Quote:
Originally Posted by chryuop
There are 2 main "schools" of thoughts about it. Some people prefere learning only the readings they meet when they do exercises, read book, newspapers and so on. Some people prefere taking the list of the most used kanji and learn by heart all readings for each kanji. There are pro and cons for both way of learning, so up to you to pick which one you prefere.
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Never knew there were two schools! There is only one in Japan, which is the first one you mentioned. I don't think the second method works well unless the student has an innate photographic memory.
If a student is learning kanji in a good order AND in context by using a proper book, most of the first few hundred kanji that he learns will be in their kun-readings. The kun-readings are more important in an early stage because they
are the meanings of the kanji in Japanese.
Take 空 for example. Its kun-reading is そら. What's the Japanese word for "sky"? It's そら（空）！
The on-reading is くう, but you will waste your time and effort if you try to remember that the first time you encounter the kanji 空. I say this because you don't know when you will encounter a compound using 空, in which 空 is read くう. There is NO correlation between そら and くう to start with, making learning both simultaneously difficult. Only when you encounter a word like 空港（くうこう=airport） or 空気（くうき= air）, you can learn its on-reading くう.
It may be 6 months later when you learn a compound using the kanji you encountered today. Could be even longer. This is why learning the on-reading with the kun can be a big waste of energy. Frankly you won't be able to remember the on when you see a compound later on.
I actually think the learner would end up hating kanji and therefore the language itself if he practices this "second" school's method.