Since I’m new around here I will also use this thread to introduce myself and say hi
I am a total beginner who just started to learn japanese and is considering going to Japan late next year. I recently befriended a really nice japanese couple and we’ve agreed to do some language exchange: I’ll help them to improve their English and they will teach me some Japanese.
Considering that my knowledge is limited to some anime-learnt random words and what my newly achieved lvl. 3 on WK might have passed to me, how you think I should face this speaking/listening practices? What should I focus on learning? To sum up, how should a complete beginner start learning to speak and understand Japanese?
Any tip is welcome and appreciated beforehand.
Oh, and congrats for this super-cool community that you’ve created over here!
I’m not sure if this is actually helpful since our situations are pretty different, but my approach has been to work on vocab, grammar and listening until I get to a point where I can both understand and produce at least legible simple sentences… then I start practicing on italki…
But you’ve got a partner lined up already and probably wants to start speaking as soon as possible…
I guess what I’ve found to be the most useful personally is learning basic grammar and using the Core10/iknow.jp vocab + sample sentences since they have spoken audio.
These tend to drill themselves into your ears on repeated listening so they both serve as useful context for words when you hear them, and a baseline for your own speech I think…
Depending on how DIY:y you feel you can either just pay for iknow.jp, download a Core6k deck and try to listen to the spoken sentences/words before you read them, or you could do what I’ve done and tweak the template a bit so you have just a spoken word on the front side and a spoken context sentence on the back.
Or, since you do have the native speaker already lined up, another approach could be to go with this guy’s routine, I haven’t tried it, but he makes it sound cool
