Lately, I have been seeing a lot of people on here saying that there are too many and too difficult kanji being thrown out early too in the course.
Before you change this, I would just like to voice my opinion on the subject. I disagree with this sentiment quite a lot. I would much rather have the kanji in the course and have to work a little harder to learn them than not have them at all.
I should say that I have activated a Japanese keyboard (This can be easily acquired with native software on both Mac and Windows. A google search with instructions is all it takes) and that I almost only use a computer for learning.
The first time I went to Japan after using the Japanese course for American English speakers (which didn’t even have katakana), I was just overwhelmed with how little I could understand because almost everything in real life seem to be written in kanji.
Now on my second trip, after studying the revamped British English course which also added level 0, I feel much less discouraged (although, admittedly, I still mostly have no idea what’s going on), and much more optimistic that I have a chance to learn to understand road signs and such eventually.
In fact there are some kanji that come up when I write which I have to change back to hiragana/katakana in order for the computer to accept my answer. I understand that some words are more commonly written without kanji, but I would still like to suggest that these kanji be accepted as right answers. It does also occur that the wrong kanji comes up when I type the word in romanji, which should, of course, not be accepted as the right answer, but I’m pretty sure the correct kanji comes up sometimes as well (although, I must admit, I don’t know for sure).
I’m very open to discussion as well.
I hope this was helpful and that it added a little bit to the conversation.
Here’s one example of where the keyboard presents the kanji but the course wants hiragana;
はだかになりますか？
keyboard gives 裸になりますか？
It is incredibly frustrating and demotivating to give the right answer and be told you’ve got it wrong. Especially because with the way the course is now it happens quite frequently.
The point I’m really trying to make here is that if someone can read the second one, they can definitely read the first one, regardsless of which one is more common.
The answer displayed can still be the simpler/most common one.
I’m inclined to agree. If the kanji is in common usage, I’d rather learn the kanji. If you know the kanji and how to say the word, you can read its kana reading, but if it appears in kanji form and you only know the kana reading then you’ll be completely lost.
I think it’d be very useful to learn kanji earlier. Sure, it is daunting in a near debilitating way when you’re beginning to learn the language but its knowing kanji that separates you from a beginning intermediate/intermediate to being competent in the language.
I find myself looking for other apps that will help me learn and recognize kanji but I’d be happier if it was all on Memrise. They’ve got stuff on Decks but I haven’t really gotten into it since it can get annoying to switch between so many apps.
What gets hard for me, and maybe it deserves it’s own thread, but when reviewing, the text of a word you’ve answered will show up in grey with the meaning/hiragana pronunciation and it switches for what seems like is no apparent reason. I’m sure it has something to do with what kanji is used but I find it incredibly frustrating that it’ll give you (word) の (word) instead of （ことば) の（ことば) because I often forget the exact sounds that go into some kanji and find it incredibly valuable to see them. This way helps (at least me) differentiate some kanji from other similar looking ones.