The paper reviewed studies in word-level processing skills and related areas, and profiled how the development of L2 word recognition and integration skills would contribute to autonomous "kango" (Chinese originated words or words created from Chinese originated words) vocabulary learning. Despite the fact that the acquisition of a significant number of "kango" (which takes up a large portion of Japanese vocabulary) is critical for effective reading comprehension, acquiring "kango" is often hindered, particularly for learners with an alphabetic background, by the unfamiliar script, complex features of constituent characters, non-transparent word construction and non-apparent word usage. The paper argued that explicit instruction on the use of intra-word clues such as the structure and functions of words and their smaller functional units, and complement clues such as syntactic and semantic information would be able to overcome the difficulties. The paper further made recommendations on the use of websites and online dictionaries targeting English-speaking learners for enhancing their autonomous vocabulary learning.