by kansaicanuck » Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:57 am
gavinmac wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:41 am
Can you explain this a bit more? Why would the explosion in text messaging and internet reading and smart phone use undermine a Japanese kid's ability to read and write in Japanese? Do you mean they can't form the letters any more because no one writes anything by hand? Or are they using too much English and forgetting or not learning Japanese?
I assume Japanese kids are texting each other all day long in Japanese instead of talking on the phone and thus I would think their reading and writing would improve.
Yes, I mainly meant writing by hand and remembering proper Kanji is becoming a lost skill. Reading comprehension hasn't fallen nearly as fast as writing but learning the characters go hand-in-hand with learning how to read and write them so it has fallen a bit as well.
As an example when you type Japanese into your cell phone on the keyboard you write it in either hiragana or katakana and when it's written in hiragana the phone will automatically change it into the proper kanji characters or you pick the proper one from a list. So whereas before people had to learn how to hand write each kanji character now a lot of kids can't correctly write these characters properly anymore because all they've done is typed them and picked them from a list. this is fine for daily life and doing assignments on their computers for school but when they have to write tests it's a big problem because they can't kanji they need. Having bad kanji writing skills in Japan is actually quite embarrassing.
This has been a big problem for many high school students who have moved to the west to go to school on Exchange programs as well. If they end up missing last four years of high school in Japan they hardly ever write (pen/paper) in their own language and when they go back to do uni entrance tests their written language skills are subpar.
Older people who grew up writing everything by hand and reading newspapers have a much better grasp of the written language especially. Kind of like how kids in the west cannot write cursive like older generations.
In recent years furigana (where tiny hiragana characters are written on top or beside Kanji) to help people know how to read the is getting much more common but was hardly seen before. *See pic example
https://japantoday.com/category/nationa ... -computers
TOKYO
The Cultural Agency said in a report this week that 66.5% of Japanese surveyed believe their ability to write kanji characters has deteriorated due to the proliferation of cell phones and computers.
The nationwide survey was conducted between February and March of this year among people over the age of 16, in an attempt to establish the perceived influence of the electronic communication methods, TBS reported.
Of the 2,069 respondents, 66.5% responded that their ability to write kanji had decreased, due to constantly texting emails. That figure has risen 25% in the last 10 years, the agency said.
For respondents in their 40s, that figure rose to 79.5%, while it accounted for 57.7% of people in their 30s.
Furthermore, the agency added that the number of respondents who said that some oral communication could now just as easily be carried out via email was 29.5%, an increase of 12.3%. Respondents who felt it has become a burden to have to meet people face-to-face accounted for 18.6% of the total, a 7.3% increase, the agency said.
© Japan Today
[quote=gavinmac post_id=963353 time=1552880497 user_id=136]
Can you explain this a bit more? Why would the explosion in text messaging and internet reading and smart phone use undermine a Japanese kid's ability to read and write in Japanese? Do you mean they can't form the letters any more because no one writes anything by hand? Or are they using too much English and forgetting or not learning Japanese?
I assume Japanese kids are texting each other all day long in Japanese instead of talking on the phone and thus I would think their reading and writing would improve.
[/quote]
Yes, I mainly meant writing by hand and remembering proper Kanji is becoming a lost skill. Reading comprehension hasn't fallen nearly as fast as writing but learning the characters go hand-in-hand with learning how to read and write them so it has fallen a bit as well.
As an example when you type Japanese into your cell phone on the keyboard you write it in either hiragana or katakana and when it's written in hiragana the phone will automatically change it into the proper kanji characters or you pick the proper one from a list. So whereas before people had to learn how to hand write each kanji character now a lot of kids can't correctly write these characters properly anymore because all they've done is typed them and picked them from a list. this is fine for daily life and doing assignments on their computers for school but when they have to write tests it's a big problem because they can't kanji they need. Having bad kanji writing skills in Japan is actually quite embarrassing.
This has been a big problem for many high school students who have moved to the west to go to school on Exchange programs as well. If they end up missing last four years of high school in Japan they hardly ever write (pen/paper) in their own language and when they go back to do uni entrance tests their written language skills are subpar.
Older people who grew up writing everything by hand and reading newspapers have a much better grasp of the written language especially. Kind of like how kids in the west cannot write cursive like older generations.
In recent years furigana (where tiny hiragana characters are written on top or beside Kanji) to help people know how to read the is getting much more common but was hardly seen before. *See pic example
https://japantoday.com/category/national/declining-kanji-writing-skill-of-japanese-blamed-on-cell-phones-computers
[quote]TOKYO
The Cultural Agency said in a report this week that 66.5% of Japanese surveyed believe their ability to write kanji characters has deteriorated due to the proliferation of cell phones and computers.
The nationwide survey was conducted between February and March of this year among people over the age of 16, in an attempt to establish the perceived influence of the electronic communication methods, TBS reported.
Of the 2,069 respondents, 66.5% responded that their ability to write kanji had decreased, due to constantly texting emails. That figure has risen 25% in the last 10 years, the agency said.
For respondents in their 40s, that figure rose to 79.5%, while it accounted for 57.7% of people in their 30s.
Furthermore, the agency added that the number of respondents who said that some oral communication could now just as easily be carried out via email was 29.5%, an increase of 12.3%. Respondents who felt it has become a burden to have to meet people face-to-face accounted for 18.6% of the total, a 7.3% increase, the agency said.
© Japan Today[/quote]
[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/Y0Jpybsf/45603.png[/img][/url]