Hi All,

I'm trying to work on _creating_ the opportunity to say things I want to say. This is kind of a new mini-project as I'm about 3.5 years into Japanese study and have listening and reading down to a very satisfactory level, but I've neglected speaking so much that my speaking level is absolutely pathetic (it's a skill, if you don't practice it you won't learn it).

As an example, whenever I get coffee in Japan they always fill the cup up assuming that a manly adult will of course want their coffee black. I like cream and sugar in my coffee. Thus, one of my most commonly uttered phrases is this (I don't even know if it's right, but it gets the job done!):

クリームをいりたいので、満タンしないでください。

As another example, I like film and I like to ask people what movies they like and then who their favorite director is, which is almost 100% of the time a direct opener for me to say:

の本の映画の監督の中で最も有名なのは、何と言っても黒澤明だろう。

I got that phrase from a text book, actually, but it is personally interesting for me and it allows me to actually speak and practice the more sophisticated grammar point "何と言っても", with the hope being that if I get comfortable speaking and using that one phrase that a generalized sense of using that construct will develop.

Ultimately I would have one or two genuinely personally interesting and exciting things I _want_ to say for the top 50 or so spoken grammar points. If I got that down then I could brute force memorize them for output (as deadly a sin as that may seem, it's really NOT that much time wasted even if the endeavor doesn't work out) and use a variety of grammar with zeal.

Any thoughts? Any phrases you guys have loaded and ready to fire off that might be of general interest?

Thanks for your time!

頑張ろう！

K

On a very fast followup, if any people want to try and turn this into a study project, i.e. identifying common spoken grammar points and helping each other out in developing solid phrases, that would be awesome!

K.

kodorakun Wrote:On a very fast followup, if any people want to try and turn this into a study project, i.e. identifying common spoken grammar points and helping each other out in developing solid phrases, that would be awesome!

If you rely on other people writing the phrases for you, you risk ending up with much less powerful or useful sentences.

I would personally encourage you to do this project entirely orally. Think of what you need to express, look up the words as needed and practice saying it. If you forget, do it again later. This should also help you develop a type of flexibility that will become valuable whatever you have to say.

For some inspiration, here is a self-talk exercise -- http://tiny.cc/mac57

Alexandre, Thanks for the comment! Funny you mentioned that speaking routine -- as I read a lot of Japanese fiction one thing I find myself doing is talking to myself trying to explain the plot as if I were telling a Japanese friend. I don't do it with any dedicated schedule but now that I've seen your suggestion put out in a prescribed fashion I might try to be a bit more serious with it.

Just as a response to your comments about the necessity of creating sentences for oneself: I agree completely. My call for other people to post their sentences or thoughts was not so much to aggregate sentences but to see examples of what grammar is used in speaking. I don't think it's too much of a stretch or too bad a practice to take someone else's sentence and identify the grammar in use and then swap out the nouns/adjectives/verbs to make it a sentence that pertains to your life or interests, right?

I think you should buy "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication".

(http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence-...472&sr=8-1)

A lot of people like it.

Basically, all the beginner/intermediate level grammar you need to communicate
your ideas effectively. I think there might even be an Anki deck for it somewhere.

I own that book and read it and SRS'ed it. It was great, I liked it a lot. I guess my problem is just that I've been all about "input" and not about "output". The prescription of "just talk more" is kind of frustratingly simple, but I guess I'll just... keep at it.

for me output was solved with talking more, but it's hard because there's no real reason to do it here in the US.
it's easy to subconsciously imitate friends and stuff, especially when they make subconscious corrections, but that's not readily available in the US either.

plus there are situations where i just don't know what to say until i ask someone what the english equivalent is, or until i experience it in japanese. i had no idea refill was おかわり for the longest time.

I have a speaking exam coming up and I am worried about similar kinds of things, I have a little method that may help.

I randomly pick a topic I think might come up, for example 'Do you think cannabis should be legalised?' I then try to talk for a minute on this without any looking up of words or grammar points. After that I write down a few notes of what I came up with and note anything I wasn't sure of (for example I might write down 'Find out how to say "That's a very difficult question to answer"')

Then when I next see my language exchange partner I run any tricky sentences past her or ask her how to naturally say something in Japanese. I make a note of what she says and then learn it (you could learn this in your normal way).

I suppose the main thing is to just give it a go. If you don't have a language exchange partner either in 'real life' or on Skype, you should get one! Make sure you ask them to mercilessly correct you at all times! Otherwise, you could write up your speech and post it on Lang-8 for the people there to correct.

Hope that helps.

kodorakun Wrote:I own that book and read it and SRS'ed it. It was great, I liked it a lot. I guess my problem is just that I've been all about "input" and not about "output". The prescription of "just talk more" is kind of frustratingly simple, but I guess I'll just... keep at it.

Have you tried lang-8.com?

Basically, you type in your sentences and native speakers correct them.
In return, you can correct other people.

Many people make friends through lang-8.

I've liked lang-8 the best to meet friends, usually because you have some assurance that the other person really wants to learn English.

None of the people I've met from japan-guide have stuck with it and most of the posts there are "teach me English please, I can teach you Japanese" and they usually don't put in any work themselves to learn English, nor can they teach you Japanese effectively anyway.

Even with that said, unless they're down with role-play (not THAT kind of role-play) it can be hard to learn what to say in certain situations, especially with 敬語。 I hate 敬語, I really do.

lol I love keigo. it sounds so nice sometimes. I can't use keigo fluently (I have no experience in real life with this) but I love listening to keigo/keigo conversations lol.

kainzero Wrote:I've liked lang-8 the best to meet friends, usually because you have some assurance that the other person really wants to learn English.

None of the people I've met from japan-guide have stuck with it and most of the posts there are "teach me English please, I can teach you Japanese" and they usually don't put in any work themselves to learn English, nor can they teach you Japanese effectively anyway.

Even with that said, unless they're down with role-play (not THAT kind of role-play) it can be hard to learn what to say in certain situations, especially with 敬語。 I hate 敬語, I really do.

I need to find language partners that are down with the OTHER kind of role-play