Hi All,

I was curious if anyone has found themselves in a similar predicament as I am now finding myself: I spend all of my time cramming new vocab (my vocab is in the ~6K words region now) and effectively zero time speaking and writing (other than RtK reviews). My reading comprehension is about a bazillion times greater than my speaking capability. I keep telling myself I should force myself to write one itsy bitsy lang8 article per day (because even written production is a chore for me) and eventually the written production will carry over into spoken production.

Does anyone have any reports on this? I.e. prioritized written production a bit and had really positive results? I feel like I have ~6K words floating around in my head that I pretty much never ever use. So despite there being a general rejection of production-based anything in this community I think written production might be a bit of a bridge between reading input and spoken production.

Thanks for any comments!

K.

No I don't feel like this.

I have japanese friends, skype contacts and I use mixi and just write mails to my friends and before sending I correct my mails via lang-8. I'm only 4k words into core though.

My results in this post as of now:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid128588

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Writing definitely helps for producing those words, you might call it a bridge. core is all about knowing 6k words, but I wouldn't say that it aids even a little in producing them.

i dunno about intense focus, but i've been writing sporadically since the end of 2009 (maybe like once a week, if that) and there's definitely improvement. it's funny when i read my first entry and compare it to my entries now. and to be honest i hardly ever review my corrections unless there's a mistake that often repeats itself and i feel like i need to stop doing it.

i actually feel fairly confident in writing, although i know it'll be riddled with many simple particle mistakes and some unnatural sounding japanese.

give it a shot if you think you want to start writing. it's also a good way to check what words are in your head that you can produce. you'd be surprised. a lot of times i know there's a word for what i want to write, but i don't know it off the top of my head so i have to search my anki deck. =) there's also a lot of times i just write something because it feels natural and it turns out to be correct.

if you want even more intense practice, try writing your entry out by hand before typing it. then you'll really know whether or not you can write kanji from your memory. =)

I've finished going through Japanese for Everyone, including listening to the audio tapes associated with that textbook quite often, as well as finishing dictionary of basic japanese grammar. I have only written once on Lang8 a while ago, but I do chat sporadically with some Japanese internet friends. I went to a 会話の授業 at my university yesterday, and it was so packed that I ended up squeezing into one corner of the room. I talked to a few people (including one 日本人), and realized that my speaking is awful. I can't string together ideas, I have to keep thinking so hard, and I just felt really dejected. I'm better at writing because I can actually think for a moment and hit backspace. 悲しいなあ・・・

Ive been meaning to start Lang-8 for a while now as well. I have exchanged emails with a Japanese friend of mine in the past but I always seem to write about what I did in that day and it gets boring and repetitive. Im curious to see what everyone writes about on Lang-8, maybe get some inspiration.

Well I guess my (possibly erroneous) thoughts were that verbal production is not that far from written production -- barring the obvious differences they are both processes that require you to reach into your Japanese mind and fish out words and phrases, but written production gives you the benefit of taking your time and using reference material. So given that writing allows some crutches in this regard, I just thought to myself "what would happen to my production capabilities if I wrote one paragraph per day for a month?"

At this point it's just a thought experiment, because I'm obsessive about spending all my time acquiring vocabulary, but my _hunch_ is that after a month there'd big a significant difference between my first entry and my 30th entry, and somewhere along the way I would have picked up a kind of familiarity with simple expression of thoughts in my own words or way/style, possibly so much so that my _spoken_ production started to mimic the writing style I was familiar with.

I don't know. My work schedule is absolutely insane right now, but I might try to make a dedicated project/effort out of this, if only temporarily. But being roughly 6K words into Japanese, comfortable with 2Kyuu level grammar and doing pretty well with _input_ overall but at the same time not being able to order a friggin hamburger without screwing something up is, well, a bit frustrating. Something has to be done!

K.

コドラさんへ

同じようなところにいる僕も、ｌａｎｇ－８で書いたほうがいいなぁと思い込んで迷います。もしよかったら、僕は始めたばかりの大学選択や応募について、コドラさんはどうでもいいことに、互いに応援しましょうか？

もちろん、どんな結果になるかわからずに、試してみるしかありませんね。

アライタチ
http://lang-8.com/57849

If you want to produce then you're gonna have to start producing. Lang 8 is particularly good for the corrections, as when I'm speaking I don't want corrections (I'd rather focus on fluency). Sounds like you might be putting it off because it's difficult? Which is what I think a lot of people do, but you have to get round to it sometime.

If you do go for lang-8 I'd suggest writing slightly longer more interesting posts every few days, as the comments / discussion that follows a post is just as useful as the original post, so you wanna write something that deserves some kind of response.


btw I don't think there is a rejection of production on the boards it's just that there's a lot of people just starting out - where non-production methods more useful. Also there are a lot of people not in Japan, so they don't particularly need / want production any time soon.

I see you're pretty focused on getting your vocab to a high level which in itself isn't bad but if it comes at a cost of study or practice time it becomes a problem. Like everyone said, if you want production you have to produce, as much and as often as you can. Getting your vocab to 15k level wont do you any good if you can't easily produce even the simplest sentence.

I've done about 280 diaries, about 1/2 written by hand and then posted. What I can do with this: I can write to the point where I'm only getting minor corrections (not on grammar points so much as word use and Kanji errors.) What this didn't do for me: I do grammar points, basically - 7 per week from the JLPT lists. 7 x 7 diaries for each set of points (about 9 days with lazy days) with 2 pages handwritten per diary with about 10 lines of text per page (I'm using kids' grids). This has helped me to understand the grammar quite well, but hasn't really done anything for my speaking.

The moral:

Wanna get good at writing? Well, you have to write! Wanna get good at speaking? Well, you gotta speak!

Then again both combined is quite effective. I now do a verbal review of each grammar point I've learned so far each day (or plan to). This will help get those points into my spoken side.

First Entry:

今日はちょうと忙しいですからダットがありました。本当に美女に喫茶店で会いました。女はコッヒを飲みました。私はコンプタアを使います。

突如、とても可愛い女は私に飲み物を零します。ちょうと飲み物を私のシャツ零します。女はもちろん詫びます。私は大丈夫です美しい女の笑みと目は凄く奇麗ですからタベルに女を着席して招きます。

我々は三十ぷんをしゃべる。あとでbye bye!終日私は愉快ですよ

ちょとう俄ダットでしょうね。今日はいいですね。

1/2 of Latest Entry:

---9---
PRISONER: 袋に隠したらどう？
Frank:　まだ隠してみたけど、Jackは見つけた。番人は賄賂をしたらどう？
Frank:　した。Jack...

---10---
JACK：１００羽もとか３人もアシスタントとか要ります。
GUARD:　はい！

---11---
JENNY: JackはFrankに擽り責めしかしないよ！
友達：そうなんだ。忙しくなったね。
JENNY:　問題じゃね。
友達：Frankさんは逃して助けよう。
JENNY:　え？

---12---
JENNY:　Frankの逃してください。
Frank：　え！いえ！ここは楽しい！
JENNY:　逃していただけませんか？
Frank:　いえ！
JENNY:　(やくざの声）そうだな？殺す！
Frank：　え？分かった！行きませんか、Jennyさま。（Frankの考え：怖い女性だなぁ！）

---13---
JACK: ３人の番人もとか大きい檻があるのに、まだ逃げた！それと、長い時擽り責めだのに、易しく歩いて逃げた！

---14---
JENNY:　この方は正しい方かも知らないけど、行こう？
Frank:　あの...　危ない木はこの方がたすさんありますから、他の方に行ったらどう。

---15---
Frank: 30分にこの辺は何か危なしか見て聞かなかったけど、すぐ危ない時に思います。

---16---
番人：ボス、ピストをあけていただけませんか？
JACK:　Frankを殺す！！！！

Looking over the second post. There are quite a few errors that I know are wrong when I look at them, but when I produce them I don't notice. Whether I've improved I honestly don't know. I guess what has come out of this is fluency in writing. I can usually pop a diary out in 30 minutes. Lol, you know I tell my students to proof read it three times... half of that I wouldn't have made if I actually read my own writing!!!

(P.s., Lang-8 tips: If you're long in the tooth with lang-8 you know you'll get a metric ton of corrections if you write short entries. To avoid this post three diaries on one post. It'll scare off people who just post to get corrections and usually you only get people who actually want to help you posting, which is infinitely better [I send a personal email to each person who posts on long posts - gotta keep the network up.] If you're new, post short ones often. You'll get more friends faster!)

Writing journals is good for production, and obviously it's going to help your writing skills, but I don't think it'll have the sort of effect you're hoping for on your speaking skills. Asides from the type of language and structure being completely different, it's ridiculously accommodating in terms of time pressure.

My advice would be to head to shared talk, Yahoo or whatever sites you know with chat rooms, and start doing 文字チャット. If you don't like chat rooms, you can easily start 1-to-1 chat on shared talk. You'll essentially be writing the way you speak, there's much more time pressure compared to journals but still enough time to think, you get the benefits of exposure and corrections, and I'd say it's a whole lot more interesting and motivating. I think doing this is the only reason I can speak at all, because I don't get anywhere near the amount of practice I'd like, despite putting in the effort to find contacts and what not.

This seems a little surreal to me.

You have 6,000 words in your head that you never use? Why did you even bother to learn 6,000 words in the first place if it was to never use them? Not to mention that if you've spent no time on production, you likely have little to no idea how to use the vast majority of that vocabulary anyway. Words exist in a context, and they are governed by usage that only production and practice in real life settings can help you internalize.

In any case, it's obviously high time you shifted gears, or you will lose everything you learned.

Written production is one thing, but never forget that language is, always was and likely always will be, primarily oral. Written language is by and large an artificial representation of spoken language. If you have no production at all in your learning regimen, you need to find yourself a language partner, and quick.

I may only have half of your vocabulary, but I know how to use it and I'm comfortable doing so because I meet with native speakers regularly and I use the language at every opportunity.

If you can't find a language partner, start a regimen of internal monologues. Get that production flowing. If you want to accompany that with Lang-8 entries, go for it, but don't neglect the oral part.

AlexandreC Wrote:In any case, it's obviously high time you shifted gears, or you will lose everything you learned.

I totally agree with this. I'd recommend the same thing.

Don't worry you can get your production skills running, it isn't hard it just takes time. Remember that in any language you'll be able to listen/read more than you can speak/write. It's only natural.

thurd Wrote:Getting your vocab to 15k level wont do you any good if you can't easily produce even the simplest sentence.

oh, you can't say that.

depending on your goals, you may not ever want to produce anything. or you may only want to produce things after you pass a certain point. for example, if you have no plans to use your language career-wise, or make friends with that language, there's not much point in concentrating on it.

dusmar84 Wrote:Im curious to see what everyone writes about on Lang-8, maybe get some inspiration.

i write about everything. i hardly ever talk about what i did in a day, unless it was a particularly exciting day. (i blogged the majority of my travels in japan.)

i've written about discoveries in the supermarket, random american cultural events like the super bowl and the nba all-star dunk contest, observations when studying japanese and comparing it to English, ranting about AKB48, and random personal frustrations like how success makes me nervous.


also, i seemed to have missed the main point of the OP, which was whether or not writing helps speaking. it does, but it's not really effective. writing has different styles to it, anything from essays to blogs to magazines to twitter which may not translate into spoken japanese. in addition, you're always constantly processing information and spitting out a reply in conversation, whereas in writing it's usually just an exposition where you write with no effort to convert what the other person is saying.

also, conversation moves at a much quicker pace than writing. i can write fine. i can't speak well at all. there have even been times when i said a word that i had to rack my brain to figure out, then when someone replied to me with that word, i forgot what it meant. -_-; it's better to practice conversation for conversation than to practice writing for conversation... IF that's your goal.

AlexandreC Wrote:This seems a little surreal to me.

You have 6,000 words in your head that you never use? Why did you even bother to learn 6,000 words in the first place if it was to never use them? Not to mention that if you've spent no time on production, you likely have little to no idea how to use the vast majority of that vocabulary anyway.

Well, I just followed the path of least resistance. I finished RtK which was an easily prescribed program to follow, and now I'm about two weeks away from finishing Core6K -- so by "words" i meant "sentences" really, so I have ideas about the context and usage, which I guess is why my reading comprehension is not too shabby. But I study alone and have never taken a class, so I have no production obligations. But yes, I agree, I feel more or less handicapped with regard to using my supposed vocabulary. I can recognize a ton of words but when I try to think of a phrase to say or write I am stuck with the vague sensation of knowing the word I want exists, knowing I've read it multiple times but... Can't recall it.

Anyways, changing gears (as you put it) is what I'm trying to explore now. I guess writing won't be as useful as I hoped it would be, given user's comments here, but I don't think it will be fruitless. I'll also try to get some more serious skype contacts for regular discussion.