This past week I attended Dreamforce (trade show for Salesforce), and a decent amount of Japanese folks from various companies seemed to have interest in my company's product. That being said there's potentially an opportunity to visit Japan for work in as soon as 3 months. My speaking/listening is still quite lacking which, anybody who follows what I say on this forum, already knows.

Of course there are tons of study methods and even a sticky for this particular board. Still, I would like to hear if anybody has a particular method for cramming that they have seen as helpful. Let's ignore the obvious "Do everything in Japanese!" one. When cramming do you use a tutor as a basis? How many hours of each type of studying do you do per day? Is passively watching Japanese TV really helpful when trying to cram? If trying to cram for speaking/listening, is it okay to not strictly read articles/news on a daily basis for several weeks? Information like this is what I'm looking for.

I do have a full-time job, so looking to work around that as much as possible.

Thanks!

I think you need to be more specific about your goals. What is it you hope to be able to do after 3 months? If it's a specific thing like "order food in a restaurant and handle shopping," then no problem: study vocabulary and practice listening to dialogues about those things. If it's an amorphous thing like "attend a business meeting without a translator," then unless the problem is just that you need to aquire some specialized vocabulary, it's probably not doable.

My guess is you want to improve your aural/oral communication; if that's the case, then a tutor is the way to go. The only way to improve your spoken fluency is to practice speaking.

Yep, tutor yourself up. Short of living there, it's probably the fastest way to make progress on speaking/listening. Since listening is a major part of conversation practice, it's 一石二鳥 time.

If tutoring is a little too pricey, try the JOI (japonin.com) online group conversation lessons. I did those a few years back to add extra conversation practice into my week. They're group lessons, but the groups are small.

I only use a tutor once a week, because it gets expensive otherwise. The JOI stuff is a nice supplement when I have time, but that's another hour per class. Make sure you write down your questions ahead of time for your tutor, so you don't waste lesson time.

Passive listening is kind of a waste of time IMO. If I'm not paying attention, I'm tuning it out. YMMV, of course. I listen sometimes when I do mindless chores or work in the house, but I'm paying attention to what I'm listening to. I'm not doing an active task that has my attention completely. Just doesn't work for me like that.

News is useful, but there's SO much more stuff out there. There are some really good podcasts out there (check the podcast thread), there's also the /r/JTV subreddit, there's FC2 that DrDunlap mentioned a while back. (I think that was live.fc2.com?) Variety shows kind of make me want to shoot the TV sometimes (Elvis style), but good ones are really good for listening practice, because it's at full speed, and not at acting or broadcasting news announcer speed, which are slower than real conversation.

Tutoring, combined with SRS sentence drills, where the tutor goes over all the sentences you're adding each day, and explains what they mean, and what each word in the sentence means, every day.

But don't expect much. Three months isn't enough to make a dent in learning to speak Japanese, sorry. If you work hard, your Japanese knowledge will impress people (as long as you tell them that you only started studying 3 months ago). But you won't be able to actually have a constructive conversation in Japanese.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Tutoring, combined with SRS sentence drills, where the tutor goes over all the sentences you're adding each day, and explains what they mean, and what each word in the sentence means, every day.

But don't expect much. Three months isn't enough to make a dent in learning to speak Japanese, sorry. If you work hard, your Japanese knowledge will impress people (as long as you tell them that you only started studying 3 months ago). But you won't be able to actually have a constructive conversation in Japanese.

What? I can read novels aimed at adults as well as the news (still use the dictionary for words I don't know or want to confirm the reading of). Anyway, I'm not going to go over SRS sentence drills... what's the point in that? I can read them myself.

I guess I made the assumption most people here know my level of Japanese since I frequent this board. I have passed N2, and failed N1 twice. Much of the reason for failing N1 is the difficulty I have with the listening portion. I can try again this year, but still... my focus is on being able to communicate at a deeper level. With reading a lot of my progress came from just slowly reading more and more difficult things. The problem with speaking/listening is that it's not as clear cut, if anyone understands what I mean. I've been banging my head against this wall for so long now, that if anyone has a more concrete schedule they used to improve my desired skills, I'd be more than willing to try and incorporate such ideas.

It'd be great if there was a website that sells better audio books than Febe. Febe is great but too much bullshit, and not enough coverage of standard novels.

I know roughly what your level is, probably because it's similar to mine.

TL;DR: The only way I know of to get good at speaking is to speak. A lot. The more you do it, the more confident you get.

Conversation classes and a tutor is how I would approach the speaking side. Use the JOI classes if money is an issue, hire a tutor if it's not. Or do both if you want to maximize your chances to practice during the week. If you're near Chicago (or even if you aren't), maybe there's a meetup or a local Japan society or something like that with group classes? That might work, too.

For listening, I keep pimping 爆笑問題's podcasts, because I like them. They're great listening practice IMO, and they're pretty funny sometimes. I think they're on TBS Radio? I forget. I set it up in Doggcatcher a long time ago. I also like 探検ばくもん the TV show-- I catch it on TV Japan, so no idea what it airs on in Japan. (It's 爆笑問題 going to interesting places and seeing/doing interesting things, but not obnoxious, more of a "Oh, so that's what's going on here!" kind of thing.)

ぶらたもり is kind of similar, too. たもり wanders around places and looks for historical stuff.

Basically, I watch/listen to a wide variety of stuff. I try not to get stuck too much in one genre, although I think comedy is the most useful one, because the speech is fast and sometimes hard to understand.

[Zgarbas]

I founf that listening to sentences was as good for my listening as reading them was good for my other skills. Went through core 10k srsing spoken sentences and it did wonders. I tried podcasts but i just space out (I do this with audio sources of any language: audio-only resources and me don't get along). Seconding the japonin, my lessons there were great, I made a lot of progress, and they're the cheapest ones on the internet
You've been to japan like 3 times by now and have a lot of friends there, right? Can't you just skype them more often? How well do you understand them?

A lot articles on NHK news have text as well as video, although they're slightly different. I'd listen to a video once, then read the article, then listen a bunch of times and shadow. Everyday. That's a good way to improve listening and maybe even a bit of speaking. You could also buy and intermediate to advanced shadowing book and shadow the crap out of it.

Then, to reinforce and learn to speak, Skype as much as possible. Just after work for thirty minutes to an hour (though, to be honest, with the time difference you may need to do it before work). Try to find a tutor and a bunch of language partners and speak Japanese every day. Talk to people about why you're practicing, that way you might be able to talk a bit about your company in a way to mimic what you will talk about with clients.

I didn't read what everybody else said, but my opinion is that there's no such thing as cramming that's distinctly different than regular studying - you're just doing more of it.

But if you're going to Japan in 3 months you should probably study specifically what you want to use while you are there. Think of situations you will be in, questions you suspect you will want to ask, questions you are likely to be asked, and what answers you will give to those questions. And the most important thing is to consider your audience because Japanese spoken amongst friends is much different than NHK easy or how clerks at the stores will speak to you. Japanese phrasebooks are a good place to start for ideas.

I'll be going to Japan in December, and started a thread about this last week if you want to have a look at the advice I was given. Maybe some of it will help.

rich_f Wrote:I know roughly what your level is, probably because it's similar to mine.

TL;DR: The only way I know of to get good at speaking is to speak. A lot. The more you do it, the more confident you get.

Conversation classes and a tutor is how I would approach the speaking side. Use the JOI classes if money is an issue, hire a tutor if it's not. Or do both if you want to maximize your chances to practice during the week. If you're near Chicago (or even if you aren't), maybe there's a meetup or a local Japan society or something like that with group classes? That might work, too.

For listening, I keep pimping 爆笑問題's podcasts, because I like them. They're great listening practice IMO, and they're pretty funny sometimes. I think they're on TBS Radio? I forget. I set it up in Doggcatcher a long time ago. I also like 探検ばくもん the TV show-- I catch it on TV Japan, so no idea what it airs on in Japan. (It's 爆笑問題 going to interesting places and seeing/doing interesting things, but not obnoxious, more of a "Oh, so that's what's going on here!" kind of thing.)

ぶらたもり is kind of similar, too. たもり wanders around places and looks for historical stuff.

Basically, I watch/listen to a wide variety of stuff. I try not to get stuck too much in one genre, although I think comedy is the most useful one, because the speech is fast and sometimes hard to understand.

Yeah I figured you were one of the people who did have a grasp on it. I booked a tutor for tomorrow since I still have some credits on italki. There's a meetup outside of Chicago in the burbs where I live but I've been to it once or twice. For the most part it's hard to reach the meetup from where I am on a weekday, and also not too many Japanese show up I believe.

I have several podcasts I listen to but always inevitably begin to space out during them. It's frustrating of course. I have that "Living Japanese" book many people recommended in the past. Purchased it 2 or 3 years ago and finally figured I might as well use it a bit. It'd be so awesome if I could get audio books of normal novels, as I said previously. Much more interesting than your standard audio and also had the text of course.

Yeah, the meetups here are all 45 minutes away from where I live... so I don't go. Sometimes you get lucky, tho.

FeBe looks interesting-- is it really a PITA to get audiobooks from them? Because it looks like they're pretty much it for Japanese audiobooks unless you can get them from Audible Japan (?).

With podcasts, if they're not interesting or if I'm having trouble understanding them, they just turn into Charlie Brown's Parents after a while, and I start thinking about pie or pi or just about anything else. That's probably why I gravitate towards comedy lately.

Jpod101 is doing a basic business conversation series, so if you don't mind paying for it, there's also that. It's basic stuff, but it's business related, and they go from the very beginning. Listen to it on their free RSS feed first.

I have a bad habit of just leaving the TV parked on TV-Japan, because I'm lazy. It's a little expensive, but it saves me a lot of hassle. I'm willing to pay them to deliver to my TV in a relatively hassle-free manner. It's "good enough" for me.

rich_f Wrote:FeBe looks interesting-- is it really a PITA to get audiobooks from them? Because it looks like they're pretty much it for Japanese audiobooks unless you can get them from Audible Japan (?).

FeBe is really good and easy to get audiobooks. The problem I have is finding anything interesting. 95% are audiobooks for self improvement and shit. Nonetheless I have purchased both 夢をかなえるゾウ 1 and 2 and both were great.