Learning Kanji

Before I took Japanese class, I already knew Chinese, so memorizing the meaning and stroke order of the kanji is not that hard for me. The hard part comes in when I have to memorize the kun-yomi and on-yomi of the kanji. Like many of my classmates suggested, when you learn a new kanji, you should practice writing it often; not only a particular kanji by itself, but with the helping hiragana and other kanjis that make up a word. By doing it that way, you will know when to read it using kun-yomi or on-yomi.

Most of the time, kun-yomi will be followed by hiragana, while on-yomi will be followed by another kanji. So instead of memorizing the kun-yomi and on-yomi of a kanji first, memorize the vocabularies or verbs that contain that kanji. When you are asked which one is the kun-yomi and which one is the on-yomi, think/visualize of a word in your head that uses that kanji in it, and then if that word is followed by a hiragana, you know it's kun-yomi. The same goes for on-yomi. If the word contains two or more kanji, you know it's on-yomi. But I do notice that there are some kanjis that do not follow this rule. For example, the pronounciation of the word 名前 (なまえ), uses their kun-yomi instead of on-yomi. I'm guessing that there exceptions to some kanjis. In that case, there is no way to remember when to use which reading other than memorizing it.

みんな、かんじをべんきょうするがんばってください！