I've noticed recently that I have no way to connect kanji with the reading in my head when I'm learning vocab. Because of this there are some words that just don't seem to stick no matter how much I try memorizing them. I've tried writing, but that mostly just slows reviews down, and doesn't seem to help much. I've been trying to think of ways I could better make the connect between kanji>reading. I have some ideas, but nothing I can do immediately. Does anyone have any advice on how to better study vocab, rather than just reading it over and over until I remember it?

Well one way to connect kanji>reading for words is to know the reading for single kanji. For example 前編, you know ぜん, you know へん, so ぜんぺん is not very far. So go through your kanji deck and try practicing on'yomi?

Also if you have trouble connecting kanji>reading, maybe you don't see the word enough in the wild, because reinforcing memory isn't just about the SRS, so read more I guess?

I would say there are basically two approaches:
Either try to fix individual cases by making some ad-hoc mnemonic for words you have trouble to memorize. Then with time, you will encounter more and more vocabulary for which you already know the on readings of the kanji.

If you want to be more systematic, then you need a method to learn on readings. Besides the RTK2 method, which does not seem to receive unanimous support, there have been a couple of attempts, such as the one presented here
http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.fr/2008/08...ethod.html
with a link at the end to more detailed instructions and a full example here:
http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.fr/2008/08...ction.html
You need to be a movie fan, though…

My personal experience is that sometimes, coming across a "recalcitrant" word in a different context immediately causes it to stick in memory better than 10 unsuccessful reviews in Anki. This, I believe, points out one serious weakness of Anki, namely the very dull background it provides for learning. To convince your brain that some information is worth remembering, it seems that there should be "something special" about that word, which is rarely provided by the Anki card. I tried to improve on that by choosing funny/unexpected/scary/etc. pictures, but is still does not work as well as having the word pop up in a conversation, a book, a game, etc.

It would be a big improvement for me if someone could propose a "complement" to using Anki, which would maximize the occurrence of such situations.

Meanwhile, faithfully sticking to my core 2000 Anki reviews…

Dominic4774 Wrote:I've noticed recently that I have no way to connect kanji with the reading in my head when I'm learning vocab. Because of this there are some words that just don't seem to stick no matter how much I try memorizing them. I've tried writing, but that mostly just slows reviews down, and doesn't seem to help much. I've been trying to think of ways I could better make the connect between kanji>reading. I have some ideas, but nothing I can do immediately. Does anyone have any advice on how to better study vocab, rather than just reading it over and over until I remember it?

Man, I understand your issues! I had the same issue when I completed RtK 1 and started the Core deck.
I know I'm stating the obvious but you know, exceptions apart, kanji have what we call "readings".

Let's take 口, you know that one of its readings is "くち", so I am sure you will have no problem to learn those words (let's ignore the other kanji for now, just focus on 口):

蛇口 = じゃぐち
口紅 = くちべに
無口 = むくち
早口 = はやくち
裏口 = うらぐち
窓口 = まどぐち
入口 = いりぐち
出口 = でぐち

As you can see, 口 reads as "くち" in all of them. In some of them it happens to read "ぐち" but this is really not a problem to remember!
As you can see from those examples, once you know the kanji reading, to learn the word reading looks no more like a random thing and it became more of a systematic process.

At this point the only issue is that kanji have more than one reading, for example in the previous compounds they use the "kunyomi", but 口 has two onyomi too, "こう" and "く".

If you look at Jisho you will see that most of the time the compounds use the "こう" reading.

So, now that you know that 口 is "くち" but many compounds use the onyomi "こう" I guarantee you that it will be way easier to learn new words!

Also kanji of body parts, like 口, 足, 手, tends to use the "kunyomi" even for compounds words, while most of the kanji favour the "onyomi", and 90% of the kanji have only one common "onyomi". See for example 編. Its only onyomi is "ヘン" and in facts it reads as "ヘン" in all common compounds. Even words where there is a sound alteration, like "短編" (たんぺん) and "前編" (ぜんぺん), most of the time it is easy to remember or even to predict.

Then there are exceptions like "部", and as you can see it reads as "ぶ" in every compound word, except for one word, 部屋.

Now, how to learn kanji readings? Many users here, and also JALUP and AJATT, suggest to simply learn words and then readings will be learned as a by-product of learning words, with time. I don't doubt it, but if you like more structured approaches there are methods like the one jmignot mentioned.

For example RtK 2 relies on the fact that many kanji do have "signal primitives":

Let's take for example all jouyou kanji with "反"on the right side and their onyomi:

坂 = ハン
阪 = ハン
板 = ハン、 バン
版 = ハン
販 = ハン
飯 = ハン

but then there are:

返 = ヘン
仮 = カ、 ケ

So you can just rely on word learning to absorb the onyomi, for example you already know the word "kana" so if you learn the kanji compound for it (仮名) you will learn also that カ is one of the readings of 仮.
Or the ju-on movie, do you know it? The kanji compound for it is "呪怨". Now that you know it, how much difficult it is to learn words like 呪文 (じゅもん) or 呪術 (じゅじゅつ)?

Or let's take 返 -> 返事 (へんじ). A very common word. If you learn it, then when you will study other words with "返" you will have no issues to learn them because you will remember that "ah! I already know another word with 返! It's the へん of へんじ!".

You can do this. Or you can take a more structured approach, like the abovementioned RtK vol. 2, or a more "mnemonic-based" approach like the one used by Kanji Damage (see point n. 5).
Or the "Kanji in Context" approach, which gives you a kanji, and then a bunch of words for it, so instead of learning words in random order, you will learn them by kanji and it will be consequently easier to see the reading patterns and to learn them.

Sorry for the long answer, I hope it will help you and not confound you more!

I have the same problem as OP and my solution is simple: read more and expose myself more to Japanese newspaper articles and blogs. The traditional method with flashcard or a textbook doesn't work for me and they in fact slow down my progress.

To reiterate Jmignot's sentiment, sometimes a new, poetic expression can stick with me for a long time. For example, I've come across this sentence in a blurb for Yuzuru Hanyu's charity book: 東日本大震災で被災しながら、逆境をバネに大躍進を遂げたフィギュアスケート界の新星, which reinforce my memorization of the words 逆境 and 遂げた. I guess I'm just not an organized person at all.

cophnia61's suggestion and RTK go hand in hand. There are anki decks where you can learn the most popular readings for a kanji. I might study that sometime soon.

But what I've been doing with success for learning 1,000s of vocabulary is simply suspend the difficult ones and learn the easy vocabulary. I only end up suspending the most difficult 5% anyway and then I'll unsuspend them a few months later. Usually, something that I've learned in the interim makes them easier to remember a few months later. Also, after learning a few thousand vocabulary words, it gets much easier, as you've already noticed the relationships that cophina points out.

You could also see you you like adding furigana to the kanji on the front of the card. It may or may not be useful.

Thank you for all the advice. I see what you guys mean about learning the common readings. There was a short period In the past where I started doing that, but stopped for whatever reason. For now I think I'm going to extract all the Kanji from my vocab deck and learning the most common readings for them. This will really help me a lot.