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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

vocabulary, kanji, kana words, Japanese

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Asian and Near Eastern Languages

Abstract

Japanese has two types of writing: kana, which is essentially phonetic, and kanji, which is primarily logographic. I hypothesized that although they are not phonetic and orthographically more complex, learning kanji actually improves vocabulary learning. In order to test this hypothesis, I created a study comparing the learning of basic vocabulary for beginning Japanese students using kana as opposed to kanji. The study involved a pre-test, a thirty minute study period, and a post-test. The pre-test and post-test were exactly identical for all students. They each, along with the study packets, contained 100 vocabulary items in English and Japanese, equally divided among different parts of speech. Eleven of the students were given a study packet that included only kana and English while the other eleven had a study packet including kana and kanji along with English for each vocabulary term. After the study period I administered the post-test. I compared the improvement of those who used the kana-only study packet to the improvement of those who used the kanji study packet.

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