The Process of Semantics Radicals (Bushu) during the Recognition
Meaning of Japanese Kanji Characters
Linna Meilia Rasiban
Depertement of Japanese Language Education,Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung,
Indonesia
Keywords: Semantics Radical, Japanese Characters, Recognition Meaning, Kanji, Non-Kanji (or alphabetic-based)
Background.
Abstract: This study investigated the contribution of semantics radical approach during the recognition of kanji’s
meaning. A number of studies have contributed in understanding Japanese characters learning strategies in
the past decade especially the recent trend of e-learning and m-learning approach. However, learners with
non-kanji backgrounds still find it difficult to understand the Japanese characters or known as kanji. Several
studies have been conducted to examine systematically the role of radicals in Japanese reading
development. To fill this gap, this study aims to find out the process and structure of kanji, and also to
understand the meaning of kanji and their implications for kanji learning strategies for learners with the
alphabetic-based background. The research method used in this study was a quasi experimental design
which involved 25 participants. The results concluded that the radical (bushu) is an important orthographic
processing unit in kanji’s meaning comprehension. A conceptual framework for further research is
discussed in order to assist approaches in considering how to read in kanji learning strategies with semantics
and phonetics radicals for alphabetic-based background learners.
1 INTRODUCTION
Japanese characters consist of logographic
characters (kanji), syllabic letters (kana: hiragana
and katakana), Roman alphabet (romaji), as well as
Arabic numerals (Taylor and Taylor, 2014). The
most complex Japanese letters are kanji. Kanji is
visually complex, ranging in stroke numbers
between 1 and 23 among the 1,945 of common kanji
(Taylor and Taylor, 2014). Given a large number of
kanji that cause difficulties for native Japanese
speakers, it is not a surprise that mastering kanji is a
complicated and frightening task for learners with an
alphabetic-based language background (non-kanji
background) (Rasiban, 2017).
Kanji learning is very complex for those who
learn without kanji characters, because in addition to
memorize the kun-yomi and on-yomi of the kanji, it
is necessary to understand the meaning of the word
and the way of writing it. As Toyoda (1995) argues
through his survey, that middle-level learners find
out that comprehending kanji is the hardest learning
process because the lexical load increases.
Responders' difficulties include retention, multiple
readings from one character (such as Chinese), as
well as visual similarity and complexity.
Radicals are defined as the smallest and most
meaningful orthographic unit that plays a semantic
or phonetic role in compound characters (Shen and
Ke, 2007). In other words, radicals are repetitive
structural patterns that convey semantic and
phonetic information (Ho et al., 2003; Jackson et al.,
2003). Semantic radicals give clues to the semantic
categories of compound characters (decomposed
characters being radical, for example, 洋, / yáng /,
which consists of 氵 and 羊), while phonetic radicals
give clues to the pronunciation of compound
characters, although the overall meaning of semantic
characters and radicals, and the overall
pronunciation of characters and phonetics do not
always match. Considering the amount, there are
about 200 semantic radicals and 800 to 1,100
phonetic radicals exist. (Hoosain, 1991; Shu and
Anderson, 1999).
Characters consisting of radicals are called
compound characters (Shu and Anderson, 1999) and
more than 80% of modern Chinese characters are
Rasiban, L.
The Process of Semantics Radicals (Bushu) during the Recognition Meaning of Japanese Kanji Characters.
DOI: 10.5220/0007171605970600
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 597-600
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
597

compound sentences (Shu and Anderson, 1999).
Thus, the introduction of semantic radicals is
important in recognizing the meaning of Japanese
kanji as well as in Chinese kanji. However, the study
of radical semantics is limited in general, especially
to Indonesian students. This study focuses on the
introduction of the meaning of kanji for Indonesian
students.
In the present study, we use the term semantic
radicals to refer to “the understanding meaning of
the role of radicals in forming Japanese Kanji
characters”. Radicals have two major features: (a)
radicals usually have habitual positions within
characters, and (b) they function to encode semantic
information or phonetic information of characters.
Experimental evidence for semantic radical’s
activation comes from single-character decision
(Feldman and Siok, 1999), single-character decision
with priming (Feldman and Siok, 1999) on Chinese,
speeded single-character semantic-categorization
(Flores d’Arcais and Saito, 1993) on Japanese, and
single-character word naming on Japanese (Flores
d’Arcais et al., 1995; Miwa, 2012). Previous
research has shown that characters with a semantic
radical occurring in many other characters are read
faster.
Miwa’s study (2012) seeks to clarify whether the
effects of semantic radicals depend on their position
in the left (modifier) versus the right (head)
character (Miwa, 2012), and this present study also
aims to clarify the role of the semantic transparency
of semantic radicals, and to establish the extent to
which radical type frequency effects to
understanding kanji's meaning for Indonesian
Japanese as Foreign Language students with non-
kanji background students.
This research will focus on the smallest part of
radicals called semantic radical that function as
symbol or encoding semantic information. This
study examines how the semantic radicals process
can contribute to recognize Japanese kanji meaning
especially for students with non-kanji or alphabetical
backgrounds.
2 METHODS
2.1 Participants
The participants who formed the focus of the study
were selected from 25 students. Respondents in this
study were taken purposively at the Japanese
language education department.
Respondents came from students who took the
subject of Chuukyuu Hyouki (Intermediate Japanese
Writing) in a total of 25 respondents; 15 females and
10 males. Respondents were set in a group with
intermediate level competencies in Japanese
language with a range of 19 to 21 years old. In this
study, the suggested intermediate level is a student
who has studied Japanese language for 4 semesters
or 2 years.
2.2 Instrumentation
In this study, the data were collected using the
following instruments:
The Semantics Radical Task: This task measured
respondent’s explicit knowledge of the function of
semantics radicals that provided semantics cues for
each kanji’s character, and ‘component analysis’
task that contains about radical (bushu) component
by breaks each kanji down into component parts of
one to 10 strokes, then assigns a name to each/every
radical (bushu) and every component, and then write
down the meaning of radicals’ characters.
The Semantics Radical Task has been given at
the beginning, before experiment and after the
learning activities provided with semantics radical
and phonetics radical approach.
Questionnaire: This instrument is used to collect
information in the learning process of Chuukyuu
Hyouki, the semantics radicals approach, the
contribution of semantics radical approach to
recognize kanji’s meaning comprehension.
Deep Interview: This stage is conducted after the
information collected through a questionnaire that is
distributed. To deepen the information, an in-depth
interview is conducted. The information collected
including on what is the influence of semantics
radical approach on the ability to remember
meaning.
2.3 Procedure
The method used in this study is a quasi-
experimental method. The treatment took 4 sessions
and the procedure of the sessions as follows:
2.3.1 Session 1
In the first session, the students were given the pre-
test (The Semantics Radical Task). After taking the
test, students are given an explanation of the radical
semantics of the kanji and introduces the kanji
through radical (bushu). Each session is given 10
kanji characters.
2.3.2 Session 2, 3, and 4
The procedure of these sessions is the same for each
session, like session 1. The final of the experimental
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
598

activity is the post-test and questionnaire.
Afterwards, the total kanji studied in this study is 40
kanji characters in the book Chuukyuu Hyouki. This
kanji are kanji of N3-N4 level in Japanesse
Language Profiency Test (hereafter is called JLPT).
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results are obtained from the test scores at the
beginning and after the experiment, questionnaires,
and interviews on respondents. It is obtained from
the experimental activity that has been done four
times; the beginning with pre-test activities and
ending post-test activities. This pre-test activity is
aimed to collect preliminary information about
students' ability in writing kanji and kanji teaching
that has been done so far.
The average pre-test score was 63. There are
several findings collected from questionnaire and
interview information, then analyzed by looking
back from the test scores obtained from each
respondent. The findings are (1) almost all
respondents feel confused in determining part of
each component of kanji, so they cannot write
radical / bushu from complex kanji letter; (2) almost
65% of difficulties are found in writing kanji and the
complex way of reading; (3) almost 60% of
respondents cannot write the meaning of kanji he or
she wrote.
From the findings conducted at the beginning of
the activity before the experiment, it can be
concluded that the students still do not understand
the component parts of each kanji letter, and lack in
comprehending radical / bushu of kanji.
Based on the results of interviews and
questionnaires that have been collected, the reason is
because the respondents did not study and did not
pay much attention to radical / bushu when learning
kanji.
Based on this, experimental activities were
carried out using radical approach to learning kanji
four times. After the experimental activity, the post-
test activities are conducted to measure and compare
the results of respondents' learning ability to write
kanji. The average post-test score is 95. It can be
concluded that there is a significant increase in
learning outcomes. When comparing the grade point
average, the increase in learning outcomes has
increased by 32 points. These results are reinforced
by questionnaires and interviews show that the
improvement of learning outcomes of kanji is
influenced by radical approach learning strategy.
In addition to the average grade increased with this
strategy of learning radical approach, the ability of
each respondent is also increased.
The following is the line graph that compares the
pre-test score and the post-test score after the
experimental in Figure 1 the graph shows that
overall the learning outcomes of each respondent
increase sharply. This is shown by the red line in
Figure 1. There are only 12% of the respondents
whose value is still below 70, this can be seen in
Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Pre-Test and Post-Test Score Comparison.
From the three respondents who have post-test
score below 70, their score increased but cannot
reach the average score 70. This is because the three
respondents did not make the preparation of learning
and not memorize the subject matter.
Most kanji are semantic-phonetic composites.
Semantic radical specifies semantic categories to
which kanji belong and tend to form left
components, while phonetics, which hint at the
sounds of kanji, tend to form to right components.
Radicals vary how closely they relate to composite
kanji of which they form parts (Klingborg, 2012).
This optimization of storage and computation should
also be applied in reading Japanese and Chinese,
languages with a morpho-graphic writing system. In
these languages, a large majority of words is
represented orthographically by means of two
complex characters (Miwa, 2012).
The duration of time required for native Japanese
speakers to learn kanji will raise questions on
Japanese as Foreign Language (hereafter is called
JFL) learners especially non-kanji background
learners about how kanji should be taught. Learning
kanji in the Japanese way takes a long time and
requires considerable motivation from JFL learners
who are limited in exposing their kanji in everyday
life (Simon and Chavalin, 2014).
In conclusion, our findings show that the
semantics radicals contribute to beginning foreign
kanji learners from non-kanji backgrounds. On the
basis of these findings, we suggest that semantics
radicals approach is an important orthographic
processing unit in reading development in Japanese
characters, and their positional and functional
regularities should be taught explicitly in class to
enhance student’s character decoding skills. The
findings of the present study have implications for
Indonesian JFL students from non-kanji background,
The Process of Semantics Radicals (Bushu) during the Recognition Meaning of Japanese Kanji Characters
599

teachers and textbook writers in the Japanese
language education in general. It is hoped that this
study will trigger more research investigating the
impact of pedagogical.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Semantic radicals were the only significant unique
predictor of meaning recognition in Japanese Kanji
characters after accounting for the effects of
semantic radical and language proficiency.
Productive semantic radical knowledge requires one
to know the meaning and meaning-cueing function
of semantic radicals, to retrieve correct radicals, and
to apply this knowledge in character writing.
Therefore, this study can be extended to further
research by searching for remembering kanji’
mnemonic image associations as a way to facilitate
remembering the meaning of kanji and extended
phonetics radical's approach to analyzing the
phonetically homophonized kanji material from
‘component analysis’ kanji in compatible with the
Indonesian JFL students from alphabetic
backgrounds.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thanks the students of
Japanese Language Education Departement,
academic year 2017/2018 1
st
grade, who took
Shokyuu Choukai course as respondents. And
Departement of Japanese Language Education,
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia for giving support
for this research.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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