Understanding The Basic of Kanji's Meaning through Mnemonic Method Learning

摘要

It is commonly assumed and claimed that learners with no prior knowledge of Chinese characters often find it more difficult to learn kanji than learners from character backgrounds (Ishida, 1986; Machida, 2000; Toyoda, 1995). It makes kanji being a burden or something dreaded by Indoneian JFL. According to Hayashi & Yano (1994), Kanji has a lot of characters and the foreigners who do not use to handling such large sets of character in everyday life is not used to it, so it's hard to remember. This research is to answer the question about the difficulty of Indonesian JFL to memorize the meaning of events in Japanese kanji. This study uses mix method design with 30 Indonesian JFL the second semester students of Japanese education department Indonesia University of Education. The results of the analysis revealed that leaning Kanji through mnemonic method seemed to help students to understand kanji's meaning and the way to read it. The statement was also supported by the students' response saying that the learning process with Mnemonic method was interesting and enjoyable.