gabrielbegin Wrote:For the output practice part, I'd highly recommend Italki.com It's like facebook for people learning languages, and there are plenty of people there happy to help you practice your japanese if you will help them practice their english. I used it a fair bit when I first moved to Japan, but now I have so many Japanese friends that it just seems silly to webcam with strangers for conversation practice...

I would bet that if/when you actually do come to Japan, you won't really have a problem with learning to speak well fairly quickly. At first you'll probably be terrible, and it will be very frustrating to understand so much and yet only be able to produce so little. That was my experience, and my Japanese is probably at a much lower level than yours.

I came to Japan about four months ago. I had taken two years of Japanese in high school in an intensive course - by the time I finished high school my japanese was pretty good (This was about 8 or 9 years ago). After high school though, I basically stopped studying at all outside of fairly continuous watching of Anime, Drama, etc. So when I came to Japan I had a pretty good ear and a decent small vocabulary everyday conversation. However, I was bitterly frustrated by my unable to hold even an extremely basic conversation.

For the first month or two I choked on my words and things just wouldn't come out of my mouth the way I wanted them to. A few months in though, something just clicked. I became able to produce output at the pace of a regular conversation provided the topics were quite simple. I still wouldn't say much of my Japanese, but I regularly have hour long or more conversations only in Japanese. Going beyond typical small talk I have to use terribly broken Japanese or my Iphone dictionary a lot, but I can communicate. I have had conversations about things like: what makes a good bottle of tequila, cultural differences between Japanese and Canadian christmas, and the nature of modern global disparity in technological and economic resources. Of course I am not even close to being able to express myself as I can in English, but I have had these conversations...

Currently, the thing I am frustrated by most is my inability to read. I love to read, and am surrounded daily by heaps of things I want to read, but can't. I remembered about 100 Kanji by the time I got to Japan, and since then I have been pouring all my effort into finishing Heisig 1 in the hopes that it will catalyze my ability to study in japanese once finished. I am about 1000 kanji in right now and it helps a lot, but it has become harder and harder to find time to study when I am so busy living...

So, given my own experiences I think that you will be more than fine once you get to Japan. Speaking practice now will definitely ease the pain of the initial transition though...

mezbup Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Update: I just got some output practice with a Japanese friend of mine. And I was definitely lacking in the output department. But the reading/understanding wasn't the problem. She said she found it interesting how I can understand and read well but still have trouble with output. She pointed out that, if you really can understand and read, it shouldn't take you too long to get a grasp on speaking japanese. She also mentioned that, if I keep continuing(which I am). Reaching proficiency shouldn't be a problem in speaking japanese.

P.S. I got my account password for that japanese test(online one). I'm going to take it tomorrow and post the results that day.

I was a little the same until recently, about 4 - 5 months ago now I started living with a Japanese girl and my speaking has gone through the roof now. So, it definitely catches up really fast.

Also, did you wind up doing that test?

Asriel Wrote:I haven't seen any JLPT results from him, but if you're talking about J-CAT, yes he did, and he did awesome:

ta12121's scores from the J-CAT thread Wrote:Section Score
Listening 79
Vocabulary 87
Grammar 62
Reading 65
Total 293