Kanji readings

[totakeke]

Do I have to know all of the readings for the JLPT kanji or just how they're used in compounds? I ask because there's a lot of readings for some kanji, and on http://www.kanjisite.com the level 4 kanji with a lot of readings have this next to them: "NB:Don't worry - you don't need all these readings for Level 4. Check with your teacher."

どうもありがとう

[phreadom]

I'm curious about this too... I've been a bit intimidated by all the readings etc. I want to take the JLPT4 this December, so I need to work on them.

[ニッキー]

Some questions will give a sentence using kanji and you choose from four options for how to pronounce certain words, other questions will give you a sentence in hiragana and you choose from four options for how to write certain words in kanji. You just need to know how words are written and pronounced.

[Yudan Taiteki]

Unfortunately I don't know of any place where you can see which readings will appear on JLPT 4 and which won't. I imagine that if you use some prep books you'll see the vocab that appears on the test.

It would be hard to make guesses because there's no way to know how rare the JLPT creators considered a word or reading. Some you can be almost certain won't appear (e.g. ショウ for 上, あめ for 天, and お（う） for 生). Beyond examples like that, it's hard to say.

The readings shouldn't be that big of an issue because the JLPT test, as far as I know, never asks you for readings of isolated kanji, it always asks for readings of words (or gives you questions that require you to know words rather than kanji). Since you would never know how to read the word without learning it, learning the readings in isolation is only going to be of limited assistance on the test.

[totakeke]

So should I still learn the readings by themselves anyway or is it not worth it?

[ya_akira]

So should I still learn the readings by themselves anyway or is it not worth it?

It is always worth learning something new, Even if your only going to use it once.
So I say learn it, even if its not on the test,
You can then at least say you tried it.

[ニッキー]

So should I still learn the readings by themselves anyway or is it not worth it?

I don't personally think it's worth it. You'll be able to figure out the most common readings for any given kanji simply by learning words which use that kanji. If you learn a list of readings, you still won't know which reading will be used in a word so it doesn't really seem like it would be of any use to me.

[Yudan Taiteki]

So should I still learn the readings by themselves anyway or is it not worth it?

It is always worth learning something new, Even if your only going to use it once.
So I say learn it, even if its not on the test,
You can then at least say you tried it.

You're not going to remember them if you don't practice them, though. Of course if it were just a matter of looking at something once and remembering it forever, we would always recommend learning all readings for every kanji. The rarer readings are often only used in one or two words, so if you just learn those words at some point you'll know the readings as well.

[ya_akira]

So should I still learn the readings by themselves anyway or is it not worth it?

It is always worth learning something new, Even if your only going to use it once.
So I say learn it, even if its not on the test,
You can then at least say you tried it.

You're not going to remember them if you don't practice them, though. Of course if it were just a matter of looking at something once and remembering it forever, we would always recommend learning all readings for every kanji. The rarer readings are often only used in one or two words, so if you just learn those words at some point you'll know the readings as well.

Yes that's true, But its still worth learning the one or two readings.

[sei]

I don't personally think it's worth it. You'll be able to figure out the most common readings for any given kanji simply by learning words which use that kanji. If you learn a list of readings, you still won't know which reading will be used in a word so it doesn't really seem like it would be of any use to me.

I agree. It's much easier and useful to learn words than readings of kanji. By learning words you are learning new vocabulary (which is always something good) and at the same time learning different readings of different kanji as you use them in words.