[steven]

Kyle, with all due respect, those first graders are 5 and 6 years old. I think saying something like "'nuff said" after a statement like that only helps what I'm trying to say when you really get down to it. That's 5-6 years of constantly being exposed to the Japanese language. That's the kind of exposure you still won't obtain even if you've studied the langauge in your own country for many many years. To say that someone should learn kanji in their second year of studying, in my opinion, is an unrealistic expectation and the time required to memorize the kanji would be much better spent elsewhere. Forcing first/second year learnings of Japanese learners to learn kanji, you are putting them at a faster pace than actual Japanese learners and I can't comprehend the logic in that. This is why people who learn languages for like 10 years still can't come close to a native 10 year old's language ability.

This goes with the idea that teachers feel the need to replicate their own education when teaching a language. Just because 1st grade was your first year in school and you were learning kanji doesn't necessarily mean that it would be beneficial for first grade learners of Japanese (with a different L1) to be learning kanji. I think it would be better to think of Japanese as a second language students to be thought of as babies in terms of Japanese. I know that word baby has a negative connotation and I don't mean it that way. I mean that the beginning should focus more on listening and observing rather than what kids with 5 years of listening and observing under their belt are expected to do.

Most people who study Japanese get fed up with it very early on. The beginning is fun and you get to laugh at all the new sounds and at the weird phrasing of the English translations for vocabulary. After all that has worn off and you go into your second year and are expected to memorize kanji (on top of hiragana and katakana) it just seems useless. It's like there's a whole year dedicated to learning how to write letters. Letters are boring and are just like a fake langauge anyways. They are things that would be better focused on after there is a foundation of spoken langauge. Studying letters first leads to comparing Japanese letters (characters) to English ones, thus the brain applise English reading rules to Japanese words slowing down the learning process. Another side effect is the completely boring task of memorization of abstract characters. I think most people who learn a langauge want to learn how to speak it-- there are some people who genuinely want to learn it in its written form, and I think they are the exception. In other words, most of us would be better off enjoying communication before we stay up all night worrying about kanji.

HOWEVER, exposure to kanji should definately be there as soon as writing is taught. I think there is no harm done with putting furigana on top of kanji to help expose learners to it.