Study Tips: Strengthening your Kanji
I’ll be posting later today, God willing, the second part of my reply to Nana’s comment here.
Sorry it took more than a month to complete.
***
When I started gathering my thoughts for this second post, it eventually occurred to me that it was impossible for me to recall all my JLPT L2-related activities in the span of 4 years (yes, it took me that long to pass) and write them in an engaging post.
So instead, I decided to jot them down to a few bullet points:
- Kanji – Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1
- Vocabulary – Nihongo Pera Pera!: A User’s Guide to Japanese Onomatopoeia
- Grammar – 完全マスター2級 日本語能力試験文法問題対策 and 日本語能力試験に出る文法2級
- Listening – old JLPT exams
- Reading – old JLPT exams
- Japanese L2 crash course
In the list above, kanji was where I made significant progress.
***
There was no study plan for me. I just needed to pass JLPT L2 to receive a needed monetary incentive.
If I hadn’t passed L2 last 2008, I would have stopped – I had already set my mind to stop aiming to pass.
But luckily, I did.
What I want to say is – I believe that having a study schedule (and sticking with it at least 80% of the time) is the way to go. But sometimes circumstances don’t allow it, or that having a schedule just doesn’t fit you. So you have to find an alternate route.
I believed that if I didn’t solidify my kanji foundation, I won’t understand most of the sentences even if I had mastered the grammar patterns.
***
So what to make out of this?
Develop a key skill – be able to break down a kanji into its “elements,” recognize them as “parts”, and then bring them back together to arrive at its meaning.
Acquire a key knowledge – one keyword for one kanji; expand later.
