Japanese Language Students' Perceptions on Kanji Learning and Their Relationship to Novel Kanji Word Learning Ability

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between how learners of Japanese as a second language perceive the learning of kanji (i.e., the logographic characters shared with Chinese) and their ability to learn novel kanji words using morphological and contextual information. Eighty college students learning Japanese as a foreign language completed a 60‐item kanji questionnaire, a 75‐item kanji test, and a 30‐item reading comprehension test. Results indicated modest but statistically significant correlations between the belief variables and the kanji ability measures, with reading proficiency factored out. Regression analyses revealed that although reading proficiency accounted for a large portion of variance of the participants' performance on the kanji test, belief in the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies accounted for 14–16% of the variance of success in morphological analysis. The results suggest that (a) students' task‐specific beliefs have a significant impact on their achievement on a given task and that (b) metacognitive awareness significantly affects how a learner handles a challenging learning task.