Trouble learning readings when I can guess the meaning from kanji

[Timmyzz]

I’ve recently run into a problem I didn’t expect when learning vocabulary. I’m around level 10 on Wanikani and have learned ~1200 words on Bunpro with furigana on.

And now, more and more often when I do my Bunpro reviews, I’m more or less able to deduce the translation using the kanji alone. But most of the time, these are words I haven’t learned on wanikani yet, so I don’t have the exact pronunciation/reading, just a vague idea of ​​the translation.

To give an example: 会議室, I know that the first kanji is for “meet” and the last one is for “room,” so my brain immediately guess that it’s “conference room” since I haven’t learned any other words in the same theme… but I’m having trouble associating it with its reading, which is かいぎしつ. This word only comes at level 20 on wanikani, and I prefer to keep learning kanji there rather than having to do it on bunpro as well.

My problem now is that on Bunpro I just “cheat” by deducing the meaning visually, and my brain never fully attaches the pronunciation… I’m worried this will become a bigger issue, like I’ll be able to read but not understand when I hear the word spoken.

Do others experience the same? Does it naturally balance out with more exposure, or should I change my approach/settings on Bunpro to focus more on readings? Maybe I just need to wait until I reach level 20 on wanikani lol

[Chimmsen]

I can related to this. Not that I’m actively learning kanji, but I absorbed a bunch passively, and if the kanji have an interesting form, they are learned faster than the pronounciation, making it harder to recognize the word when only listening.

I would love to have the option to blur kanji instead of enabling/disabling furigana, but I guess that’s very niche.

But the new listening style reviews are great for that! Listening to the sentence (maybe even a few times) before looking at it will give yourself a chance to focus more on the pronounciation without seeing the kanji. At least that’s what I’m currently doing and it actually helped with a few of my troubled words

[travv0]

If you don’t know both the meaning and the reading, mark it incorrect. That’s pretty much the way to study Japanese vocabulary. Learning the reading of a word isn’t “learning kanji” if that’s what you meant by that, it’s learning vocabulary, which is entirely separate, and not something I’d rely on WaniKani for since it only has a small number of vocabulary that are just there to reinforce the kanji it teaches.

Edit: To add to this, WaniKani only quizzes you over one reading for any given kanji, and I think through vocabulary teaches you maybe one or two more, but most kanji have quite a few different readings. Even if you went through and memorized every reading every kanji can have (which I don’t recommend), you still wouldn’t know which reading to use in which word without just learning the reading of the word as a word, not as individual kanji that you’re sticking together. The way you do this is by quizzing yourself over the reading of every word you learn. Once you’re familiar with kanji and their readings, you can often take a pretty good guess at the reading of words you don’t know, but you’ll never know for sure unless you study that word as a word (by learning its specific reading).

[zconnor]

What I can recommend from what I personally do in studying is a lot more reading aloud when I can afford the time to do so. In studying kanji with Ringotan, I always repeat the first 4 words listed for each kanji two times each time it appears (they have 6 listed but 4 seems good enough for me to cover common enough words). When I study vocab on Bunpro, I repeat the word a couple times, and read aloud the first two example sentences, along with listening to the next two. And for vocab since there are native recordings, I makes sure to be able to sight read all example sentences, as well as to be able to speak the sentence without looking at the words. This definitely takes the most time, but is the most comprehensive skill practice method.

I wouldn’t say obviously this exact plan needs to be followed, just that the general idea of working more speaking aloud into your study will help that retention greatly.

[Jacob-Bunpro]

This was actually something that I had an issue with early on! I learned a ton of Kanji and my Kanji comprehension was way higher than my actual vocab knowledge, so my listening really suffered.

I took an N4 practice exam and could barely understand anything because there was so much hiragana.

Two things that really helped me were:
-Finding some YouTube videos to watch that were actively aimed at learners.
-Playing video games that don’t use Kanji. I mostly used Pokemon. I believe all games have the option for kana-only Japanese, and anything pre 3DS is kana-only!

It was really as simple as those to things for me! It was uncomfortable and frustrating for quite awhile, but you get the hang of it eventually!

[frogg]

Same issue here, I spent my first year of learning really focused on kanji, which means I know a bunch but rely way too much on their meanings instead of trying to learn how to pronounce them.

I’m using the “reading” mode when learning vocab on Bunpro and do it like this : if the word is still at beginner level, I’m alright with using kanji to guess its meaning without knowing its pronunciation. Starting adept I’ll mark the sentence as wrong even if I understood it if I still didn’t know the pronunciation. I’m also reading everything out loud whenever possible.