[Columbine]

Originally Posted by steven

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.

I agree that spoken japanese and listening skills shouldn't be back-benched in favor of writing and reading skills, but I also think it would be highly flawed not to teach kanji. By your second year of language learning as an adult, you should be more than capable of applying yourself to kanji use. Using 'It's hard and boring' as an excuse not to is frankly feeble. Not all elements of language learning can be fun. I will say though, that rote memorization of kanji is an incredibly poor way to teach it and if that is how your teacher approaches it, I can appreciate how frustrating and nonsensical that it can seem. Kanji however, is a non-negotiable part of becoming fluent in Japanese. Regardless of whether you like it or not, you cannot fail to learn it and then claim to have a high level of Japanese.

Originally Posted by steven

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.

I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, most people approach japanese learning as late-teens and adults. We come with a full set of developed mental faculties (although given some students, you'd wonder) and so we can learn more directly than children. We're not trying to learn what 'frog' is at the same time as learning the word 'frog' because we already have a mental concept of 'frog', if you follow my drift. Yes we don't have the exposure to the language, but written skills form a big part of education and reinforce key aspects like pronunciation, intonation and word segregation. The last part is particularly kanji-related. Knowing where the kanji part of a verb ends and where the hiragana starts is one of the chief ways you can tell how to conjugate it.

Certainly after 5 years of Kanji use, I find it very hard to read a hiragana-only sentence, because it's not clear where words end and certain words I'm more familiar with as Kanji. Just yesterday it took me a couple of tries to read さかなや because it kept coming out as さかーなや and confusing me. I wouldn't have had the same issue with 魚屋。Similarly, Kanji give good hints to unknown words. Suppose you saw うそ written somewhere. You wouldn't have a clue as to it's meaning unless you already knew it, or you might think 'oh, it means lie'. written as 鷽、however, I can instantly see that it's not 'lie' but something else, and given that it has the character for bird in it, I can assume that it's either a sort of bird, or related to birds.

Additionally, as adults, we have other difficulties. Despite being child-level in Japanese, you would (I hope) still want to be considered an adult, and sound adult. In japan it's quite acceptable to be kanji-illiterate as a child but as an adult, it's a skill you need.
If you arrive with almost fluent speaking skills but no kanji recognition, you are to all intents and purposes, illiterate, and furigana is generally much scarcer than you'd like. And you will be expected to be able to read kanji- not all communication in Japan is verbal; think of all the signs, instructions, information you -read- on a daily basis, just navigating around town. Neglecting a full set of reading skills is like cutting off your foot and then trying to run a race. You will stumble at the starting block.

Originally Posted by steven

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.

Again, this is pretty feeble reasoning. I've met people who've come out of easy-street, fun japanese courses. Their Japanese usually sucks and they flounder when they get to Japan because, surprise, surprise, they can't read or write a darned thing. So they become highly dependent on literate people to help them out. At the end of your second year (university level) you should have a reasonable level of self-sufficiency.

You describe a writing system as a 'fake language', which only goes to show that you're utterly ignorant of how to use it correctly. It is not a fake language, it is highly formative in the structure of Japanese, even down to a social level (Non-PC characters, for example). Your attitude suggests both bad learning and bad teaching.

Originally Posted by steven

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.

Again, this suggests your learning experience is flawed and biased. I learnt Kanji in context in addition to rote learning and I certainly wouldn't call them abstract. They might not all be as explicit as 木 but there are patterns of logic to kanji construction, which clearly you've not been taught.

Originally Posted by steven

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.

Agreed. However, using 100% furigana 100% of the time doesn't actually teach you to read Kanji; most people skim from hiragana to furigana and get a certain attentional blindness to the kanji symbols (ie, they barely glance at them), and it promotes an over dependancy on furigana, which in real life isn't used that much. Teen novels and manga perhaps, but if you're allergic to reading, then you're not likely to be opening many japanese books.