Proposed Material Development for Japanese Vocabulary and Kanji Learning

Abstract

Our school provides preparatory courses for overseas students intending to enter an academic institution in Japan. To fulfill their needs, the development of new teaching material has been proposed for the more efficient learning of Japanese vocabulary and kanji. The following three conditions were considered: kanji learning should be postponed until after some vocabulary is learned, the learning of opposites or synonyms at the same time should be avoided, and the selection of words to learn and their order should be based on the result of a word frequency survey relevant to our students' needs – learning Japanese for academic purposes.