Comparing Teaching Stategies between the teaching of Japanese and Chinese.

[Xi'Er Dun]

I learnt Japanese in High School and am now learning Mandarin Chinese at an Australian University.

I have noticed that when I was learning Japanese in High School, as far a learning necessary Kanji 漢字　relevant to our current learning topics, we were taught individual Kanji with only the necessary ON 音讀み and Kun 訓讀みReadings (which only helped us with the topic we were studying and not beyond, we were taught no Nanori 名乗りReadings as we wrote all Japanese names in Hiragana ひらがな　and our foreign names and foreign words Gairaigo 外来語 in Katakana　カタカナ[too much of the vocabulary consisted of foreign mostly European words in the Japanese language transliterated in Katakana, instead of older Chinese Derived Words that could be written in Kanji--which I prefer the use of] , and were taught no Ateji 当て字　Readings of Kanji if I can remember....)---we only learnt "prescribed" Kanji for the course topics for use in Japanese verbs, some adjectives and vere few nouns, we learnt some Kanji used Chinese Derived Japanese vocabulary and those native to Japanese. Most of the vocabulary we learnt we were taught to just write in Kana　仮名. Most of our Japanese course was using Kana. I must say with learning Japanese, the focus was clearly on grammar, due to the complexity of Japanese Grammar, especially for an English native speaker. Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar has elements exculsive to Chinese and some with no translatable equivalent in English, but over all, I find Chinese Grammar much easier to learn than that of Japanese.

My point being, were taught with a focus on speaking and grammar, with Kanji only as an extra element to the Japanese written language as well as learning individual Kanji, and not words made up one or many Kanji.

I am comparing this to my experiences learning Mandarin Chinese at Australian University, as there is a different focus and teaching startegy used with this language compared to what was used in Japanese in High School. At the beginning of the Chinese course we were working entirely in PinYin, this is an equivalent to our Japanese High School work in Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ , as we were at introductory and elementary levels.

In Chinese, we learn whole PuTongHua 普通话 Chinese words with the correct Simplified Hanzi 简体, and all foreign names and foreign vocabulary are still written in Hanzi 汉字, although they use Characters for their phonetic transliterations or literal translations of the foreign concept. This way we learn Hanzi for use in Modern Chinese words that are mostly made up of many Hanzi Characters. In First year Study of Chinese, we learn about one thousand verbs, adjectives and nouns, we learn the about 800 Hanzi used in these words in first years study (which we need about 3000+ to call ourseleves literate in Chinese, but that will come). This is a possible way to learn all required Hanzi for daily use in Mainland China for PuTongHua 普通话.

This strategy of learing Chinese may be attributed to the fact that Hanzi Characters are a core element of the Chinese Language.

Now what I am getting to is, would this strategy of learning words made up one to a few Kanji for use in Chinese Derived Japanese words be effective in learning all of the Jōyō 常用 Kanji for daily use, rather than learning a Japanese word just be learning its Kana spelling which might help in learning to speak Japanese, I think one should learn a Japanese word with its proper Kanji spelling with initial help from Furigana　振り仮名.

However, I don't think this strategy of learing would help with the learning of native Japanese concepts and verbs--after all wouldn't the aim of the study of Japanese be the learning of Modern Japanese and not Classical Chinese or Middle Chinese?

Teaching the Chinese Language versus teaching the Japanese Language have different focuses and strategies due to the differences in these languages and each languages core elements.

Tell me what you think?

I am open to criticism.

如何も有り難う御座い升

谢谢您

Xi 'Er Dun 希尔顿 from Australia 澳洲