I'm at the point where I am not intimidated by kanji since I have completed a good portion of RTK 1. At the same time I am reading the two Genki textbooks. I don't plan to study RTK 2 or a similiar method at this point. When I want to study a vocabulary word, I'm memorizing the full word with the kanji included and the corresponding reading. Should I also be examining each of the individual kanjis in the word for their on'yomi and kun'yomi? Do I need to study those as well at the same time in order to faciliate memorizing the reading? I tried this and it has me a little overwhelmed. Or should I stick to memorizing the word and the reading and let the rest come with experience? Thanks in advance for helping a confused individual...

Keep your cards simple. You basically answered the question for yourself.

Quote:it has me a little overwhelmed

Just study the word. Don't worry about each kanji's different kun or on-yomi readings. You may never see some of them and are simply wasting your time. Also because its not easy to guess which reading to use some times, it only makes sense to study the words.

vix86 Wrote:Keep your cards simple. You basically answered the question for yourself.

Quote:it has me a little overwhelmed

Just study the word. Don't worry about each kanji's different kun or on-yomi readings. You may never see some of them and are simply wasting your time. Also because its not easy to guess which reading to use some times, it only makes sense to study the words.

Totally agree.

Keep your reviews to minimal. Get intimate with your study material (be it your text book, native sources, etc.)

EDIT:

Quote:At the same time I am reading the two Genki textbooks.

BTW, just "reading" doesn't seem enough to me.

Thanks for the advice. I have been memorizing the words in the Genki textbook while studying each chapter. I'm finding that in most cases, the reading is harder to memorize than the actual word (with kanji). This is probably to be expected since the words are basic and I have gotten familiar with the kanji through RTK 1.

When I finish RTK 1 in a few weeks, I'm planning to start either Core 2000 or Kanji Odyssey 2001. I received the books for ko2001 from the company last week. I took a quick look at them yesterday. I noticed that in addition to ordering vocabulary by kanji, ko2001 also lists words within each kanji by important readings for each one. There are usually 1-3 important readings per kanji and the corresponding words listed besides them. This may be a good way to study the vocabulary. I'm not familiar with Core 2000 but I don't think the vocabulary words are presented in this manner. Do you guys think this is a good approach to take?

Okay. I have an update but I've gotten a bit more confused. I just finished RTK 1 the other day. I was skimming RTK 2 for the hell of it but after reading some of it and having a small discussion on the RTK 2 forum, I decided against it. I am currently trying to finish studying the Genki textbooks.
Now that I know the kanji from RTK1 the vocabulary listed at the beginning of each chapter isn't intimidating. Every time I encounter a word with a Kanji reading (ON or KUN) that I haven't seen yet, I mark a row in a spreadsheet for that Kanji and highlight the onyomi or kunyomi. I only do this for the reading in the word I m memorizing. As suggested in previous posts I ignore other readings. If its an onyomi, I may make a mnemonic based on some lists I found on other sites. If its kunyomi I will just mark it. I'm doing this so that next time I see the kanji used in a word, I'll at least have some chance of getting the reading right. If its a new reading, I'll add it to the spreadsheet.

Does this seem like a logical way to approach things? I think that if I just memorize the hiragana for a word, I won't be able to associate it with the kanji making up the word for use later.

PotbellyPig Wrote:Does this seem like a logical way to approach things? I think that if I just memorize the hiragana for a word, I won't be able to associate it with the kanji making up the word for use later.

I'm still confused by what you are doing.

Are you saying your spread sheet looks like this?

Kanji - Kun - On
強　 -　つよい - キョウ

If that's what it looks like then I'd still say your creating more work for you. What I was saying is you should be studying words and not kanji. So you should be studying stuff like 強い、強調、強引、強化. This way you learn where each on-yomi is used. For instance, that kanji in particular is USUALLY キョウ in a compound, but every now and then its ゴウ and you can't really figure that out without memorizing. There are tons of kanji that work like this; sometimes they are one reading and then sometimes they are another. Sometimes there are general rules for where the reading changes, like maybe its one reading when its on the end and another at the beginning. Sometimes the kanji reading uses the kun-yomi for the reading and not the on-yomi like you would guess, such as 年月（ねんげつ）,　日日（ひにち）、毎月（まいつき）.

Learn words. You can actually use that.

Thanks for the advice. I have one more question about how to set up anki decks for vocabulary. Most decks have cards that present the word in kanji on the front side and the reading and English meaning on the back side. Some decks have a duplicate card for each word which has the English meaning on the front and the word and reading in Japanese on the back. Since having the additional card will double the number of reviews you have to perform daily, is this too much to have in a deck? I do think that going from meaning->(word & reading) is harder than word->(reading and meaning). Thanks...

From my experience just because I can read the word and understand it when it comes up doesn't mean that I can produce it when I want to say it. I don't think the english -> Japanese cards is necessary if you are practicing writing things from memory or speaking on skype or whatnot. But do whatever it is you want to do don't force anything or it will feel too much like work. Also there are a lot of synonyms that would become confusing and different ways to say the same thing in japanese. If you want you can try do do clozed delete cards with some kind of hint or enough context to help you distinguish which word to use.

Most of my cards are Kanji front, Kanji/furigana back, with english meaning and notes if its a grammar point.

Thanks for the advice for anki. Here's a vocabulary memorization question. When you memorize a word in japanese that has kanji I can think of two methods to do it:

First method:

1. The ordering the of Kanji along with any hiragana.
2. The meaning of word

then from he Kanji if you know the kunyomi/onyomi you can derive the reading.

Second method:

1. The ordering of the kanji with any hiragana
2. The reading, memorizing the hiragana that constitute it.
3. The meaning

Now which method is best? In the first method, you are really only memorizing two things: the kanji ordering and the meaning, then you derive the reading. In the second method you memorize all three things. I guess if you have enough experience and have the quickness of thought you can do method 1. But if you need to grab a word off the top of your head in order to speak and undertand verbally, I think you have to go with method 2. Am I right in my way of thinking or is there a nother manner in which to approach this?

In my opinion, the most natural method would be, as for any other language, to learn the meaning and the pronunciation, and to consider the writing only at a later stage. This seems quite obvious for languages whose writing is primarily phonetic because the connection between the pronunciation and the writing is quite close.
However, adult learners tend to rely a lot on visual memory to improve their memorization of new vocabulary, by writing ad reading the words in addition to listening and pronouncing them. In the case of Japanese, one might choose to postpone the study of the kanjis for each word by, for instance, using only hiragana. This, however has the disdvantage that you would exert your visual memory on a nonstandard written form of the words—a waste of time in this sense. Furthermore, because kanjis convey a meaning, which is often relevant to the meaning of the word as a whole, not using them deprives the student of a useful hint when it comes to remembering a vocab item.
So in my case, I chose not to dissociate the study of the words and of their writing, especially since my exposure to spoken Japanese is limited and I cannot rely on speaking practice to drill the words into my memory.

So putting together what jmignot and Hyperborea stated, would the correct course of action to first memorize the pronunication of the word and then tie it to the writing (with kanji)? I guess it is okay to look at the word in Kanji in order to help memorize its pronunication but at the end of the day (and through whatever method you use) you have to memorize it in order to recall it instantly in order to verbally communicate. Does this sound right?

That's what I do, at least for words with kanji that I'm not very familiar with. I create a card with the word spelled in kana only, and the kanji on the back side (not as a pass-fail point, just for reference, its the meaning I pass or fail on).

Once I know the word, I create another card that has the word spelled with its kanji. Preferably with a different sentence for context, but not always; all my cards are sentences even though I only pass/fail on the word.

It won't be relevant for a while, but, I don't go through this two-phase process for words where I can easily guess the pronunciation from the kanji.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:That's what I do, at least for words with kanji that I'm not very familiar with. I create a card with the word spelled in kana only, and the kanji on the back side (not as a pass-fail point, just for reference, its the meaning I pass or fail on).

Once I know the word, I create another card that has the word spelled with its kanji. Preferably with a different sentence for context, but not always; all my cards are sentences even though I only pass/fail on the word.

Once you learn the word, do you keep the kana->(kanji, meaning) card in your deck or do you just review with the kanji->(kana, meaning) card?

PotbellyPig Wrote:Once you learn the word, do you keep the kana->(kanji, meaning) card in your deck or do you just review with the kanji->(kana, meaning) card?

Depends on the word...
If it would never be written in kana, I'll suspend it.
If it would usually be written in kana and rarely in kanji, I'll keep it.
If it it would usually be written in kanji and rarely in kana, then, I'll keep it unless it becomes nauseatingly overfamiliar and then I'll suspend it - this mostly only happens in the case where I didn't find a different example sentence for my context.


Of course, those 'rules' are written after the fact so there may be exceptions, but that's mostly what I think about when I consider suspending a card. Of course, the anki spacing algorithm means that you really don't need to worry about it much. Unless you get it wrong, you won't see that kana card very often.

Another 'rule' might be... 'if it's a homonym think carefully about how often you will see the kana only version or hear the spoken version, and how good the context on the card is for differentiating it.'
It's good to keep homonym cards for words that -will- be heard or written in kana sometimes -and- have good context, but a lot of kanji compounds essentially only appear in writing (or in the cases they are spoken are likely to be written on a blackboard or such). Also, of course, homonym cards with unclear context are simply painful and need to be suspended or rewritten depending on how much you value the word.

Edit: If all this sounds complex and painful, I should point out - once you know the core phonetic readings for the kanji, the only time you go through this process is for kun-reading words that are new to you (and likely are mostly written in kana) and for the occasional troublesome ON reading compound that doesn't go as you expect.
In other words, the more words you learn, the less you go through this, and before long it's very rare indeed.

I also don't spend much time analyzing the process... in practice it's more like 'this looks hard, I'll start it as kana', or 'this card irritates me, I'll suspend it' (for the above articulated reasons.)

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:If all this sounds complex and painful, I should point out - once you know the core phonetic readings for the kanji, the only time you go through this process is for kun-reading words that are new to you (and likely are mostly written in kana) and for the occasional troublesome ON reading compound that doesn't go as you expect.
In other words, the more words you learn, the less you go through this, and before long it's very rare indeed.

This leads in to the problem I am having. I can learn the onyomi and sound it out but that is really only going in one direction and is useful when you are reading text. If you are listening to a TV show, you have a split second to recognize a word. So I have to memorize the reading by itself (standalone) so I have a chance to recognize it. The processing time to think about the pronunciation is what's killing me. I think that "filling in the blanks" by seeing the kanji word and replacing the kanji with hiragana is easier that brute force memorization but it won't lead to total recall when you need to speak the word (it aids in written recognition though). At least not for me at this point. Will this come with time?