Teaching Kanji by focusing on learners’ development of graphemic awareness

It has been widely claimed that Kanji is one of the most difficult aspects of Japanese language learning for learners with alphabetic language backgrounds. There are various techniques devised by teachers to teach Kanji effectively. However, given variables such as individual differences, none of these techniques can be a single perfect technique. In this paper, how learners process Kanji is analysed, then based on the findings of the analysis, techniques for teaching Kanji are classified into four categories for developing learners’ proper processing skills. The four categories are: 1) techniques to eliminate learners’ anxiety, 2) techniques to familiarise learners with Kanji, 3) techniques to store Kanji in long-term memory, and 4) techniques to restructure learners’ schema. The paper suggests 1) that learners need to have appropriate graphemic awareness to process Kanji, and 2) that techniques from each category should be implemented in teaching to facilitate the development of proper processing skills.