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Kanji Look and Learn Workbook: 512 Kanji with Illustrations and Mnemonic Hints
This workbook is designed as supplementary material for the textbook Kanji Look and Learn: 512 Kanji with Illustrations and Mnemonic Hints.
It helps users to learn kanji not only at the level of characters and words, but also in the context of sentences and longer text.
It helps users to learn kanji not only at the level of characters and words, but also in the context of sentences and longer text.
176 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 16, 2011
I don't have the accompanying textbook, so I have no idea how the mnemonic hints and illustrations work. I came to this workbook having worked through Remembering the Kanji 1 and being frustrated that while I could write 2042 kanji (more or less) and having a general idea of what they meant, I couldn't read them at all. And compounds? I didn't know any unless you count 今日 and really easy ones.
The book is well structured. There are 32 chapters. Each chapter consists of 3 sections. Sections 1 and 2 are essentially the learning sections. Between 8 and 10 new kanji are presented in each section with space to write each new character 5 times. There is no stroke order guide, so if you're completely new to kanji it may be a bit daunting. After practicing writing the kanji, you move on to reading it. This is probably much easier if you have the book because the section shows the kanji, leaves a space to write the hiragana reading of it, has it's English meaning, and then uses it in an example sentence. The example sentences use kanji, but if you haven't come across them in the book yet they have furigana. If you don't know the reading for the kanji and don't have the accompanying book, I found it helpful to skip to the final part of the section. In the final part There are example sentences constructed and you are to write in the missing kanji. Sometimes it asks you to write the reading for a kanji you've already learned to reinforce your knowledge of it. All the new kanji for the section are written in bold type, and all of the new words are used in the section so you can (most of the time) figure out a reading by its context in the sentence. If all else fails and you get stumped, I found tangorin.com to be a helpful resource.
The third section in the chapter is the "practical use" section. There are reading passages that contain many of the words from the current and preceding chapters in small reading sections. In my opinion these are great for reinforcing what you've picked up along the way and help bolster self confidence. After the passage there are questions about it to test your understanding. I'm not entirely certain what level you should be at to understand the passages. I've only completed the Genki I textbook and towards the end of the book some of the reading was really difficult for me, but usually I got the gist of it. And the passages were interesting cultural pieces—not always upbeat, like the section on the war memorial in Hiroshima with the little girl who made 1,000 origami cranes believing it would cure her leukemia...
I highly recommend using this book in conjunction with flashcards. It started off easily enough, but snowballed and at the end of the book I found myself having to look up a lot of the words I had supposedly learned. I now have two decks of cards, one to read the example sentences with the reading of the kanji, and one to write the example sentences. This is helping immensely with retention.
The only caveat I have is that there's no index of the words you've learned. So if you forget one and need to find it for an example sentence later on you have to spend a lot of time hunting for it or use a dictionary to find it. I suppose theoretically you should memorize the words before moving on to the next section and shouldn't need an index, but I don't have total recall and sometimes space out on easy words.
The answer sheet （答案用紙-yes you learn that）is included with answers to all of the exercises, so technically you don't have to go to a dictionary if you have trouble with a word, you can just look it up there.
My only question is, what do I study from here? There's no book two, and while the 512 kanji that you learn to read in this workbook are a great start, it's by no means adequate for general reading. The reading passages prove that. They use many words you haven't learned yet and, fortunately, define most of them.
The book is well structured. There are 32 chapters. Each chapter consists of 3 sections. Sections 1 and 2 are essentially the learning sections. Between 8 and 10 new kanji are presented in each section with space to write each new character 5 times. There is no stroke order guide, so if you're completely new to kanji it may be a bit daunting. After practicing writing the kanji, you move on to reading it. This is probably much easier if you have the book because the section shows the kanji, leaves a space to write the hiragana reading of it, has it's English meaning, and then uses it in an example sentence. The example sentences use kanji, but if you haven't come across them in the book yet they have furigana. If you don't know the reading for the kanji and don't have the accompanying book, I found it helpful to skip to the final part of the section. In the final part There are example sentences constructed and you are to write in the missing kanji. Sometimes it asks you to write the reading for a kanji you've already learned to reinforce your knowledge of it. All the new kanji for the section are written in bold type, and all of the new words are used in the section so you can (most of the time) figure out a reading by its context in the sentence. If all else fails and you get stumped, I found tangorin.com to be a helpful resource.
The third section in the chapter is the "practical use" section. There are reading passages that contain many of the words from the current and preceding chapters in small reading sections. In my opinion these are great for reinforcing what you've picked up along the way and help bolster self confidence. After the passage there are questions about it to test your understanding. I'm not entirely certain what level you should be at to understand the passages. I've only completed the Genki I textbook and towards the end of the book some of the reading was really difficult for me, but usually I got the gist of it. And the passages were interesting cultural pieces—not always upbeat, like the section on the war memorial in Hiroshima with the little girl who made 1,000 origami cranes believing it would cure her leukemia...
I highly recommend using this book in conjunction with flashcards. It started off easily enough, but snowballed and at the end of the book I found myself having to look up a lot of the words I had supposedly learned. I now have two decks of cards, one to read the example sentences with the reading of the kanji, and one to write the example sentences. This is helping immensely with retention.
The only caveat I have is that there's no index of the words you've learned. So if you forget one and need to find it for an example sentence later on you have to spend a lot of time hunting for it or use a dictionary to find it. I suppose theoretically you should memorize the words before moving on to the next section and shouldn't need an index, but I don't have total recall and sometimes space out on easy words.
The answer sheet （答案用紙-yes you learn that）is included with answers to all of the exercises, so technically you don't have to go to a dictionary if you have trouble with a word, you can just look it up there.
My only question is, what do I study from here? There's no book two, and while the 512 kanji that you learn to read in this workbook are a great start, it's by no means adequate for general reading. The reading passages prove that. They use many words you haven't learned yet and, fortunately, define most of them.
October 23, 2024
This is an excellent workbook. The format and content is very useful and brilliantly selected. The only issue is that the frequency of some vocab is far smaller than others. The reviews in the workbook are not sufficient enough alone for long term memorisation, and need to be supplemented with a revision system such as an SRS app.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews