Prof. Toshiyuki Zennyoji was invited to give a talk on Systematic Kanji Tree and Teaching Kanji to University Students on 27 September 2016 at the FAH Blackbox Theatre. Seventy students from the Japanese major and teachers attended the lecture. Prof. Zennyoji talked about the history and development of Kanji. In the lecture he explained and introduced to our students the techniques to break down a character into parts for easy understanding and learning. This technique is especially useful to non-Kanji region students to learn Kanji. Unlike Chinese students, they learn from understanding the meaning of the word rather than memorizing the word only. Prof. Zennyoji mentioned that altogether there are forty to fifty thousand Kanji but the common used Kanji are only around two thousand plus. There are still many Kanji which are not being used. In the lecture, he introduced to our students the 2800 Systematic Kanji Tree. Though our students can read and write Chinese characters they were exposed to the different insights of Kanji in this lecture. Prof. Zennyoji ended the lecture by encouraging our students to master the technique as this is especially important to those who would become Japanese language teacher in the future. Below are some selected photos of the lecture.
