Quote:What's fortunate is that readings are automatically learned with words. You can't (as in, it's impossible to) actually spend your time 'only learning words' and 'not learning readings,' because every time you learn a word you've learned a reading of the kanji. You'd have to be pretty dense to not understand, after learning the word 食事, that ショク is one of 食's readings. The point of learning this way is that it turns what's usually thought of as a two-step process into a single step.
That's certainly true, but there's also importance in being able to distinguish which reading is a 音読み and which a 訓読み. Only having a list of readings in your mind for a character, but not knowing into which category those readings fall, makes reading personal names, place names, and unknown words much, much more difficult.
Quote:Aijin, out of interest, has your question been answered as to why many of us learn Kanji via our native language first?
I think I understand the gist of it. I don't really have an opinion as to which method is more efficient, since I can't test the methods on myself. But if it didn't work then of course this forum wouldn't have so many members, so there's definitely rhyme and reason to this method
but how it compares to the way I was taught, and also to how foreigners are taught in a university setting, that I can't really say. I don't have enough experience yet with all the different methods, but I hope to gain that experience in time.
