News [How much do you need kanji learning?] Important in the digital age, learning not only "writing"

How much do you need kanji learning?

As digitalization progresses and handwritten opportunities are reduced, the mainstream of kanji learning is still "repeatedly writing".Is it okay to keep this?In the first edition of the series "How much do you need kanji learning?", I asked Yuki Nagaoka, Associate Professor Shiga University, who specializes in Japanese language education.

【話を聞いた人】滋賀大准教授　Yuki Nagaoka

Yuki Nagaoka

(Nagaoka Yuki) Completed a doctoral program at the Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University.She has been a lecturer at the Fukuyama Heisei Daikyo and Welfare College of Welfare and a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Shiga University since 2016.

Homework that becomes "work"

――Digitization is progressing and the chances of handwriting letters are decreasing. Nevertheless, is it necessary to spend a lot of time to learn kanji, just like the analog era? Even as digitalization progresses, the need to read kanji or select the correct kanji from the conversion candidate is the same. The opportunity to do handwriting at work is certainly reduced, but it is still more common to take notes and write letters in private situations. For now, it is important to read kanji correctly and write it by hand. I have many opportunities to go to elementary and junior high schools, but I don't have the impression that classes are decreasing in class. Even after each digital device is introduced at the school site in the "GIGA School Concept", I often see a handwriting on tablets, especially in elementary schools. ――However, isn't the learning method of kanji biased in writing? Based on the actual experience, I think that people who know the effect of writing repeatedly by writing repeatedly become teachers and teach children. It may be a learning method where children can do it silently. Certainly, what you learned by moving your hands has the advantage of being easy to remove your memory when you remember. However, some people do not work in that way. Some children may not be able to remember whether they are written or written. When I talked to the students, I didn't write one kanji one by one when I wrote the newly learned kanji 10 times, but the parts were just 10 times, and the next one was made 10 times. There was a person who wrote it separately and was just working. The purpose is to write for the time being, and you can see that it is not linked to learning how to read the kanji and checking the meaning and usage. In Japanese language classes, it is difficult to teach and establish all kanji, and the higher the grade, the left to self -study and home learning. To do so, it is necessary for children to learn on their own. However, I think that there are some places where the perspective of kanji teaching at school is currently being held at school. ――What kind of guidance is needed to gain the ability to learn on your own? In Japanese language classes, we systematically accumulate learning about how to capture kanji, such as kanji with similar shape and kanji with the same radical. I think it is necessary to incorporate that learning as a single -out perspective, but to incorporate it as a self -learning perspective. Also, what kind of homework you do will have a significant effect. At present, there are many schools that use drills and workbooks to write homework repeatedly, and children may only know the learning method. On the other hand, some schools are trying to make children create "kanji learning notes" to gain comprehensive knowledge. Children not only write kanji and how to read them in their notebooks, but also collect words that use the kanji, create and write sentences. In the upper grades, you will select and work on learning methods that you need, such as kanji with the same part and kanji that is easy to make mistakes. By working on kanji learning in this way, children can use this notebook as a model to establish learning methods, including how to use kanji. It is also important to select a flexible learning method according to the development process and individuals. Looking at the trends of documents in a survey conducted by the General Foundation Comprehensive Education Research Institute in 2003, there is a tendency for incorrect answers such as homogeneous sentences to increase since the middle of the year. It is necessary to flexibly review the learning method according to this situation and the development of children. As for the guidance according to individuals, there are many things to learn about special support education, and there are many studies on learning methods according to the recognition characteristics of learners. In addition, in the field of Japanese language education, research on learning methods according to the purpose and environment of learners is underway, so I think those cases will be helpful.