WRAAAAA! I am Dankoochoo, the kanji-master monster!

...okay, enough of that. (I like to role-play, though I will keep that to a minimum here.) The REAL question is just that: I am mixed as to whether use the Movie method or mine sentences (by AJATT) to learn the on-readings. Though the Movie Method gives a general mnemonic for the readings, learning actual sentences teaches you how a certain combination of Kanji is pronounced (especially considering since there does not seem to be a certain rule-set as to which on-yomi to use, so you pretty much have to learns the combinations individually).

(I wonder if I should do both...)

Either way, I am getting ahead of myself, since I am only at around 107 kanji, but all the reading of the methods had me think.

Well, it's not like you're actually asking for advice, but I would recommend going for sentences since vocab is a lot more important than knowing individual readings. I mean, if you know 2-3 words with a kanji, you will learn the reading anyway and you would have had to learn those words regardless so it saves time I'd say.

My recommendation is to try the movie method first. It's not for everyone, and if you don't like it, you can move right on to sentences.

The movie method is like RTK: It's a long process, and hard, but provides awesome results for when you start learning vocab.

Yes, you can skip that step and move right to sentences, but they'll be harder than if you'd done the movie method first.

Just like wccrawford said, it's a long process. I've found it usefull because i know 1000+ kanji readings so far. So for me i enjoy it now, but in the beginning it can be hard.

I tried doing sentences to learn the readings. Sentences are good for a lot of things, grammar, collocations, etc...
But in my experience, it's not very effective for readings. For example, I know the word 経験 no problem, but when it comes to writing it...which one is "けい" and which one is ”けん”? Yes, you "learn" one reading for 2 kanji by learning one word...but the hard part is remembering which one is which.

However, since I've begun a certain personalized/modified version of the Movie Method (more of a Chain Method, I guess) I can remember which is which more easily.

It takes the massive amount of readings, and massive amounts of kanji, and narrows it down to a simple process of elimination...if that makes sense..

I've tried both, but I've found that I like the Movie/Chain method better.
Seems to be different between people though. Try them out and see.

I've tried to understand the point of methods for learning the readings separately as a means to offload some of the work when you do words/sentences, but I always found the relationships to be complementary--i.e. learn the readings for kanji by seeing how they're used in different combinations, and remember them better when they're tied to meaning and sound and collocations, etc. I found learning readings to be so easy that I couldn't imagine separating the process out.

I don't know if this helps, but I'm getting a decent return by using both a single vocab deck and sentence version deck of KO2k1 smartfm. lists. The 5 words per kanji + order get me the readings and vocab, as well as the benefits of sentences and pre-made cards (time - some grammar). Doing both makes each a bit easier, and a pattern of readings emerges. I can fly through the vocab deck. I also do all three card versions in the vocab deck (recognition only for the sentences) which adds a bit of time (but I like writing kanji LOL).

It's not the most exciting way, but it's working.

Still, I do see the appeal of learning readings separately. For some words I have a heck of a time.

Well, for me that's not an either-or question.
I did RTK1, then the movie method and then started with sentences. And I'd recommend that.

I used the movie method to learn on-yomi, sentences enforced this, but sentences are mainly to help me improve my kun-yomi nowadays.
Because I finished the movie method before doing sentences, I'm able to read words I've never seen before and thanks to RTK I often also can understand their meaning. It's really nice.

nest0r Wrote:I've tried to understand the point of methods for learning the readings separately as a means to offload some of the work when you do words/sentences, but I always found the relationships to be complementary--i.e. learn the readings for kanji by seeing how they're used in different combinations, and remember them better when they're tied to meaning and sound and collocations, etc. I found learning readings to be so easy that I couldn't imagine separating the process out.

My experience exactly.

I also feel a lot of users get too impressed by being able to read words they don't know after doing such a method as the movie method.
1. If you put equal effort into learning kango as you did into the readings method, you would probably have the same capability more or less, but with a LOT more words under your belt.
2. You still can't read words you don't know, you can just make educated guesses as to their pronunciation. This is less useful than people make it seem (good for memory though).

I went back and learnt 1 onyomi reading for each kanji because i was still finding reading too slow, and there were a lot of words I just couldn't look up without consulting online kanji dictionaries or asking people. I did this while quickly reviewing RTK1(which i had already finished at this site) and completing RTK3. While I totally aggree with what others are saying, that it's knowing words that enables reading(I'm at the mass vocab learning stage myself), learning 1 onyomi WHILE doing RTK1 enables faster dictionary lookups, improves understanding/realisation of kanji phonetics (which RTK2 goes into) and give a crude sound/meaning association and is essentially no extra work. All you need to do is add 1 extra primitive to each kanji story which indicates the onyomi (eg SEN=SENator, KAN=genghis KHAN, JOU=JOAn of Arc). It seems that 95% of onyomi words use 1 onyomi or a derivitive. Being able to easily look up words is really useful When you're mining vocabulary from native sources.

nest0r Wrote:I've tried to understand the point of methods for learning the readings separately as a means to offload some of the work when you do words/sentences, but I always found the relationships to be complementary--i.e. learn the readings for kanji by seeing how they're used in different combinations, and remember them better when they're tied to meaning and sound and collocations, etc. I found learning readings to be so easy that I couldn't imagine separating the process out.

Agreed. The only time I ever found readings of kanji hard to learn is when I was trying to cram them out of context.

I think the movie method would be great to do instead of RtK, but not in addition. If you're just starting out with RtK, you can kill two birds with one stone and use the Movie Method instead to learn readings too. But if you've already finished RtK...just go read a book already or something. You will learn the readings, as well as vocab, that way- as people have been saying.

Okay. I have been pottering around the forums a bit more, and I have acquired two more reason in support of the movie method:
1) What happens if I need to know the readings for some test?
2) If I already know the readings, then would not studying compounds (or actual Nipponese words) be made much easier?

Either way has it's merits. It takes time to choose movies for the onyomi and the images/scenes to cement the kanji to the onyomi. I did it last year for about 1000 kanji but abandoned it in favor of subs2srs and vocabulary via sentences. However, I still call upon that movie method learning even now to get the kanji via a kana word (and vice versa).

I know I'll reapproach when I enter the JLPT 1 and above equivalent area of knowledge. Reason being, I doubt I'll have enough words to match up to onyomi so it's good to be systematic then. Getting Onyomi for the most common 1100 Kanji won't be much of a problem. However, for the next 1000 or 2000 that can be a huge number of words that aren't useful to you to learn, so a systematic approach like we did with RTK becomes useful.