If you are comfortable in your Japanese speaking ability, how did you get to where you are today? What steps did you take? Where will you go from here?

Not a theory crafting thread,

I'm interested in people that are genuinely happy with how their speaking ability has progressed. If you are a theory crafter ( like myself) comment and just say that you are interested in this as well and maybe we can get more people to chime in with how they became beautifully awesome, Japanese speaking, greater than man, rival of the gods entities that I envy.

I'm interested in this too. I figure when I get around to practicing speaking, I'll follow advice like Fluent in 3 Months has.

Also interested. I'm planning on learning as much as I possibly can and being able to read and listen "fluently" before I go over there again in August. Soon as I get over there I'm just going to try and speak to people and I'm hoping through making mistakes I will learn to apply what I have learned.

I was confident in listening and reading when I got to Japan. First arrived had a brief moment where I couldn't understand the most basic sentences due to being shocked at real Japanese directed at me. Got over that and got better at listening and reading but the speaking side is still lackluster. I use the most basic sentences structures to get my point across and lack depth or any degree of natural Japanese. So yeah to me now speaking is my number one priority but I keep doing the method that got me good at reading at listening because it's easy for me

I didn't speak Japanese for about the whole first year I studied. What I think is most important is listening to Japanese a lot. I mean, there are millions of people who are far better than you; you don't need to invent your own Japanese. Monkey see monkey do.

When I started to speak (=practice) I was able to produce very natural Japanese (well, I copied almost all of it) and slowly alter certain sentences word by word which seem to fit, and thus slowly increasing speaking ability. Just 'doing' that did the trick.

When you can express yourself easily you can stop using simple words or descriptions of more complex concepts and start using more specific words; you can always revert back if you need to.

Also the first time you speak Japanese is very strange, even if you have the perfect sentence lined up in your head, it will just not come out at all. Give it a few days or a week, and you're good to go. Don't be shy, try to talk as much as possible. Finding a Japanese person (or partner) to hang out with is very helpful.

Maybe you can pick an idea or two from this

I'm not yet comfortable with my Japanese but I have experience with achieving fluency in other foreign languages.

It's a little ambiguous what an "accomplished speaker" is so I'll offer my view - it's about proper semantics and above all, your accent.

It's not about vocabulary. Here's Homer Simpson forgetting the word "house" - "Let's go to that... building thingie... where our beds and TV...is". As long you sound natural you'll be considered native. It's quite normal for natives to struggle with the choice of words so the things that give you away as a foreigner are accent and obviously wrong word usage (Pedro: "build her a cake or something").

There are different degrees of fluency each with its own "OK plateau" and people may feel comfortable at any stage to the point of never progressing any further.

1. "Initiate" fluency - is about speed only.

Semantics ×
Accent ×

You can have a strong accent (think Apu from the Simpsons) and use unnatural semantics ("build her a cake or something") but you'll speak at the same speed as the natives. You can stay forever at this level even if you never speak in your native language any more.

How to achieve: This is achievable in 6-18 months just by getting used to talking.

2. "Adept" fluency

Semantics √
Accent ×

Some constant accent, you sound identifiably foreign. Your semantics are generally fine. You're fluent... just foreign. You're an Englishman in New York.

How to achieve: Use the same speech patterns as the natives. Achievable in 18-24 months.

3. "Master" fluency

Semantics √
Accent √

Mostly no accent, though some accent may pop up occasionally when you're tired or you had to speak your native language for a while and then switched back. You may mispronounce a word or two. People may think you sound a bit odd at times but will write it off as a personal quirk if they believe you to be native.

How to achieve: You must practice mimicry. This is more about pretending to *look* native rather than *sound* native. To achieve this, force yourself to "mock" the way the natives talk. You'll feel like an idiot doing it but strangely the natives will think you're finally becoming normal. If you're an American trying to sound British, try to have a stiff upper lip and pretend you're a character from Monty Python or something. If you're British trying to sound American you will "contort" your face, give your facial muscles a workout. Same applies to Japanese, pretend you're someone and mimic their facial expression, posture and gestures.

4. "Grand Master" fluency.

How to polish up that last bit of awkwardness: Do some shadowing of a TV anchor or movie actor, notice where you're a bit off and do deliberate practice on those rough spots. It is useful to slow the sound down with VLC and speeeeaaaak sloooowww when you're shadowing.

This last bit may also be useful at any stage, even in your native language if you're not very confident in your speaking abilities (you're a teenager and smooth grown-up talking feels awkward, for example).

I have no theory. I can only tell you what I did to get to a speaking level that matches my N2.

I had studied for 6 semesters in college, and didn't like to speak there, because I never felt like I knew what I was talking about. I hated the pair exercises. So much silence as we struggled to find something to say with out limited vocabs.

Real life happened, and I stopped studying for 3 years. I restarted in 2007. I had been casually studying until last summer, when I took the N2, when I realized that my speaking was *still* terrible, mostly because I just didn't feel comfortable with it.

I was pretty good at listening-- I've been listening to Japanese TV on a daily basis for a few years now, and I have fewer and fewer problems with that. I also listen to podcasts regularly, so I have a rough idea of what "good" Japanese is supposed to sound like-- but I still couldn't string together sentences.

So I took 3 months off, and went to Japan. Since I was a freelancer, it was do-able. Yeah, I know, not everyone can do that. Time is money, and the yen is strong these days. I had a little of both, and the place I went to made it somewhat affordable.

I went to the Yamasa Institute in Okazaki in Aichi Prefecture, and studied my butt off. 5 hours or so of regular class time plus 1 hour of Business Japanese a day, plus, hey-- I was in Okazaki, so I pretty much *had* to use Japanese. And I had homework, too, so I was studying 2-3 hours a night on top of that. Generally, outside of calling friends/family back home, it was Japanese 23/7.

Going to the hospital twice *really* boosted my Japanese ability as well.

The teachers at Yamasa all generally refuse to speak English, even if they're very good at it, which I found very cool. No matter what you say, they'll reply in Japanese, and usually remind you to talk to them in Japanese.

Since the other students came from all over the world, Japanese was the best language to use for communication. I had friends from Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and other places as well, and I generally only spoke to them in Japanese.

One time I met some guys from Turkey in the campus bar, and we had a nice conversation-- in Japanese, because they didn't speak English, and I don't speak Turkish. It was like one of those sci-fi mangas where the whole world speaks Japanese. Made me chuckle a bit to myself.

My most favorite class ever at Yamasa was a class we had in the Biz Japanese class on "How to say nothing." In other words, filler words. Everyone said I was scary good at that. (Probably because I watch a lot of TV.) I'm *still* not sure how to take that. XD

The biggest challenge for me was when I got back to the U.S. After a month of resting, I realized that my hard-fought ability was starting to leave me FAST, so I set up a network of people locally and over the internet to talk with on a regular basis to keep my level up.

One of my 書道 teachers teaches the class only in Japanese, which is awesome. I meet up with a local Japanese person who came back recently after being in Japan for 20 years or so, and we have fun talking about all kinds of stuff. (Sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese. Gotta be fair about it.) And I use Skype a few times a week to work with one of my old teachers on my Business Japanese. That *really* helps a lot.

Also, a non-human-interaction thing I do-- I read a large chunk of my Anki cards out loud, if I'm reviewing at home. It's good practice. I've been told by many people that I don't have much of an accent, and that makes me kind of happy... but it's one of those 日本語が上手ですね things... they may just be being polite.... but I have heard some terribad accents before, so I'm hoping it's not just politeness. XD

I'm not sure if I believe the "silent period" stuff or not. After going through what I've gone through I feel like it's a good thing to break out of that as soon as you have a basic grasp of the language, and just keep beating your head against it. Also, using the words you're studying in a conversation *feels* like a great way to help flip them over into active vocab. *Shrug* I'm not a scientist, so who knows?

tl,dr: if you want to get better at speaking, then speak. speak a lot. then speak some more.

shinsen Wrote:It is useful to slow the sound down with VLC and speeeeaaaak sloooowww when you're shadowing.

I've tried getting started with shadowing but had the problem that I couldn't keep up. Why have I never thought of this? >.<

Hello, this is my first post on these forums.

I lived in Japan for 5 years (4 of which spent as the only English-speaker at a Japanese company), so I'm very confident in my speaking ability.

I had studied Japanese like crazy before going to Japan, so my reading was pretty good when I got here. I also had a high degree of exposure to Japanese in my university years (girlfriend was Japanese, roommate was Japanese exchange student, watched lots of anime). But even so, when I did actually get to Japan it was hard to keep pace with the speed of real Japanese. Sentence length and grammar complexity also gave me problems.

Even after I passed JLPT N1 and started working at a Japanese company, I still had to ask native speakers to slow down a lot for about 6 months.

From my experience, I would offer the following suggestions:

1. Try repeating some grammatically complex sentences to build your speaking "stamina". It's good if you have a native speaker example so you can try to match it as closely as possible, but use an out-in-the-wild Japanese audio clip (like from a TV show or something), not a mechanical audio clip like from a study CD.

Speed is probably the biggest hindrance to intermediate learners', and repetition is great for speed training. The more you do it, the more your brain will start to process things like 行きたくて仕方がない as a single unit rather than a verb plus such-and-such sounds/grammar.

2. Watch Japanese TV if you can. TV programs and game shows usually have a lot of sub-text (so much that you could almost call it subtitles), which really helps. This exercise probably sounds like listening practice (and it is), but it's still important for speaking because it's training the speed at which your brain can process Japanese, just like my 1st suggestion.

However, I do believe that (like so many other things) becoming a fluent speaker/listener in Japanese is something that takes a lot of time. There's not really any shortcut.

Hope this helps!