Hi everyone!

I've been studying Japanese on my own since February. So far I have finished RTK, browsed through Genki I and II (concentrating on dialogs and grammar) and at the moment I'm in the middle of SRS'ing Core 2K6K. To keep things more interesting I'm also adding some bits of shadowing and easy step-by-step reading, favorite doramas and occasional J-pop/rock for immersion.

I think it would be good time to add some conversation. There are no Japanese lessons or teachers in the area where I live but I've found two girls who would be willing to help me. I think it would be great to learn from Japanese speaking girls and having two different speaking partners might be even better - one is native, the other is non-native but has good Japanese speaking skills and has experience in learning Japanese.

The thing is that both of them have never taught anyone before so I would like to prepare some draft plan for our future lessons and discuss it. My speaking skills are close to zero and I don't have any idea how to arrange these sessions but I would like to use my precious time efficiently.

Do you have any ideas, tips or suggestions? How did you do your speaking practice with native or non-native speaker?

Thanks a lot!

I'm not to the point where I wanna start pushing output yet, but I've read it's a good idea to write up an introduction for yourself, get it checked and use that as a base to start a new conversation.

Don't have any personal experience with it, but fi3m had a post about verbling which might be useful for you.

((This post got longer than expected. My advice in a nutshell: Don't worry about speaking yet. Do it when you can but focus on input for now.))

Don't "arrange" speaking practice in the earlier stages! Use what you know and try to talk when you're with people who 1) know Japanese well and 2) are tolerant of being used for practice..?

I'm on the radical side of things but I'm big on not pushing output. You want to get your muscles used to making these sounds, it's true, but that can easily be done by reading out loud/shadowing/etc etc.
Once you've gotten used to the language as it exists normally- output becomes fairly easy.
I'm a dirty, rotten perfectionist so I was always holding back from speaking until I was ready to be good at it and I seem to have turned out alright (next-to-no output for ~2 years in the beginning. it wasn't until I was reading novels without a dictionary that I was beginning to have conversations).

Having speaking partners is nice. But you don't really learn or benefit that much from output until you can output enough to sustain a conversation (and so receive input you can understand). New knowledge *can* be gained from your partner but you will almost always get more benefit from pure input.

It kind of sucks- I won't lie- because obviously you're learning the language to communicate. But I'm just not sure how beneficial it is to push output before you have enough of the language under your linguistic belt!

Daichi Wrote:Don't have any personal experience with it, but fi3m had a post about verbling which might be useful for you.

I've tried it multiple times with no luck. It just endlessly looks for a partner without finding anyone. Maybe it works better with other languages (I've been looking for Mandarin speakers).

PrettyInScarlet Wrote:The thing is that both of them have never taught anyone before so I would like to prepare some draft plan for our future lessons and discuss it. My speaking skills are close to zero and I don't have any idea how to arrange these sessions but I would like to use my precious time efficiently.

It's kind of a long video, but in the Fi3M interview with Tim Ferriss he talks about how he structures one-on-one conversation sessions with people who aren't teachers. It's definitely worth watching all the way through, but I think the part about conversation practice is near the end. It sounds like that's sort of what you're looking for.
http://www.fluentin3months.com/4-hour/

Listen to native-spoken Japanese A LOT

Just try to repeat everything you hear

Try to read out everything you read, but read it out loud in a natural way, do not speak out loud and read every word slowly, that's not gonna help.

Ok, here's a thing you can do to really improve your speaking:

Listen to a Japanese rap song and rap along to it. Trust me, this will help TONS.

Realism Wrote:Listen to native-spoken Japanese A LOT

Just try to repeat everything you hear

Try to read out everything you read, but read it out loud in a natural way, do not speak out loud and read every word slowly, that's not gonna help.

Ok, here's a thing you can do to really improve your speaking:

Listen to a Japanese rap song and rap along to it. Trust me, this will help TONS.

Thanks for posting this. I just got to the conversation section at about 20 minutes in.

Since you're done with RTK, I would suggest reading Japanese subtitles for Japanese TV dramas. The script is 100% dialogue (since actors are speaking the words).
So it's very useful for learning conversation.

Read the script out loud as if you're the actor.

Here you go:
http://jpsubbers.x10.mx/

:-)