So for the past couple of months, I've been getting private instruction after work, and it's been great. I feel like I'm making a lot of progress, but at the same time, my tutor has hasn't had the best availability (maybe meeting up about 5-6 times a month on average). That aspect of doesn't appear to be something that can be improved, so I'm wondering ... do people usually just get a second tutor in a case like this?

I can see some advantages (like being able to get multiple viewpoints onto the same question), but on the other hand it might be weird to try to have multiple lesson structures going in parallel (for references, I'm concentrating on conversation skills as much as possible)?

What do you guys think?

Edit: For reference, I would like to have two sessions a week at the least; when it's less than that I feel like I'm not moving fast enough.

Why not just find people to chat with on sharedtalk.com or similar? That way it's free.

I did read somewhere that having multiple language partners is better because that way you can surprise one with language you learned from the other. That way the partner is kept on their toes and has to constantly reassess your level rather than constantly treating you like noob and teaching you only what they think you ought to know (usually a low estimate).

Everyone also has their own speaking patterns and pet vocabulary. Whenever I make a new friend and hang out with them a lot it takes a little bit to get used to their speech (doesn't really occur with business speech or casual superficial conversation though it seems).

I may be completely wrong, but if you feel like you're not making progress if you don't see your tutor at least twice a week, I'd guess you're not studying properly on your own, and possibly not using your lesson time effectively either. Have you discusse this with your tutor?

IMHO, making Japanese friends is better than having a tutor.
But if there are hardly any Japanese people in your area, then
you need to deal with what you have.

For me, a tutor can never become a friend and that adds
an invisible wall that makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
The conversations feels simulated and/or forced.

My advice is to find the one tutor that works best with you.
And stick with them. Then, do your best to also get some
Japanese friends.

You'll find that a lot of the things you learn between tutors and
friends with cross-pollinate. Try your best to expand your horizons and
get involved with the local japanese community (if there is one).

If you want to meet twice a week, meet one day with your tutor
and another day with your friends.

FooSoft Wrote:I can see some advantages (like being able to get multiple viewpoints onto the same question), but on the other hand it might be weird to try to have multiple lesson structures going in parallel (for references, I'm concentrating on conversation skills as much as possible)?

Why would you want to do the same thing with the second tutor or get a second viewpoint on the SAME questions? If you are concentrating on conversational skills, I'm not sure how you're going to cover the same material, anyway.

Your tutors are going to have different strengths and it's up to you to use them to your advantage.

Find the tutor, find what works and if it doesn't, give it up. Explain the situation up front if you can; this might encourage the second tutor to try to approach things less conventionally.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Quote:I may be completely wrong, but if you feel like you're not making progress if you don't see your tutor at least twice a week, I'd guess you're not studying properly on your own, and possibly not using your lesson time effectively either. Have you discusse this with your tutor?

It's not that I'm not making progress, but rather that I'm not making progress in the area that I'm the weakest in. I'm decent enough at reading and writing to not feel crippled, know a good amount of vocab that I've mined (almost 20k at this point, of course that's recognition not actual use) but my conversation skills are not good. They sufficient to the extent that 95% of the conversation in the tutoring sessions is in Japanese, but overall listening/speaking is far behind reading for me. The reason I started getting tutoring was that I felt that I was hitting diminishing returns with respect to what I could do on my own.

Quote:Why not just find people to chat with on sharedtalk.com or similar? That way it's free.

This is an idea that I've thought about, but I just don't have the confidence to go and start talking to complete strangers in Japanese yet. Maybe I should just go and do it anyway though. Does it just usually work by splitting time half/half between English and Japanese or something?

Quote:Why would you want to do the same thing with the second tutor or get a second viewpoint on the SAME questions? If you are concentrating on conversational skills, I'm not sure how you're going to cover the same material, anyway.

I guess I phrased it a bit odd. It's more about receiving different critical input regarding what I'm doing right or wrong. Even though I'm OK with the grammar side of things, sometimes I overstress one thing, or make another thing sound overly grand without having the slightest idea that I'm doing this. I guess it feels like I'm kind of flying blind sometimes, so the more input to get my bearings the better.

Why don't you watch Japanese TV dramas with Japanese subtitles?
You're good enough at reading.

You can study the subtitles and since they are exact subtitles (i.e. the exact words
the actors are saying), everything is conversational (because all the words are spoken by the actors).

Incidentally, anyone have experience working with video or audio with tutors or language partners?

AlexandreC Wrote:Incidentally, anyone have experience working with video or audio with tutors or language partners?

Alexandre, yes I try to record the session I have with lang. partners.

Think it's easier to go back and review the session on video or audio recording vs. trying to write down words/phrases and interrupting the flow. Think I posted one of my sessions in a previous post.

Actually tonight we have a 1hr skype session with some 日本人and will be reading a drama and translating to english, so get in touch if anyone is interested. Think there might be space for one or two more 客様。

AlexandreC Wrote:Incidentally, anyone have experience working with video or audio with tutors or language partners?

It really depends on the conversation partner.
Some like it. Some don't. It's really trial and error
finding out someone that likes it.

Also, if you're in public, the background noise often
makes it difficult to hear the video/audio.

I usually convert the drama script into a PDF (using OpenOffice)
and use iAnnotate on my iPad to highlight, mark, and add notes.
The newest iOS has built-in Jap-Jap and Jap-Eng dictionaries
that works in all apps.

Also, I made a script to extract all the RTK kanji in a drama script.
Then, I add those kanji to RevTK and study them in my spare time during
the week.

AlexandreC Wrote:Incidentally, anyone have experience working with video or audio with tutors or language partners?

Let me rephrase.

Does anyone have any experience working with a tutor while using audio or video recordings as the main material used during the session? For instance, watching a clip or a scene from a movie or show and expanding on that.

In my experience, working from a drama script is easier.

Going through audio/video manually can be painfully slow
when you're with a conversation partner.

I don't know how to explain, but it feels like time moves
really slow when you're using a movie clip as an example with
your partner in public. Pausing/rewinding can get very annoying.
Also, very often, it's only the words that the conversation partner
really needs to see.

Also, something I've found is that the genre can matter sometimes.

Comedy and romance can have some very funny vocabulary that
will make your partner laugh like crazy. Even better is when you can
turns those funny moments into discussion topics on-the-spot.

The really serious "save-the-world" type shows didn't go to well
with my partners. Light and easygoing seems to be what works
best (as least with female conversation partners).

Try to go to deep and it might fry their brains.... ;-p

Also, like I said before, it can be difficult to hear the video/audio
when in public. The background noise from all the people talking
can make it really hard to hear. I've had times where it was next
to impossible to hear a video clip with my partner unless I turned it up
REALLY loud (and that attracts attention from other people).

I think having 2 tutors is a good idea.

Having Japanese friends and language partners is good too, but it's different from having a tutor, unless you treat your friends like a tutor I guess...

You've mined 20k vocab and you don't have the confidence to talk to random strangers in Japanese yet? That doesn't make any sense to me--that's a huge amount of vocab, even if it's just recognition.

Sounds like talking to random people is exactly what you need to do. You'll learn how to hold conversations pretty quickly if you try it a few times.

Tzadeck Wrote:You've mined 20k vocab and you don't have the confidence to talk to random strangers in Japanese yet? That doesn't make any sense to me--that's a huge amount of vocab, even if it's just recognition.

Sounds like talking to random people is exactly what you need to do. You'll learn how to hold conversations pretty quickly if you try it a few times.

Yeah, sounds pretty strange right? You're probably right though, I should just go and talk to random people even if I don't feel comfortable with it at first. Is sharedtalk what people generally use?

Yeah 20k is a lot. Could it be that you've emphasized reading quite a lot up to this point? Reading is a great way to collect a lot of words quickly, but you need to start getting used to hearing this vocabulary too. i.e. Build up your passive listening vocabulary. How is your listening comprehension? Can you understand japanese TV or radio well? how about anime?

Yeah, I've really only done reading (8 books so far: Toradora 1-2, Mardock Scramble 1 - 2, 1Q84 1-3, How to Argue and Win Every Time) and lots and lots of SRSing. Listening comprehension varies greatly. Some anime like "Working!!" I understand probably 95% of what is being said. In other shows it can fall to like 30%. Same goes for dorama and radio, just a lot of variation. I'm trying really hard to work on listening comprehension, but I don't have as good of a workflow set up for it as I did for reading yet.

I don't think you need a good workflow or anything. It sounds like you're doing the right things, reading a lot and expanding your vocabulary. Keep on going. Just try to incorporate more listening practice, maybe make that your emphasis for a while. For example you could give yourself the goal of watching a solid hour a day of Japanese TV or youtube or something, even letting the reading practice fall by the wayside if necessary. It seems to me, that with that kind of passive reading vocabulary, gaining listening comprehension should be like shooting fish in a barrel. In other words just keep on going. Other than that maybe introduce some different kind of reading material eg newspapers, internet forums, wikipedia etc. I also think japanese subtitled material would work well for you, though I could never be bothered finding jap subs for things.

FooSoft Wrote:Yeah, I've really only done reading (8 books so far: Toradora 1-2, Mardock Scramble 1 - 2, 1Q84 1-3, How to Argue and Win Every Time) and lots and lots of SRSing. Listening comprehension varies greatly. Some anime like "Working!!" I understand probably 95% of what is being said. In other shows it can fall to like 30%. Same goes for dorama and radio, just a lot of variation. I'm trying really hard to work on listening comprehension, but I don't have as good of a workflow set up for it as I did for reading yet.

Wow, you read IQ84? You are my hero. I don't say such things lightly, either. I've been studying Japanese for quite a while, and have only recently gotten to the point where I find my Japanese generally useful enough to do the things I want to do like watch TV, see movies, or read books. So the fact that you've read all those is pretty amazing to me. I'm struggling through Natsuo Kirino's I'm Sorry Mama right now, and I'm 34 pages in after something crazy like 2 weeks of reading. It's starting to go faster, but I dream of the day when I can say I've read even as many Japanese books as you've read.

You need to stop worrying so much, and find actual conversation partners. Sign up for something like Lang8 or other services that put you in touch with actual Japanese people. You don't need to pay a tutor for this stuff. There's more than enough people that want to talk to you for free. Sure they might not correct every single wrong thing you say, but that's not the point of a lot of conversation practice. The point of conversation practice is the pragmatic ability to actually communicate. Doing it artfully or in a grammatically correct way is secondary. You'll pick that up as you go.

FooSoft Wrote:

Quote:I may be completely wrong, but if you feel like you're not making progress if you don't see your tutor at least twice a week, I'd guess you're not studying properly on your own, and possibly not using your lesson time effectively either. Have you discusse this with your tutor?

It's not that I'm not making progress, but rather that I'm not making progress in the area that I'm the weakest in. I'm decent enough at reading and writing to not feel crippled, know a good amount of vocab that I've mined (almost 20k at this point, of course that's recognition not actual use) but my conversation skills are not good. They sufficient to the extent that 95% of the conversation in the tutoring sessions is in Japanese, but overall listening/speaking is far behind reading for me. The reason I started getting tutoring was that I felt that I was hitting diminishing returns with respect to what I could do on my own.

Ok that makes more sense now. Your lessons are more like conversation practice with corrections and feedback, right? If that's the case then I can see why you'd want more meetings.

You sound just like where I am now. My advice is, become friends with a few Japanese friends and just hang out with them. Also ask them to correct you on everything you say (a lot of people won't be willing to do this but some will). It's better as you can listen to how they speak,what they talk about, your in constant immersion and your having fun speaking,even if it's no where near-fluent. It builds over time but you will have speaking down in a few months.

I know my reading and listening are solid but not my speaking/writing. So what will it take to get good? Going into the areas your not so secure in. I remember when listening/reading were scary things and I almost felt like I wouldn't get anywhere but now I have no problems with reading,listening and learning more vocabulary/kanji. Same applies to speaking, you start from nothing but you keep building and building. You will get good but just give it time.