New Kyoiku kanji: Cross-reference between 1026 Japanese school kanji and the JLPT (Japanese Edition) [Print Replica] Kindle Edition

The special feature of this book is that it quantifies the correspondence between the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) vocabulary list of over 9,000 words and the new Kyōiku kanji (1,026 kanji taught in Japanese elementary schools).With regard to teaching kanji, foreign learners face specific problems in the Internet age. Today, learners can access comprehensive information, such as kanji databases, via the Internet. However, the flood of information sometimes makes it difficult to identify useful and important data for the purposes of learning kanji. For this reason, the aim of this publication is to clarify the relative importance of each Kyōiku kanji and reduce the burden on the learners. Quantifying the database using JLPT levels and "gap values" will be welcome for all overseas learners of Japanese, making learning more efficient and removing barriers to learning.Why was the Kyōiku kanji chosen?The Kyōiku kanji [教育漢字], officially known as 学年別漢字配当表 [kanji distribution list by grade] is an official Japanese list of 1,026 kanji and associated readings that was published in 1977, first revised in 1989, and, after a second revision in 2017, implemented in Japanese elementary schools starting in the academic year 2020.The 2017 revision of the Kyōiku kanji, with an increase of 20 kanji, was thus the first revision to take place in around 30 years. It is also important to note that the document entitled “Guideline for Style and Form in the Japanese Jōyō kanji” was announced around the same time as the guidelines for teaching kanji. Since the Kyōiku kanji is a subcategory of Jōyō kanji, this guideline also applies to the former. Presumably, this guideline was drawn up in response to various problems arising from increasing exposure to a variety of character forms via the Internet. Some commercially available kanji and Japanese-language textbooks in Japan place a strong emphasis on this new "instruction" on character style and form. For example, it is possible to read 11 pages extracted from this guideline in the Sanseidō Editing Office’s Handbook of New Japanese Expressions in Writing (2019). Moreover, Kume Isao’s Guide to Teaching kanji—Study Guideline Compliance (2017) followed the guidelines by including a column for the “standard forms” and a column for the “tolerated forms.” One might say that the most important point of the guidelines is to reduce the burden on learners by presenting both standard and tolerated forms of kanji. With that in mind, this book includes a section entitled "Points to note," which describes some of the most common pitfalls for foreign learners.(...)Regarding the title of this bookThis book is based on my paper “A Study of the Renewed Kyōiku Kanji: An Attempt to Quantify the Relative Importance of 1,026 Kanji Using Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Levels,” originally published in The Gakushuin Journal of International Studies, Volume 7, GIIS, Gakushuin Women's College Institute of International Studies, 2021. This paper was later included in Nihongo-gaku Ronsetsu Shiryou (Japanese Linguistics Essay Materials), Issue 57, 2022, published by the Japanese Linguistics Research Materials Preservation Society, in cooperation with the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.Although the revised Kyōiku kanji began to be used in 2020 and are, therefore, not particularly recent, the title “New Kyōiku Kanji” was chosen to emphasize the new perspective presented in this book – namely, a comparison with the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. Read more