Hello all,

I've been studying Japanese for almost 3 years, 2 in University and 8months using the AJATT method. Also, I live in Japan. Hopefully, understanding this information will allow you to understand where my frustration is coming from. Despite my best efforts, after nearly three years of study, I cannot hold a conversation in my target language. I've been doing massive amounts of input, reading, doing sentences, listening to music, and watching movies. I've been studying at least an hour and a half (including shadowing) a day everyday, and I also work in a Japanese environment. I can understand most of the media I am exposed to, yet I cannot perform sufficient language production.

With all of this, I've still yet to get to a level at which I am able to freely speak. Short sentences here and there are all I can muster, and it frustrates me to no end. AJATT really doesn't provide an answer when it comes to actually speaking. Khatz doesn't seem to provide a point at which speaking will begin to come to the learner. When I try to speak, I find myself trying to consciously correct my grammar or fumbling with the correct polite forms to use.

As of now, all I want to do is to freely communicate with those around me. That's it. At some point, I want to become a translator, but it feels almost impossible now. Almost 3 years of Japanese study, and I still find myself struggling.

For those old hats, those experienced in studying and speaking, what can one do to improve their speaking? What can one do to improve their speaking specifically? AJATT seems to recommend that one stay clear of production until a certain point is reached, but what is that point? How much input does it take for one to finally feel comfortable speaking?

The AJATT method has improved my reading and kanji recognition immensely, but I want to speak too...

Sorry for the rant. It's just really frustrating to live in a country, try your best to learn the language, yet always seem to fail at speaking. Any advice you guys could provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Converse more! That's it, really. Especially if you're getting pretty decent at reading and otherwise understanding. Studying by yourself is great but it won't prepare you for conversation.. and trying to break into conversing regularly in another language is certainly frustrating.
Also, I think the "don't output too early" advice is simply warning against solidifying bad habits and unnatural Japanese. At three years in with a decent grasp of the language and a burning desire to improve... I don't think you have anything to worry about there! Just keep checking yourself as you go and don't be afraid to make mistakes here and there.

I studied abroad in Kobe during my third year of Japanese study and it took me the first half of the year in a near-100% Japanese environment to finally break into speaking fairly regularly in Japanese. Even then, I couldn't hold meaningful conversations and I felt like a child when trying to converse with my university classmates. It wasn't until I returned to the US and kept studying and using Japanese that I finally became able to speak with confidence. 3.5 years or so into the game? (1 year of university, 2.5 adding in generous portions of self study (one of which was in Kobe)).

In my last post here I talk about a site called FC2 Live where I practiced production after returning to the US. The ability to observe native interaction and copy it was an invaluable tool for me. Also, if you participate in chat, you get to have an extra second or two to think about what you want to "say." Online chatting may have helped me finally break through to higher levels of speaking! Maybe!? My ability to speak with confidence certainly came during this time.

Let's just assume you have enough input because until you are struggling to express yourself that probably isn't the problem.

First you need to find some kind of audience. Who are you going to be speaking to and what kinds of things are you going to want to say to them? I started at small bars around my station that foreigners don't frequent so my first audience was generally polite Japanese and the content was a lot of talking about myself, where I was from, why I was in Japan and such things. I just completely avoided anything complicated like politics, religion, emotions, and story telling. If you are going to use a tutor or something similar then they can be any audience you want them to be, but the point is that you need to know where to focus your study.

Second you need to setup a speaking study environment. Shadowing random dialogue once isn't going to be effective in building up a base of phrases your brain can pull from and colocate. You need to listen to something enough that you can shadow it in real-time from memory. I originally just put phrases I thought were cool or useful into Anki but these days you should be able to use subs2srs to rip the audio too. Find content that you can shadow that has lots of useful phrases. I originally started with romantic dramas.

Finally when you go out in the wild to speak to someone make notes about where you get stuck. You want to learn the phrasing that people actually use in speaking instead of translating English in your head. As you go from facts to story-telling and emotions/feelings you will find that phrasing is by far the most important thing in being understood. Definitely whip out your phone and make a few notes about where you got stuck, no one will be offended once they realize you are adding words or phrases to study. Also have people teach you things when they are willing as these phrases lead to interesting conversations next time. (I recall a bartender teaching me 休肝日 which used to elicit giggles whenever I used it as an excuse for not drinking.)

One thing you are going to figure out really fast is that output is not the hardest thing about speaking Japanese. Learning to listen so that you can respond appropriately is much harder. You want the starting speaking part to be easy and automatic, memorize some stuff if you have to, because understanding what is being asked of you and replying is very difficult at first. Just open your mouth and speak and see what happens.

Bonus: Read 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese. This book has excellent tips for increasing your speaking abilities and is definitely worth reading more than once.

Pro Tip: Many times when you are speaking to someone they will provide little corrections by repeating part of what you said but more clearly or correctly. Always repeat these corrections to reinforce them. Dumb Example: 「ボールに蹴った。」「ボールを？」「あっ、ボールを蹴った。」and then just let them finish their comment. This actually makes the conversation flow MORE smoothly because you are confirming that they understood you despite the mistake.

If you want to get better at speaking, practice speaking. Look up Benny Lewis. There was a thread on here a while back when he was doing a project in learning Japanese. A lot of people were trying to downplay what he was doing, but after only 2 months of study, he posted a video where he was conversing more fluently that I could after 4 years of university, albeit with poor pronunciation and a relatively small vocabulary.

His method was largely just talking to people in his target language as much as possible.

As someone who really sucked at speaking in Japanese and overcame it, I agree completely with DrDunlap.

Keep speaking. Don't beat yourself up if you suck at it, we all suck at it at first. It took me a good 3 months at a language school just to be coherent (this was right after I passed N2... great indicator of ability, huh?), then another couple of years back in the US working with tutors here and there to get good at holding a conversation.

One of the tutors I've worked with over the years will make me randomly explain things about the US to her. "What's the deal with Americans and football?" or "Do you have toll roads there? How do they collect the money?" Lots of "Oh crap, how do I explain this in Japanese?" moments. After a few years of that, I've gotten pretty good at BSing in Japanese.

Definitely look into the FC2 Live thing. (I know I'm going to look into it to work on my skills, too.)

Also, try to find a hobby while you're in Japan. Get into some kind of community center or group that does something interesting. Or just go to bars. W/E you like to do, find some locals who are doing it, and do it with them.

Oh, one conversation secret: don't just nod your head or sit there silently when you converse with Japanese people. It tends to creep them out. Lots of ええ/はい　ああそうなんですか　えっ？　へぇぇぇぇ？ peppered in there shows you're paying attention, and it's an important cultural signal. (And they'll think you're a really good conversationalist, even if you're just repeating the same 4-5 phrases over and over.)

Great ideas here, particularly from tokyostyle and rich_f. For me, doing hour long convos on iTalki has been a huge help. You can't predict where an hour long conversation will go, no matter who much you prepare beforehand, thus resulting in many of those "oh crap" moments referenced by rich_f.

After you talk about something with someone, write a post about it on Lang-8 or Ameblo or on the back of a garbage can or wherever to help reinforce what you were trying to discuss. I actually need to do more posting of material to Lang-8 so that I can harvest the corrections and recycle them back into my Anki deck.

Also +1 on 相槌. If you don't say anything, your Japanese friend will assume you're not understanding. If you're not understanding, be honest about it, and ask your partner to repeat or slow down.

I find it hard to believe that your speaking could be that bad.... haha

but if it is haha have you tried subs2srs? I've found movies/tv with good ordinary Japanese in them and shadow them in sub2srs works well for me

Thanks for the awesome replies guys. I'll definitely put the advice into action!

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rich_f Wrote:Oh, one conversation secret: don't just nod your head or sit there silently when you converse with Japanese people. It tends to creep them out. Lots of ええ/はい　ああそうなんですか　えっ？　へぇぇぇぇ？ peppered in there shows you're paying attention, and it's an important cultural signal. (And they'll think you're a really good conversationalist, even if you're just repeating the same 4-5 phrases over and over.)

If anyone wants this point reaffirmed from a native source -- just listen to the radio. If you can find a show where the host interviews or speaks to a caller, you will notice how often these phrases are used.　You don't need to understand the conversation to spot all the 'paying attention' phrases:　なるほどね、そうですね、すごい, et al.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:Also +1 on 相槌. If you don't say anything, your Japanese friend will assume you're not understanding. If you're not understanding, be honest about it, and ask your partner to repeat or slow down.

And you will get some basic phrases down such as: もう一度お願いします。There's a nice article on iTalki with a bunch of handy phrases for asking for clarification during conversation practice.

Back to the OP. If you don't have many people you can practice with (or perhaps they aren't the best practice partners), then try iTalki. Since you currently live in Japan it should be easy to find a cheap community teacher on iTalki (no timezones to worry about). You might find it easier to practice with someone you have no ties with.

You know, I can relate to this a little when it comes to Korean. I studied it pretty intensely via the AJ(K)ATT method for a short time (4 ~ 6 months) and expected that because grammatically it is so close to Japanese that I would just be able to start speaking it if I could at least understand it. Wrong. I wound up getting an understanding of basic conversation and could produce fragments but speaking never really materialized.

Then I reflected on the key difference between my experience with Korean and my experience with Japanese.

I live in the inner city of a big city in an English speaking country with a decent sized asian population. Access to Korean native speakers is somewhat plentiful with Japanese being rarer but still, around. I found that when I was learning Korean every time I would be in the elevator with someone who was Korean or be seated near them in a restaurant I would really want to try and say something to them in Korean. Only, I never did. I felt a little paralyzed for some reason. Contrast this with when I learned Japanese... I would strike up conversations with Japanese people no matter who they were, where they were, what they were doing or what reaction they gave me. As soon as I recognized them as Japanese I was straight in there. I just wanted to speak it so bad. I would literally just go sit down at their table in a restaurant and be like 久しぶり！元気？and fully pretend like I knew them and just start drinking together. As a result I wound up speaking lots and getting lots of corrections, making lots of friends, going to random parties and I guess freaking a few of them out haha. That's what made it really happen for me.

I agree that the best advice is just to try to have real conversations as much and as often as possible, and don't worry about messing things up. Most importantly, don't keep quiet just because you're nervous about embarrassing yourself by not being able to get your meaning across.

If you want a sort of structured study, I used to like doing this with my tutor: Basically, pick a topic your interested in to explain to a tutor or Japanese friend. If there are some vocabulary words you don't know that you think might be helpful, write them down and memorize them beforehand... but don't actually write any sentences! Then tell your friend you'll explain a topic for two minutes (or whatever time you can handle), and ask them not to interrupt you for those two minutes. At the end, have your friend correct you on some mistakes you made or give you advice on how to explain it more clearly. This is great because you can choose topics you're interested in, so you'll get better and better at explaining things that are important to you.

If your problem is finding someone to talk to, conversationexchange.com is pretty good in my experience. Though I am much too lazy to use it regularly and as such my speaking is also horrible.

Tzadeck's exercise is good-- it'll help develop speaking and presentation skills, plus you'll pick up vocab.

Another exercise to try, which is a little bit different from Tzadeck's, is learning how to talk around vocabulary you didn't know on the spot. Try to describe something you don't know how to say in Japanese.

The idea of practicing how to talk around unknown vocab is that it happens quite often. If you keep practicing it, when you're in a situation where you just plain forget the word, if you know how to do describe it or talk around it, you're golden.

Another idea to try-- practice functional situations, such as ordering things at a restaurant, buying things at a コンビニ, meeting the neighbors, chatting up someone, w/e. Find someone who can help you practice that kind of stuff. It sounds SO stale and dull, but at least knowing some good canned phrases will make the Real Thing a LOT less stressful.

The use of 相槌 is just so crucial. One thing to keep in mind, saying ええ・はい・うん doesn't have the same meaning as in English. It does *not* mean, "I agree with you!" It means, "Yes, I can hear what you are saying, even though I may not agree with it, I comprehend it. My hearing organs are functioning, and I'm paying attention to you. Please keep talking, my fine fellow!"

If you like video games, the guys & gals at Kotoba Miners are always having Let's Plays where they play multiplayer games and get together on TeamSpeak to talk in Japanese. They frequently post videos of their sessions:

which is Minecraft, but they also play LoL, Warcraft, etc. Follow https://plus.google.com/+JamesYork/ and of course http://forums.kotobaminers.org/events/weekly

Wow, thanks guys. All of this information is very helpful. I went to iTalki yesterday and found some partners. I've also decided to become more active in my local community.

Thanks again!