[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by sakaeyellow

But learners should be able to recognize and understand Kanji, at least the basic ones, because modern Japanese is still heavy in Kanji, to the extent that a Chinese who have no Japanese education can understand around 20% of Japanese text.

Okay. At the very very least, learners must learn the basic 100~200 kanji such as 日月木水人大小一二三…If learning these easy Kanji is a challenge for someone who aims at being a fluent speaker, I strongly recommend him to think twice before investing his time.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. No one has said that it is a waste to learn kanji, nor that you shouldn`t know some.

What IS being said is that they should not take the level of priority that they typically do in the learning process. You should NOT be working on your kanji before you have a good grasp of the spoken language. You should not be trying to memorize a kanji when you may not even know a SINGLE word in which it is used. They SHOULD be studied, but NOT as quickly as they typically are.

The example of 5 and 6 year olds learning kanji is given. It`s actually 6 and 7 year olds (you have to be 6 to start 1st grade) - but regardless, the kanji they learn are for words they already know. They don`t get a list and learn to read a bunch of "on" and "kun" readings. They start with one meaning, the most familiar to them, and don`t even touch on and kun until later. But yet it`s used as an example that even elementary Japanese learners should be picking up kanji from the start.
My son knows about 5 kanji, a couple compounds with multi kanji (like kindergarten and the name of our town, etc)... But despite being far far behind in language skills - he is STILL "fluent".
Children who start learning kanji already know the language. Being expected to learn the language THROUGH kanji is a bit odd, really, and is the root of some serious frustration for learners.

Finally, to be honest, can a fluent but illiterate Japanese speaking foreigner find a respectable job in Japan? (It is a question. I really don't know the answer.) And yes, if you don't know how to read Kanji, you are illitereate.

But that isn`t what anyone is saying. Once you get to the point where you ARE fluent you absolutely should know your kanji (and really shouldn`t consider yourself fluent if you do not.) What I am saying, and think steven is saying, is that learners who are still in the early stages of learning should not be dedicating so much of their time to kanji and should instead be working on actually learning to SPEAK Japanese.