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Japan's weird anal-retentive method of primary and secondary education is hostile to language learning; it's bad enough here in Canada, where the typical anglo
by microcolonel 6y ago
Japan's weird anal-retentive method of primary and secondary education is hostile to language learning; it's bad enough here in Canada, where the typical anglo school will just as likely turn students away from the French language† as help them learn it, but Japan (among others) is on another level.
We know, empirically, that this is not the way that people acquire language; but somehow it is the core of almost every public education body's language curriculum.
† Do you know anyone who acquired French fluency by completing conjugation tables two hours a week for a decade?
- Grustaf 6y agoNo it’s not, it makes perfect sense for Chinese based scripts. And it works, look at their literacy rate.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAll developed countries have literacy rates statistically indistinguishable from 100%, so I'm not sure it provides much evidence either way on the effectiveness of teaching styles.
- microcolonel 6y agoStroke order makes sense for 漢字, and to some extent for 仮名, but rigid calligraphy of this sort is not a necessity with English, it is a pure luxury, especially in this case, when it's just printing. That print lowercase a is not self-evidently “correct” in any sense, there is no history or reason behind printing an a that way, and you can make an argument that it causes unnecessary confusion with d to do so. Also, precise stroke order isn't really that important for 漢字 either. Which of these has correct stroke order? https://qui.suis.je/drop/20200608_0001.webp https://qui.suis.je/drop/20200608_0001.webp
- Grustaf 6y agoI’m not sure what you mean. Clearly the current forms of the lowercase letters are correct, what do you mean? Do you simply mean that they _could have_ looked differently? Sure. I can’t open the link, but yes, stroke order makes a big practical difference for learning, and of course for cursive.