4 Overlooked Tips To Help You Learn Kanji Fast

For most people who are suffering the pain of memorizing Kanji, the amount of characters is terrifying and makes you feel desperate for any shortcuts you can find. To tell you the truth, learning Kanji requires a lot of effort. In the whole process of learning Japanese, memorizing Kanji may be the most difficult aspect. But here I will show you some tips which will hopefully make things at least a little easier so that you can hold your own next time you pick up a Japanese newspaper.

Tactic #1: Forget about the conventional sequence of study

The first step is to get familiar with the first 100 to 200 Kanji which are commonly used in Japanese, so that you can get started. But what you should do next is to learn the advanced kanji as you see them or encounter them when you try to read something in Japanese, and do not worry about how uncommon they are. At the very start, it will feel hard, but this approach will actually save you time and energy in the long run because you won't constantly be deferring certain Kanji into the elusive "future."

Tactic #2: Memorize the composing parts:

Of the 214 radicals, there are 20 or 30 ones used extremely frequently, learn them with a dictionary and you will learn a large part of Kanji. You will become quick at recognizing new Kanji with less effort. The radicals which make up the new Kanji will help you figure out what the Kanji means. Memorizing 3-5 composing radicals is much more easy that memorizing 15 individual Japanese Kanji. The next thing you should do is just to put the radicals together.

Tactic #3: Dive into the hard things first

I'm talking about written Kanji here. You should try to take the time to read something in Japanese each day to improve your Japanese. Getting familiar with the way Japanese printed writing works will help you understand common applications of each Kanji you see. You should be able to get a decent understanding of Japanese on your own after you've been doing this for awhile.

Tactic #4: Read out loud:

When you are learning Kanji, you need to focus on three things: recognizing the figure, understanding what it means, and saying it correctly. As long as you aren't studying in the library, go ahead and practice reading out loud. Reading Kanji aloud is a great way to kill three birds (learning structure/shape, meaning, and sound) with one, big, noisy stone.

Learning Kanji is not easy, but it is not that hard either. Follow my advice, and your learning speed will increase.