Survey on Students' Acquisition for Chinese Characters in Japanese Vocabulary

2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 15330197
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Education on school subjects and activities
• Research Institution: National Institute for Educational Policy Research
• Principal Investigator: ARIMOTO Hidefumi National Institute for Educational Policy Research, Dept. for Curriculum Research, Senior Researcher, 教育課程研究センター基礎研究部, 総括研究官 (40241228)
• Project Period (FY): 2003 – 2005
• Keywords: Chinese characters / Japanese vocabulary / 漢字・語彙調査

Research Abstract

I conducted surveys about students' acquisition for Chinese characters as follows.
(1)Compare with a survey by Agency for Cultural Affairs in (1964-67) and clarify changes in forty years.
(2)Survey on students' free writing ability by using Chinese character.
(3)Survey on Chinese characters which are frequently used in comics and game softs but which are not taught at schools.
(4)Survey on how much time they watch TV and playing games and correlation to scores of the test for Chinese characters
Theses surveys were conducted in September to December 2004. It took for forty minutes for the test of Chinese characters and ten minutes for questionnaires.
I asked educational centers of every prefecture to select one middle school and twenty nine schools of twenty nine prefectures have agreed to conduct the survey in their schools.
Number of samples is 3,018 students in 99 schools.
Main results are,
(1)Test scores for Chinese characters which are taught in schools up eight points in reading when compared to forty years ago.
(2)Test scores for Chinese characters which is not taught in schools up eleven points in writing and twenty seven points in reading when compared to forty years ago.