yo! i can't speak japanese!

this month, it's my 2 year anniversary of learning Japanese. if i go back to Japan again, i want to kick ass at speaking!!!

So, things have of course improved since my first post about this 1 year and 9 months ago. i can speak a little, and i can write with a computer, but i'm still very slow, and make a lot of errors. If i've been watching tons of stuff in Japanese, i can think in Japanese fairly easily, but it's short sentences and phrases only... but once i stop watching and do some stuff in english again, even that disappears pretty quickly.

So, it's time to get serious about speaking skills. I think a lot of it is probably going to be as simple as just doing things that involve more conscious mental exertion than SRSing / reading / listening on it's own. Here are my thoughts on what might help, & i'd really appreciate your thoughts or experiences, as well as any good resources for any of these things.

1. Grammar drills
i've never done any, and probably should. This should help when trying to make a sentence from scratch rather than saying a ready made phrase. I do have one excersise book, the companion to "an introduction to modern Japanese", which has got plenty... but... it's fairly basic, even at the end. And, it's pretty much textbook Japanese. I can probably work through it really quickly. Any suggestions for more advanced and colloquial workbooks are great! (i don't mind JLPT workbooks, as long as they are not JLPT for JLPT's sake ones, and are actually good).

2. Sentence pattern drills
I guess this is a lot like general grammar drills, and you can find these in textbooks. But i guess practising something like "The X thing about Y is Z" 「XのYところはZ」　with a lot of different X's, Y's, and Z's, might be pretty helpful. Any recommendations for where to find drills like this would be great. Another type of sentence pattern drill i'm looking to do is more academic. For instance, when asking academic questions, or explaining something, it seems like there are particular sentence structures it would be useful to use sometimes. Do i have to find these myself, or are there any resources for that?

3. Collocation drills
i know there's a Kodansha book with collocation patterns, but i don't think there's a workbook to go with it. Does anyone know of a good workbook that includes a ton of collocation practise? Or am i kinda stuck having to make cards like this for myself?

4. Situational production
One of my problems is that i forget the right thing to say at the time i should say it, maybe that's because i feel quite self conscious & shy when i try to speak Japanese. Therefore, i end up saying one word or something like that. So, i thought maybe adding a load of basic production cards where the front side describes a situation, and the back side is what you would say in Japanese at that time.
Another, similar thing would be to do call and response cards of common questions. I thought (as well as drama) the white rabbit press shadowing book might be good for making cards like this, what do you think?
... But, i'd really like to go a bit further than this, and here i'm a bit stuck. For instance, it would be good to have more ways of saying the same thing, if possible, since many situations occur quite often, and it's boring to repeat the same things all the time. So, it would be good to have, say, 3 ways of saying something + a few funny responses ready if possible. But, how do you organise that? Srsing it isn't ideal, and resources will be harder to find if i want to do that, i guess...

5. english phrase translation
there's no avoiding it, sometimes i think in english, and get stuck with how to translate something. There's lots of little phrases in english that i use... "the thing is...", "this sucks" "randomly (X'ed)", one word things like "cool" or "wicked", "i dunno...", or, i dunno, lots more things that are harder to think of. While directly translating them probably isn't so helpful, because use of one phrase doesn't map directly onto any Japanese one (カッコイイ isn't used exactly like "cool" for example). But, i thought it might be good practise to make sort of maps of these phrases to show which situations they are or aren't used in. "Cool" might map to カッコイイ, as well as すごい as well as some other stuff, and i could write something about the situations each would be used in on the map (this is a simple example but you get my point). Alc seems like it might be a good reference to use for this? Similar kinds of mind-maps might be useful for dividing up Japanese words with similar meanings, etc. I dunno, how helpful do you think this could be?

One thing i was thinking that could save a lot of time searching and trying to think of things myself, might be to start a thread like the "What's this word / phrase thread" for "how to say / how do you say X in Japanese", and add in things i've thought about and researched... especially for numbers 3, 4 and 5, where resources are maybe not so easily available. But, would anyone else be interested in participating too? If not, i guess there's no point...

Finally, if you have any more suggestions (apart from speaking to real people ), please let me know!!! Thanks for reading!

yo

I didn't read what you wrote but all I needed was getting Japanese friends in my town and hang out with them.

1 year ago I met my first japanese friends, and they were also the people who I exchanged my first japanese words with.

+

in summer I had homestayers here for 5 days and my speaking skyrocketed.

And then skype + some more parties and now I can speak on everyday topics with not that bad fluency. The place where it's getting difficult is describing my thoughts and emotions and deeper topics.

Hang out with jap friends for 30 days in total and you should feel satisfied with your speaking at that point.

Or skype ~100 hours

+

You will natually make lots of mistakes and they will get corrected one or other way.

Learning from your mistakes will solidify yr speaking.


Also Don't forget that if you haven't spoken Japanese for more than 4 days in a row, you will experience the feeling "Oh goosh, I spent so much time on this but I still suck"

It's okay, just speak more and in the end of the day you will even feel that you speak better than 5 days ago.

There really isn't much besides speaking to real people.

You can't be able to drive a car if you only read the instruction, manual and tutorials.

yeah, i hung out with Japanese friends for 3 months, and it didn't help. i'm specifically not looking for the advice to "just speak more", because i feel i need something else to help with getting a lot smoother...

IceCream Wrote:yeah, i hung out with Japanese friends for 3 months, and it didn't help. i'm specifically not looking for the advice to "just speak more", because i feel i need something else to help with getting a lot smoother...

I think it's about->

Learn stuff-> hang out with japfriends and speak->Learn stuff-> hang out with japfriends and speak->Learn stuff-> hang out with japfriends and speak->

not about

Learn stuff-> Learn stuff->Learn stuff->Learn stuff->Learn stuff->hang out with japfriends and speak.

3 months in a row is good, but I think it's better to study in the intervals between talking to people.

I mean, if you spoke for 3 months but now you speak once every 3 months then it's evident that something's wrong.

I dunno about your case though

well, i didn't speak for 3 months... i barely spoke in japanese at all, and that's the problem. Hanging out with Japanese friends doesn't change anything, because they either know english already, or want to learn. If that's the situation i'm going to be in, i need to work on speaking on my own.

That's one of the problems. The other problem is that i literally don't know what to say. So, it's really not a matter of "speak more", because if you can't think of anything to say, you're just not going to do it, even if people are speaking in Japanese around you.

Anyway, any help with resources for any of the above things would be great! thanks

IceCream Wrote:well, i didn't speak for 3 months... i barely spoke in japanese at all, and that's the problem. Hanging out with Japanese friends doesn't change anything, because they either know english already, or want to learn. If that's the situation i'm going to be in, i need to work on speaking on my own.

That's one of the problems. The other problem is that i literally don't know what to say. So, it's really not a matter of "speak more", because if you can't think of anything to say, you're just not going to do it, even if people are speaking in Japanese around you.

Anyway, any help with resources for any of the above things would be great! thanks

Haha, I talked about all kinds of boring random stuff almost like a child I'm still doing it with some people.

Some weeks ago I wrote a blogpost on mixi, saying to all friends: "日本語で話せるようにしたくだらない話をして本当にごめん" + "I thought that I had to apologize now that I can finally write in japanese well enough to say this" or something.

Maybe that's what helped me?


Every 6 months come new exchange students, which is a very good way for me to measure my progress every 6 months. I have been speaking in Japanese from the very start.

1 year ago I barely spoke japanese, their english was better than my japanese, but I still talked in japanese + I didn't really get a chance to talk with them on deeper topics because of that. Not that I think that their English was enough for this. But I still kept their contacts. And oh goosh what kinds of くだらない話 I made. They were polite though

6 months ago my japanese was kind of like theirs but thanks to living for 5 days in my apartment with japanese guys I learnt intensively. Everyone else was also amazed about how those 5 days changed my speaking speed. I gathered courage and motivation to keep learning.

At this point my Japanese was faster than their English, and that's what made us speak in Japanese, not English. Being faster was the key in my case! Not the vocabulary(theirs was bigger) but speaking speed. And every time you speak you get faster and more natural.

Now
Those new exchange students came 2 months ago and there was no question about what language we will be speaking in. My vocab's better, I'm faster, more natural.
If I hang out with my friends for like 2-3 days in a row for some hours, on the 3rd day I can speak totally comfortably, comparatively fluently and my speaking speed is I estimate 90% of the natural speed.
My vocab still sucks a lot though.

My friends also comment me on that my speech's flow is much more natural than my other friends' (although vocabulary is worse).

This is what you want, right? If it's so then I can think of what made me improve in that direction and I can tell you resources or what I used for it.

You have been already answering your own question. You can't think in Japanese for a long enough time outside your shelter of books and SRS. Because this takes the most time in language learning. You got all the vocab, you have been studying like crazy, you can type in the language, but speaking randomly about something does not work. Added to that problem is the problem that you seem to be too shy to just use the language, because you could say something stupid, if you are at all able to say something. Is that right?

Your answer is, i want to learn more, maybe conversation material would be right, it can even be a textbook, but god almighty don't let me have to speak and think on my own. Yes, i know this is not how it is, i just wrote it to make a point.

You have been learning how to speak, you have been learning vocabulary, and grammar, and writing and reading the kanji. But you have never spoken anything, that you have come up yourself in that language, so it is time for a little back to the basics, or rather more back to some simple things. I imagine you know a great deal of grammar already, correct? And you have a huge vocabulary, or at least you should have, after two years of studying.

Think of things that you can say, and say it to yourself, no need for others to talk to. Don't type anything, don't think for too long how you can say it, but say it. Think of a presentation you would like to hold, about a topic you know very well, and write it down no matter the sentences being right or wrong. And then hold this presentation, with a microphone record it, and listen to it once you are done. Again, stop thinking, because if you know the topic, you should be able to talk about it. Speak about the weather, the temperatures, and what not - to yourself, if you don't have anyone to speak to. Or you don't want to speak to others.

Don't go back to the books, tempting isn't it, but don't do it. You can learn how to speak, you can learn what to say in a different situation, but someday you will notice that you still have the same problem, you can't say what you feel, you can't talk about literature or astro-sciences if that is what you like. Because you never started using even the basics, even on your own, before really going out of yourself, talking to others even with errors and mistakes.

You can't expect to be able to do that, not because you don't have anyone that forces you to speak. Because even if you were in Japan now, how much could you say, without your books? You can't expect to think all day long in that language, because that comes all on it's own, some day. This has nothing to do with Japanese or Chinese, or German or Takalog, one day it will happen.

For now, as i have already written, go back to the basics, find out what you can talk about, and talk about it. When you feel ready, go to your friends, and talk to them, or some random person over the Internet in a group chat, if that makes you feel more comfortable. You can't force it, and you can't learn it, you have to do it.

Half my daily social interaction is with Japanese people on MSN/Skype (just through text, but it helps with speaking too) and I find that's plenty of practice. I've never done any sort of formal production practice so I'm not sure what to advise. I just leapt straight into finding someone to talk to after going through the basic beginner stuff.

My speaking is a bit rusty when I arrive back in Japan after many months of not speaking Japanese, but it quickly comes back to me. I find the bigger problem is listening, depending on the voice of who's speaking.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Think of things that you can say, and say it to yourself, no need for others to talk to.

I've always been repeating Japanese words or phrases what I though were "cool"
Drama, hip hop, japanesepod words, I repeated all the sentences in toki wo kakeru shoujo deck also.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Don't type anything, don't think for too long how you can say it, but say it. Think of a presentation you would like to hold, about a topic you know very well, and write it down no matter the sentences being right or wrong. And then hold this presentation, with a microphone record it, and listen to it once you are done. Again, stop thinking, because if you know the topic, you should be able to talk about it. Speak about the weather, the temperatures, and what not - to yourself, if you don't have anyone to speak to. Or you don't want to speak to others.

This sounds like good advice, but don't try hard . Just put youself in a situation in which you will speak/will have to speak. FE, I just can't resist talking on skype when a Japanese person offers to have a call.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Because you never started using even the basics, even on your own, before really going out of yourself, talking to others even with errors and mistakes.

Making lots of mistakes = mastering the basics = feeling comfortable when speaking = win!

Nagareboshi Wrote:You can't expect to think in that language, because that comes all on it's own, some day. This has nothing to do with Japanese or Chinese, or German or Takalog, one day it will happen.

I've usually found that when I had input that was in Japanese, I would naturally think about it in Japanese. Fe, if I read a post in Japanese I would think about it in Japanese.

Hard to explain but maybe:

1 Read something in japanese
2 Think: What do you think about what you just read? what's your opinon? And try to do it in Japanese. you should have most of the suitable vocab activated from having just read the material.

-----


I can speak 4 languages quite decently and what I have found about myself is that certain languages have certain topics that are "highlighted"

When I think about schoolstuff, homework, history, math ->Estonian

When I think about learning Japanese + srsing and AJATT-> English

When I think about:
what dramas I'm going to watch, or how should I name a computer folder( my pc-s in jap), what do I think about Igo, what did I do with my japanese friends on sunday? --> It all automatically happens in Japanese.

Every language I speak has it's own "comfort zones" and I think you just have to widen your Japanese comfort zone. Speaking with friends will evolve certain comfort zones, and won't do the same with other topics.

There is a good chance that you're not in your comfort zone in the topics you wanna speak about and perhaps that's what annoys you.

These are probably both too easy for you, but resources I know that are focused on (really basic) speaking are Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication and Pimsleur Japanese.

I found it really hard to start speaking because I'm not that chatty in English anyway.

I had a conversation partner for about a year and we'd meet up once a week for a couple of hours. That was the most helpful thing as we'd go and actually do stuff or bring some photos or something to talk about rather than just sit and be like 'we are going to have a Japanese conversation now'.

I also had conversation classes but I didn't get much out of those except for colloquial equivalents for grammar. I just wasn't good in group conversation.

Sentence patterns drills I did a lot of using the book Total Japanese Conversation. You'd get a grammar point and then it would give sentences to change so that they used that point. There's a grammar book as well which explains all the grammar. The conversation book contains the drills. I think the books start from beginner level and go up to about jlpt N3-ish grammar so maybe quite basic but if you want drills, there's many many drills.
http://www.amazon.com/Total-Japanese-Con...489358278X
http://www.amazon.com/Total-Japanese-Gra...pd_sim_b_1

It seems like you just have problems with expressing yourself spontaneously in Japanese, the groundwork is there but you just didn't practice that particular skill. From what you wrote I think you're trying to solve the problem by getting back to basics (which I believe you have already) while avoiding the real problem... lack of practice. You want to learn how to talk to people by reading books and doing grammar drills... sounds crazy no matter what language you're trying to master. Ask a 5yo about his/her proficiency at book reading or how many grammar exercises he/she has done over the last weeks

I know you said you don't want such advice but I'll still give it to you because this is what you need (not the stuff that you wrote), start speaking & writing. Be prepared to make a lot of mistakes at first and embrace them, not fear them. Find a pen pal, start with just exchanging mails, once you're up to it move to live chat, after that its Skype territory. You will be reviewing your basics as you go anyway but at least this way you'll also get some real practice too.

I barely started this whole pen pal thing and already I can see some improvement, despite having over a year of weekly Japanese practice. Its just that simple, practice, practice practice... and so on.

thurd Wrote:Be prepared to make a lot of mistakes at first and embrace them, not fear them.

Don't underestimate the usefulness of mistakes.

Once I said 「あらかじめに」　when talking to someone else, my other friend shouted 「あらかじめだよ！！！」from other part of the table with a slightly angry tone.

I've never made the same mistake since.

yeah, seriously... i'm looking for resources, not advice to "just talk"!!!!!!!! That really isn't going to help me right now.

i think one of the problems is probably that i never DID cover the basics properly... i just srsed a bunch, and listened & read... consequently, my output grammar is pretty poor, and so it's difficult for me to construct sentences.

EDIT: sorry if i sound a bit pissed, thanks for your responses anyway

Knowing a lot of vocabulary, collocations, grammar etc helps a lot, but it's all useless if you don't practise. Drills might be of some use, but are isolated grammar/sentence patterns going to carry you through an entire spontaneously created dialogue? Over half your utterances will be words and short phrases.

Saying you spoke for three months with no benefit... but actually you didn't speak any Japanese is a complete non-argument. If your friends speak English, then look online. 90% of the Japanese I speak to have absolutely no interest in actually trying to speak English, even if they are "studying" it.

In my experience, the best thing is consistency. Even if you did speak a lot during some random three-month interval, you're probably still going to suck if you haven't spoken for a long time. I've made more progress in the last few months than in the last year and a half because I've been speaking at least 3-4 times a week. You constantly review to remember kanji and vocabulary, and speaking takes just as much regular effort.

One thing that doesn't take much effort that might help is shadowing. If you can't be bothered with structured daily shadowing of the same materials, just try repeating a lot of stuff you listen to. If you can get your mouth used to fluently producing sounds, and make pronunciation as autonomous as possible, you can save a lot of 'processing power' for recalling words and what not.

Edit: Also, if you're not doing it: IM, IM, IM! It's about as close you can get to speaking without actually doing it and way more motivating than drills!

IceCream Wrote:consequently, my output grammar is pretty poor, and so it's difficult for me to construct sentences.

What helped my English a lot was taking a book that I would usually read and just read it, quickly analysing every sentence/it's grammar, analyzing whhy something is the way it is. This really helped me, if you believe my words.

Resources you need: I'm sure you have books that you read

I get the impression that you're looking for the magic textbook or something, but there are numerous ways of achieving what you want.

Icecream, don't take this the wrong way but I think pretty much all the ideas you listed in your first post are bad ways to improve your speaking, because they all seem to be based on memorisation of pairs of equivalent English and Japanese. You may pick up some vocabulary and a handful of useful conversational expressions this way which is of course always a good thing but the actual act of speaking will not be trained by these activities. This is because serious conversation moves beyond stock phrases and grammar patterns very damn quickly. Speaking ability is an extension of thinking ability which itself comes from slow the mastery of basic grammar and vocabulary that is best trained by listening, reading, conversation and writing. Focusing on any of these activities will improve your conversation ability because they train your ability to think in japanese, for both comprehension and output. If you want to practice conversation, just open up skype or find someone on sharedtalk. Just having a chat dialogue open while you're doing something else, say listening to japanese TV will start to add up if you're consistent. Listen to Javizy.

I think everyone says "just talk" because it's really the only way to improve.

Vocab, grammar, listening etc are all building blocks that can be studied with "resources" and will help conversation to some degree, but in the end you just need to do it.
It's just like you'll never be an olympic weightlifter just by studying about it.

You don't need a solid grammatical foundation to speak (though it of course helps). I was having pretty good conversation LONG before I could ever read a book or understand TV in Japanese, thanks to working at a Japanese restaurant and dating one of the staff.

Re: All your Japanese friends want to speak English...
Get different friends. Of all the JP friends I have, maybe only one speaks English to me, and that is because she is a former student who is very fluent (and even then we both code switch).

Since last month I've been going out with different JP friends 4 or so times per week and never speak a word of English. Last night I went to a friend's hole in the wall bar where there was a private 百物語 event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyakumonogatari_Kaidankai). Spent a few hours drinking and telling each other ghost stories with the lights off. Pretty educational (for me, the only foreigner, anyways) without the whole "lets practice language" vibe that really turns many people off.
Like anything else social, it's just a matter of getting out there and finding what you want.

Probably a good start is making friends outside of an academic environment (most of mine are from bars, mixi, the guesthouse I lived at for a bit, or met through other friends). Being outside Japan makes that a bit more challenging though I'll admit.

jettyke Wrote:

thurd Wrote:Be prepared to make a lot of mistakes at first and embrace them, not fear them.

Don't underestimate the usefulness of mistakes.

Once I said 「あらかじめに」　when talking to someone else, my other friend shouted 「あらかじめだよ！！！」from other part of the table with a slightly angry tone.

I've never made the same mistake since.

I was staying at a friends house and needed to wake up at the same time as them. I meant to say 起こしてください　「おこしてください」 (please wake me up) but instead I said 犯してください 「おかしてください」　(please rape me).

On the bright side, I was woken up at the desired time.

Wow, no offence everyone but I think the room is in need of serious introvert sensitivity training. I highly recommend the article "Caring for Your Introvert" from The Atlantic. It addresses many of the major misconceptions non-introverts have about introverts and it's a quick and enjoyable read. I highly recommend it for both introverts and non-introverts alike.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...vert/2696/

Anyways, as a fellow introvert, I really like the ideas IceCream came up with. IceCream: I say just try them out, see what works, and report back. I think you're a few months ahead of me in your studies so I'm not in a position to give too much advice but I will be very interested to hear how these strategies work out and what resources you find.

kiriyama Wrote:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...vert/2696/

Offtopic, but wow! I haven't seen English of this high level since Nest0r's scientific posts

As a fellow introvert, I practically never talked with Japanese people until I was fluent.

kiriyama Wrote:Wow, no offence everyone but I think the room is in need of serious introvert sensitivity training. I highly recommend the article "Caring for Your Introvert" from The Atlantic. It addresses many of the major misconceptions non-introverts have about introverts and it's a quick and enjoyable read. I highly recommend it for both introverts and non-introverts alike.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...vert/2696/

Anyways, as a fellow introvert, I really like the ideas IceCream came up with. IceCream: I say just try them out, see what works, and report back. I think you're a few months ahead of me in your studies so I'm not in a position to give too much advice but I will be very interested to hear how these strategies work out and what resources you find.

It's good article

kiriyama Wrote:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...vert/2696/

Excellent article. Thank you!

Now that I recall it, one Japanese exchange student was shopping with 2 other Japanese friends on the first day of coming here. Then, she suddenly dissapeared without saying anything. And they found her sleeping in the dormitory later. The dormitory was something like 15 minutes from the department store...

There also happened 1 other similar case to her (that I know of).