I have no problem recalling the writing and the meaning of compounds, but completely fail with the readings.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

HELP! Thank you!

I can't speak to learning Japanese readings, but I'm curious: do you notice this problem less with words that have audio as compared to those where there is no audio?

An example: when I see 履歴書 I have no idea how to pronounce it. I understand what it means by seeing the Kanji, but the pronunciation? No. Then I click "forgot" and I see りれきしょ which reads rirekisho, I nod, say "ah, that's what it was..." but next time it comes up again I forgot. Repeat. repeat. rep... ... .. . Dozen and dozen of times. It just doesn't stick. Of course that doesn't go for all of the words, but for many.

On the other hand, when I see "personal history" I can write it right away: 履歴書. No problems there.

This gets better with time. Phonetic components help a little, I've noticed that characters with 复 are usually pronounced ふく, 㑒 tends to be pronounced as けん and so on. Or if I can remember a common compound, like 歴史 and 図書館, I can separate the reading from there.

Personally, I have sort of an opposite problem. Based on those things, I can sometimes guess the reading of a completely new compound, but most of the time I only have a general idea of the individual character meaning that I got from the compounds it's in. And I'm completely lost when I'm faced with guessing its kun'yomi.

I'd hate to say it but the only thing that helps me are example sentences. That's why I am using another site (iknow.jp, readthekanji.com is also good but lacks sentence audio and pictures) to help with that. However those sites don't do a good job with writing so I never feel as if I have really learnt the kanji. I am really excited about the upcoming sentences being added to Japanese Skritter. However even after that happens I feel it probably won't be as polished as the other sites as they have had years and years of refinement. I wish Skritter and iKnow (next best would be readthekanji) would team up to make the ultimate app someday.

I definitely think hearing it helps to make you remember, or Chinese anyway. Then it's his a matter of drilling, drilling, drilling. Some I can know straight away, some take literally a hundred times to remember. I don't know if Japanese is the same as Chinese, but a lot of characters I can guess just from the phonetic portion of the character, maybe this is not the same in Japanese though.

Thanks a lot for all your comments and links, really appreciated.

I can see I am not the only one struggling and when I read that some take a hundred times I am reassured. The Heisig method has been of great help with the writings (I completed book 1) and somehow I'll manage the readings as well. Just have to be patient.

Already feeling much better about this. And I now know 履歴書 :)