Hi All,

I'm now starting to meet a conversation partner once a week and I realized a major weakness of mine is not keeping the conversation in Japanese. My current conversation partner is better at English than I am Japanese, and we end up speaking English like 80% of the time. Of course, some of this is just forcing oneself to not speak English, but sometimes I feel trapped and really don't know how to express anything or ask how to express what I want to (or how to get the conversation partner to reiterate themselves but in different words, etc).

Feel free to suggest things at all levels... As embarrassing as it is, my literacy and input is decent (2Kyuu level), but I hardly ever ever ever speak so, quite naturally, I suck at it This has to change!

Thanks

K.

The way I solved this problem is by finding people who spoke worse English than my Japanese.

But, you could always just force yourself to speak more Japanese. It's really hard to do though, because you get all flustered in situations where you can't express what you want to. Write it on your hand or something ("Speak Japanese 50% of the time!"), haha.

Learn techniques to describe what you want to say without saying it.

For example, if you don't know how to say watch, just say something like "I want to buy a new.... that thing you look at on your arm when you want to know the time". Your partner will say "watch?" and you will have learned something while keeping the speaking in Japanese.

Also, make friends who aren't just friends of convenience due to mutual language desires. They'll probably be better friends anyways.

There was a really useful thing I read (maybe a textbook I have in pdf but I don't remember) about what Jarvik7 mentioned.

It teached you the use of mono, koto and things like that to express.

The thing to write letters (pen), the action of not going to class (absentee...) and stuff like that. I think if you use that you might avoid some freeze-outs.

Making friends with English speaking Japanese people can lead to meeting other Japanese people who don't speak english. But really just make friends. If you're in the position of having to speak, your ability will gradually go up. If you have no need to speak in Japanese, then there isn't really any reason to try and up that ability. It will go up with your comprehension ability anyway.
I've done the language exchange thing before for both japanese and chinese and it's largely a waste of time, except as a contrived way of meeting new people. If you really want to be "taught" though, you're better off hiring a tutor who knows what they're doing.

Drink. It actually helps quite a bit. It may not be the optimal time to learn new things but you can practice what you do know with less hesitation due to shyness, fear of failure or getting tongue tied over small grammar points.

[Katsuo]

jobhuntingman3 Wrote:There was a really useful thing I read (maybe a textbook I have in pdf but I don't remember) about what Jarvik7 mentioned.

This book, chapter 2, maybe: 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese

You could try taking something with you to talk about, like holiday photos or something. Then you can have a think about what sort of things you want to say before you meet up.

thisiskyle Wrote:Drink. It actually helps quite a bit. It may not be the optimal time to learn new things but you can practice what you do know with less hesitation due to shyness, fear of failure or getting tongue tied over small grammar points.

Yes, drinking works great. Most of my friends I either met when out drinking, or became better friends with because we go out drinking together. None of them speak English (at least to me).

It's not just a social setting, but people are more friendly and less inhibited when they've had a few - the perfect language learning environment! Noisy bars are good for those with slightly higher levels since you have to fill in the blanks and try to read lips.

My language partner tries to force/embarrass me into using Japanese. Heh. Maybe yours could do the same?

Jarvik7 Wrote:Learn techniques to describe what you want to say without saying it.

For example, if you don't know how to say watch, just say something like "I want to buy a new.... that thing you look at on your arm when you want to know the time". Your partner will say "watch?" and you will have learned something while keeping the speaking in Japanese.

Jarvik, I think this is exactly what I'm interested in. What everyone is saying in response is helpful but more or less already hit upon. I try to only meet with language partners that I have hopes for actually becoming good friends with, I bring articles I read of interest to me to our meetings and try to discuss them and ask questions about them, I try to force myself to ask all the simple things I know in Japanese, etc.

The other thing that comes to mind is that post on AJATT about being able to describe and state all the basics first as one of the most important abilities. I agree pretty whole heartedly in this regard as this being a crucial ability.
(http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...the-basics)

Speaking is a skill just like any other part of the language and I've only really studied input-comprehension stuff which is going quite well, but now I'm looking for an organized or systematic set of descriptive phrases that could be applied to a lot of situations.

A random question I came up with since I started doing J-J dictionary/anki study is "what is the minimal set of language necessary to describe all other language?", which I'm only mentioning because I think it's an interesting linguistic question and is moderately pertinent to this.

When a kid asks me "what does 'eccentric' mean?" I realize I explain (as best I can) the definition of a relatively sophisticated word with very minimal and basic statements. I'm kind of targeting a similar goal in Japanese, but instead so I can express the (operational) definitions of verbs/nouns/emotional statements in hopes of getting the "proper" word told to me or simply for the sake of being understood and not depending on English.

Anyway, thank you all for your comments thus far!

wccrawford Wrote:My language partner tries to force/embarrass me into using Japanese. Heh. Maybe yours could do the same?

How does you language partner do that?

you could try joining pm215 & me with our speaking practise project...

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7817

i have exactly the same problem as you...

IceCream Wrote:you could try joining pm215 & me with our speaking practise project...

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7817

i have exactly the same problem as you...

This seems like a fun/productive project, but I'd have to order the book from the UK and it's already somewhat expensive!... I have the White Rabbit shadowing texts, but those aren't so thematically organized.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Learn techniques to describe what you want to say without saying it.

For example, if you don't know how to say watch, just say something like "I want to buy a new.... that thing you look at on your arm when you want to know the time". Your partner will say "watch?" and you will have learned something while keeping the speaking in Japanese.

There is a section in the A Dictionary to Intermediate Japanese Grammar titled "Conversation Strategies." The strategies covered are: Aizuchi (back-channel response), Fillers (そう、ね～、あの・・・、なんていうXだったっけ？etc), Rephrasing (what you mention Jarvik), Topic shift & Topic Recovery, and Avoiding decisive expressions.

Rephrasing was a big one for beginners, while the others are more for sounding natural. The rephrasing strats might seem pretty obvious to some:
a) "A common way to rephrase a noun is by means of a noun modification. Ex: Person can't remember the word げた、「ほら、日本人が着物を着る時ははくものがあるでしょ。あれ何て言ったかな。」「ああ、下駄のことだね。」

b) When rephrasing a verb or adjective, use more basic words or phrases. (IMO this is a developed skill, because rephrasing to other "routes of description" is difficult on-the-fly.) ex: Person doesn't know/remember 放送 「このFMクラシック番組は毎日同じ時間に放、放、あのう、聞けるんですか。」　Is this FM classic program broad, broad, ah, can we hear it everyday at the same time?

c) When the speaker can't get to the word he wants, he can use ~こと・ひと・ようす,etc をなんと言いますか。 ex: Speaker can't remember/doesn't know the verb nesugosu (oversleep) 「朝、予定より遅くまでねることを何と言いますか。」「【寝過ごす】といっます。」

kodorakun Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:you could try joining pm215 & me with our speaking practise project...

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7817

i have exactly the same problem as you...

This seems like a fun/productive project, but I'd have to order the book from the UK and it's already somewhat expensive!... I have the White Rabbit shadowing texts, but those aren't so thematically organized.

well, i'll also write the questions down each week if you want to join in. You'll have to find more of the vocabularly for yourself to answer the questions, but owning the book isn't really necessary to answer the questions either, since the answers are about your own situation or something you can find out about elsewhere...

vix86 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Learn techniques to describe what you want to say without saying it.

For example, if you don't know how to say watch, just say something like "I want to buy a new.... that thing you look at on your arm when you want to know the time". Your partner will say "watch?" and you will have learned something while keeping the speaking in Japanese.

There is a section in the A Dictionary to Intermediate Japanese Grammar titled "Conversation Strategies."

Thanks! This is the sort of info I was hoping to find reference to. I even have that dictionary on my shelf but I never noticed those sections (DOH!).