しあわせ

漢字学習ステップ８級 published by: 日本漢宇能力検定協会

Another book to prepare for the kanken test. This time it is an official book published by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation. It is a textbook for Japanese people, completely in Japanese and requiring a vocabulary beyond that which the kanji might suggest. Maybe it’s for grade school children but I’m certain parts of it are intended for their parents.
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漢字練習ノート・小学２年生　author: 下村昇 published by: 偕成社

Inspired by the upcoming Kanken test in June I went looking for some Kanji texts in JP Books yesterday. This workbook is one of the two books I bought. It is a companion volume to a more comprehensive yet small book 漢字の本2年生

As I wanted to use it more for revision I decided to skip the main book and just use the workbook. Also the main text being entirely in Japanese (as is the workbook by the way) needed more concentration than I really wanted to give to it. However I think once you reach a certain level it’s very useful and satisfying to work in an all Japanese environment.

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English words made only from twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese

— A Concise Chinese - English Dictionary for Lovers — Xiaolu Guo

On Sunday 22 June at SOAS in London the 11th Kanji Aptitude Test in the UK will take place.

There are 12 levels ranging from level 1 with 6000 kanji, Genius level! to Level 10 with 80 kanji, primary school level. Each test takes 1 hour. The pass mark is a relatively high 70% or 80%.
Pretty much the real deal.
You can find details of the levels here.
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