engleski

Multimedia assisted learning of Japanese kanji characters

This research presents guidelines for usage of multimedia in learning Japanese writing system for international learners. The writing system in question, the Sino-Japanese script called kanji, consists of at least 2000 commonly used ideograms. Such system presents a great obstacle in acquiring Japanese language for a great number of international learners. The research consists of three parts. Firstly, we provide an overview of existing multimedia tools for learning and teaching the Sino-Japanese script. Secondly, we present the results of survey among 47 international students. They have been surveyed about their methods of learning kanji in classroom and self-study, as well as their perceived difficulties and problems. Lastly, we talk about the experiment about using multimedia in teaching and learning kanji. The group of 6 students spent one semester learning kanji using modern multimedia method, such as websites, videos and smartphones. The group was successful in acquiring a large number (300-400) of characters with greater retention and reported enjoyment in the process, which had been the biggest issues in the acquisition process.

multimedia tools; kanji; ideograms; learning Japanese

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