Hello folks! I am a long time user of RevTK, but (judging by my post count) a serious wallflower.

I have spent the past three months doing a homestay in Japan. For someone who has never learned Japanese like me, it's been an amazing experience. However, I only have one month left, and my Japanese is not as good as I'd like. After this month, I'll be spending some time traveling Japan, and would love to talk to lots of Japanese people; but sadly my Japanese aural/oral skills are lacking.

Here are some stats from the past three months. They're not extraordinary:

VOCAB:
~2000 words learned from Core 6k (various, not sorted to NukeMarine)

KANJI:
~1000 kanji learned from RTK

GRAMMAR:
~Completed Nakama I
~Learned 3/4ths of Tae Kim to the point of recall, but not necessarily speedy recall.

My language skills are still lacking. For a lot of things that I want to express, the words are there; but to express them results in some stuttering and halting speech. My host parents are nowhere near proficient in English, but they know words such as "nuance" and "meteor." I feel that with my expanding vocab, I'll soon enter the territory of my host parents: I'll know a lot, but I won't be able to do much with it.

I've poured over the forums and the wiki looking for some sort of aid for speaking practice. I can't find any. Besides the often repeated, "Speak Japanese to Japanese people," I'm at a loss.

The recommendation to "Speak Japanese to Japanese people," which I do every day, seems like some sort of cop-out. It seems like this would be similar advice to, "To learn Kanji, simply remember how they look." But this is RevTK! We know better than that. We know that sequencing, mnemonics, and radicals work better than the bang-you-head-against-the-wall advice, "just simply memorize the kanji."

Have no users attempted to break down speaking and listening practice? If the search function is failing me, I'm sorry. I'm really trying my hardest to research before asking.

Here are some of my current output/input problems that I'm going to slowly through, or feel helpless in.

Problem: Looking through sentence examples to find helpful phrases such as, "generally speaking" or "as you can see" is tedious. Beyond that, I can't even tell if the example sentences are trying to express the English sentence's idea in a way that's awkward in Japanese.
Question: Is there any sort book or reference that easily lists and catalogues these colloquial phrases?

Problem: I know Japanese grammar to a good extent, but I am not a master at it. Tae Kim has been an amazing resource, but there are so few examples for me to practice and to get into that Japanese thinking mindset. It feels like just repeating one example gives me less quick reaction understanding than being able to say multiple examples. The Tanaka corpus fails me by having complicated,literary sentences, with a vocab too complex for my sake.
Question: Is there any resource with a whole slew of example sentences for each grammar point and with simple vocabulary. I would love to have something where, for example, I could put my hand over the Japanese, look at the English, guess that "I plan to go to France" is "私はフランスへ行くつもりです。" and then lift my hand up and confirm if I'm right.

Problem: Reading graded readers is easy for me. If those readers were audio files, I'd have a harder time. Simply listening to Japanese talk radio, or the news seems to be less reward for the time spent. I need something to bridge the gap.
Question: Are there any recommended graded readers that come with audio? Are there such things as graded listening practice?

Problem: My Japanese is in general halting. Sometimes it feels like this is because I may be thinking in English, but it also just feels like how it did when I first started playing guitar: I could play everything fast poorly, or everything slow perfectly.
Question: Does anyone have any "Japanese practice routines" that they'd like to share? Does anyone here ever spend 10 minutes just trying to smoothly say one grammar point with a variety of vocab before doing Anki reviews etc.?

This community has been a god-send for my Japanese learning. Without this community, I'd be nowhere near what I am now; so I obviously deserve no replies for how little I've contributed. If that's so, this is just one big thank you for the extraordinary help!

Have you learned any language before? I'm sorry but to me it seems like your expectations are not realistic if you are not content with the progress you've made in just three months.

Quote:The recommendation to "Speak Japanese to Japanese people," which I do every day, seems like some sort of cop-out. It seems like this would be similar advice to, "To learn Kanji, simply remember how they look." But this is RevTK! We know better than that. We know that sequencing, mnemonics, and radicals work better than the bang-you-head-against-the-wall advice, "just simply memorize the kanji."

Speaking Japanese to Japanese people is not banging your head against the wall. It is the most effective way to learn to speak. With kanji you have reading, meaning, writing as well as recognition issues to deal with, thus it is broken down to more manageable portions. Speaking and listening practice is simply making use of the things you've learned so far, and only by doing this for a considerable time you become a better speaker. There is no magical way to start speaking from a fluent stage. You will also come across meaningful colloquial phrases and words much more efficiently than studying canned phrases from some book.

Quote:Problem: I know Japanese grammar to a good extent, but I am not a master at it. Tae Kim has been an amazing resource, but there are so few examples for me to practice and to get into that Japanese thinking mindset. It feels like just repeating one example gives me less quick reaction understanding than being able to say multiple examples. The Tanaka corpus fails me by having complicated,literary sentences, with a vocab too complex for my sake.
Question: Is there any resource with a whole slew of example sentences for each grammar point and with simple vocabulary. I would love to have something where, for example, I could put my hand over the Japanese, look at the English, guess that "I plan to go to France" is "私はフランスへ行くつもりです。" and then lift my hand up and confirm if I'm right.

The dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is an excellent resource alongside Tae Kim for grammar problems. The book addresses grammar points that Tae Kim doesn't, does a better job at explaining some things and there are multiple example sentences for each grammar point presented. I read the book from cover to cover when I had around 2000-3000 words under my belt in Core6k. I did not know every word but the ones I didn't know came up soon enough in Core, so the vocabulary is not advanced. The example sentences are also on an Anki deck if you want to drill them afterwards.

Your progress is remarkable and in my opinion you could not be studying the language any better than you currently are. I suggest that you accept that you will be a bad speaker before you become a good speaker and that the process to internalize the language will take time whether you like it or not.

I do not want to criticize your desire for maximum efficiency however! I think we all have similar thoughts regarding the learning process, and that is a good thing.

Betelgeuzah, thank you so much for your detailed and encouraging reply. I just ordered your book suggestion :-)

I can't help but feel a little unsatisfied that so few people have described how they increased their speaking proficiency. It very well may be as simple as you claim, but I'm still going to try to find a speedier method. I'll definitely let this forum know if I hit on anything.

As for listening practice, I'm still on the hunt for something to bridge the gap between the slow and obvious textbook listening and the transcription-less native listening I find. Something like 10-pun de Yomeru Ohanashi (Stories You Can Read in Just 10 Minutes) but in audio form would be right up my alley.

Like almost anything in life, if you want to get better at something you just have to do more of it. If you want to speak better, then you have to do more speaking. There isn't much way around that.

You should keep up your other study of course to increase your vocabulary to give yourself more options to express yourself when speaking, but you aren't going to improve your speaking ability by doing anything other than speaking a lot.

I mean, I guess you can, but it won't be as efficient.

Try to think in the language and talk out loud to yourself. For example look around the room and describe things, label items you know how to say in Japanese, make up mock conversations in your head etc. Stuff like this does not substitute actual speaking in Japanese but it helps in the passive to active vocabulary transition.

As for listening, I put the sentences from core I covered so far on my ipod. I listen to my core playlist for at least 30 minutes a day. I have noticed a slight increase in my listening skill, but when I listen to native material a lot goes over my head just because of my lack of vocabulary. It'll certainly help though.

datrukup Wrote:As for listening practice, I'm still on the hunt for something to bridge the gap between the slow and obvious textbook listening and the transcription-less native listening I find. Something like 10-pun de Yomeru Ohanashi (Stories You Can Read in Just 10 Minutes) but in audio form would be right up my alley.

Graded Readers have an audio CD. With the different levels of graded readers you could easily find one that matches your current level.

datrukup Wrote:Does anyone have any "Japanese practice routines" that they'd like to share? Does anyone here ever spend 10 minutes just trying to smoothly say one grammar point with a variety of vocab before doing Anki reviews etc.?

Buy and read 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese.

You should shadow. In particular you should try and shadow stuff that you want to be able to use. Create a subs2srs deck of a few shows, make sure they are slice-of-life, and use that as a base. When you find a particularly useful expression copy or move that to a shadow deck so that you tweak the settings down and rep it a lot. (In Anki terms this means set the Graduating Interval to 1 the Easy Interval to 2 the starting ease to 100% and the Interval Modifier to 60% or lower. That will guarantee you see each card a ton before it very slowly works its way to mature.)

You should carry a notebook. Whenever you get stuck in a conversation thread or fumble around being able to express something write down what it was so that you can come up with a strategy to deal with it later. Also note things that you want to be able to express in a more Japanese way.

Listen for corrections. Many Japanese people will offer verbal corrections in the form of repeating back to you what you just said. Most of the time it differs from what you just said, for example pitch, particle usage, word order, so immediately echo back their correction. It might sound weird but in practice it actually helps the conversation flow.

Watch more TV. Variety shows in particular are nothing more than a stream of semi-casual conversations. Pay special attention to how things are discussed and how people tell stories. You can pick up a ton of very natural speech every single hour. Shadow these liberally.

Also try and speak a very short time with lots of different people. This is because new people tend to ask you the same kinds of questions but in very different ways which helps because you can formulate strategies for answering the standard questions. (Once you get bored of that you can spice it up of course. Tell people you are from space or tell them your job is international spy, etc.)

One thing I found particularly helpful was making and memorizing speeches in Japanese. By memorizing my speeches, I've internalized all of the grammar of those speeches. As a result, I just don't make mistakes using the grammar from my speeches.

Obviously it's too tedious to study every grammatical structure using this technique, but it's especially helpful for pinpointing particular grammar points that consistently give you trouble.

P.S. You don't need to make and memorize a speech. You can probably get similar results by memorizing lines from your favorite TV program, film, or book.

Listening practice ... try Saturday and Sunday morning anime - it's basically kid's cartoons but better. Stuff like Driland, Pretty Cure, Prism ... Stone(?) - the idol one anyway, that cardfighting show, the car mecha one. Watching the news or radio sounds both ambitious and boring.
If you need a transcript, you can probably get one at kitsunekko.com - all of these shows air with subtitles.

My 'practice routine' is subs2srs - listen to the audio, repeat, and then check if I got it right. It's mostly for learning vocabulary, but I guess it helps with speaking smoothly too.

And just a general suggestion:
When you travel, you should hitchhike instead of catching the train and such. It's very easy to travel all around (or live in) Japan and talk to no one. Hitchhiking is hours of free conversation practice with multiple interested people, and as a bonus you (usually) end up where you want to go.

Aikynaro Wrote:And just a general suggestion:
When you travel, you should hitchhike instead of catching the train and such. It's very easy to travel all around (or live in) Japan and talk to no one. Hitchhiking is hours of free conversation practice with multiple interested people, and as a bonus you (usually) end up where you want to go.

There have been cases where tourists have done this, and it's ended badly. No matter how safe people think Japan is, I would never suggest hitch-hiking.

ktcgx Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:And just a general suggestion:
When you travel, you should hitchhike instead of catching the train and such. It's very easy to travel all around (or live in) Japan and talk to no one. Hitchhiking is hours of free conversation practice with multiple interested people, and as a bonus you (usually) end up where you want to go.

There have been cases where tourists have done this, and it's ended badly. No matter how safe people think Japan is, I would never suggest hitch-hiking.

Well, this probably isn't the thread to have this discussion, but I've hitchhiked pretty extensively in Japan and recommend it highly. Of course there are risks, as with anything. I'd guess they're pretty low in this case, but I don't have any numbers to back that up except my own, so...

I think you should chill out a bit, OP. You've gone further in 3 months than most people go in a year. Language learning, no matter how efficient we make it by using Anki, still takes time.

It can feel frustrating, but diligence is most definitely rewarded. It seems to me like you need to finish Nakama 2 or Tae Kim so that you have all the most common kinds of verb conjugations and sentence patterns under your belt. From there you can continue to practice with native sources and increase vocabulary using Core and Anki.

Judging from the replies so far, I'm going to say the answer is basically "Uhhh... no, there isn't."

You're getting a myriad of advice, all of it good, but with everyone advocating something a little bit different. I personally think vocabulary is the biggest advantage you can have, and so I like Anki-ing with vocab in context, working Japanese-English. But that's just me. No matter what you do, it's going to take a lot of practice.

Speaking is more like basketball than an intellectual activity. You can understand it on the chalkboard, but when it's Game On, it's harder than it looks.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Speaking is more like basketball than an intellectual activity. You can understand it on the chalkboard, but when it's Game On, it's harder than it looks.

This is very true. Speaking is a performance skill like dancing, sports, or improv jazz. It is not an intellectual skill. This is one of the reasons that academic approaches to language learning tend to fail pretty badly. People spend a lot of time learning language theory, but not a lot of time actually applying that knowledge.

Balancing practice and study is very important. If you're practicing without studying enough then you can very easily run into a wall where you're fluent in what you're fluent in, but extremely shaky anywhere else. If you do the opposite then your understanding might be fantastic, but your speaking won't be very good.

More people need to treat speaking like the performance skill it is rather than the intellectual skill they think it is. People on this forum do a pretty good job of discussing it properly, but people in the real world, even language teachers, don't seem to realize the distinction a lot of the time.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Judging from the replies so far, I'm going to say the answer is basically "Uhhh... no, there isn't."

I completely disagree with this. If he hasn't learned to talk around words that don't come to mind immediately than he is completely wasting all of his vocabulary knowledge and it seems likely that this is a huge reason for his frustrating. In addition if he doesn't have a complete framework for how conversations flow in Japanese he won't understand how to express his ideas in a way that the listener expects.

These things can be learned, but none of them are learned from RTK, Core6k, Tim Kae, or Nakama. These are dry, dead resources that don't give you even the slightest clue how to communicate with real humans.

Most of the advice given is pointing him at materials that will help him learn some of these skills. Even if he isn't able to rapidly improve in his last month here I'm guessing that having a plan for how to improve will increase his confidence and reduce frustration.

I agree with you and erlog that the only thing that is going to make him better is lots of practice in lots of different situations, but there are ways to be prepared so that you make the best of that time. There needs to be a feedback loop where you reflect on your weakness and work on improving them. People that don't develop that are the foreigners that have lived here 10+ years but still have the same basic conversations that they learned when they got here.

Edit: After re-reading some of the responses it does seem like a lot of people didn't even read his whole post. Some of the recommendations are for stuff far, far below his level. I guess maybe that's part of what you were referring to.

[RawToast]

Quote:Problem: Reading graded readers is easy for me. If those readers were audio files, I'd have a harder time. Simply listening to Japanese talk radio, or the news seems to be less reward for the time spent. I need something to bridge the gap.
Question: Are there any recommended graded readers that come with audio? Are there such things as graded listening practice?

I was going to recommend the same graded readers that ryanjmack posted. You get the audio for each story on a separate CD, they are expensive though.

You could also try JapanesePod101, the higher level audio has less English and will be easier than the news/native material.

You can also talk to yourself and record it. Also watching dramas/movies/anime with Japanese subs or no subs if you feel better. As for speaking Japanese to real Japanese people; takes some practice and the actual experience. Also you might need some conversational skills aligned with your Japanese speaking ability to settle in cool. Hope this doesn't sound too "bro philosophy" but it's just where my levels at.