewhat informative.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A useful book for the student of Japanese,
By Allan MacInnis (Vancouver) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kanji from the Start (Paperback)
Most textbooks designed for English-speaking students of the Japanese language either give their exercises and readings in Rooma-ji (the western alphabet) or else in hiragana and katakana (the syllabaries used in Japan, each with about 50 characters). If someone is aiming at being able to READ as well as speak Japanese, both strategies are less than ideal, since rooma-ji is normally not used in Japan at all, save for occasional street signs or store names, and hiragana and katakana are used only for those words not normally written in kanji (kanji being the 1800 or so characters imported from China -- each of which often has multiple meanings and/or pronunciations). Kanji, as difficult as they are to master, are a fact of life in Japan, and in my opinion there are only two strategies that make sense in regard to them: 1. Dive in all the way, memorize all the common ones and become literate in Japanese; 2. Totally ignore the damn things and get by on the spoken language and the aid of English speaking Japanese (the route I seem to be on). For students of the first path, this is an EXCELLENT book --the readings are well organized, the kanji are thoroughly explained, and there's plenty of supplemental grammar and so forth, so that even a beginning student, with work, can profit from the text. I wouldn't "start" studying Japanese with this book, though -- you should have some basic familiarity with the language, both as a spoken phenomenon and as a grammatical system, before you dig into this book. If you're there, though, and want to commit to the "kanji adventure," this is an excellent text for you, and will serve you, in the long run, much better than studying in either Rooma-ji or the syllaberies will. By the way, it's designed more for self-study than classroom use, and is nicely formatted -- an attractive book, well worth the money.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The essential Kanji guide.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kanji from the Start (Paperback)
This book is very well writen. Writes a story first in Kanji (characters) next in romanji (japanese words in english letters) and then finnally in English. A very practical and effective guide.
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