Errors in writing Japanese kanji: a comparison of Japanese schoolchildren, college students and second-language learners of Japanese

Abstract

AbstractThe present study examined handwriting errors of kanji by Japanese schoolchildren, college students and second-language learners of Japanese. Errors made by all these three groups of participants were collected and used as research data. Japanese college students made phonologically related errors in writing kanji rather than orthographically related or semantically related errors. In contrast, Japanese schoolchildren in Grade 7 made mainly orthographically related errors when writing kanji. Since they are still at the stage of mastering kanji, they are likely to mix up constructing elements of kanji and use them incorrectly to make a single complex kanji. Australian university students (with no previous kanji knowledge) often wrote various non-existent kanji. Because they have not yet clearly learned the orthography of kanji elements, they were likely to create figures that resembled kanji or kanji elements that did not exist in Japanese. As such, depending on the learning stage of kanji, differe...