Abstract
Kanji represent units of both sound and meaning. Therefore, it is often claimed that learners should be able to guess the meaning of kanji compounds easily using knowledge of the core meaning of the individual kanji which make up the words. For foreign learners of Japanese, however, not only the meaning of the words but also information about parts of speech of the words are very important in order to be able to use them in making sentences. In this paper, the author will examine the effectiveness of teaching about parts of speech and word formation of some basic kanji for beginners by comparing parts of speech of kanji and their compounds.
