It was nice to read your thread, Naevyah. I’m at a similar stage on trying to get off of my machine translation (“MT”) dependence on producing output.
I have been trying to write every day on Hello Talk and asking the natives to correct my writing. I’ve been doing this for about a month. (currently very MT-dependent) Their comments are so good, I have to keep a word file with what I wrote and their comments.
I STILL feel like I’m having a hard time with Japanese output. It’s a small percentage of the time (because I’m always in a hurry) that I FORCE myself to at least TRY to compose my sentences in Japanese before I paste my English idea into MT, review, edit and post.
One thing that’s also actually been helping with my output is that I’m forcing myself to record myself saying the Japanese whether I post or comment on posts of Japanese natives. I’m learning Vocabulary from their posts and my own comments (what I had wanted to say that MT had spit out). It’s painful, and I don’t sound good, but in a month, I can tell that I’m improving.
One Japanese teacher says recently “we are fluent in what we know”, which means that it’s easiest to produce output using what you already know. So I advise “riffing” off your lessons, making similar sentences and using Vocabulary that you know it are studying.
So far, I still can’t do more than 10 sentences in an hour
I started playing the bass again a few months ago and bass guitar blisters are the worst. And I keep breaking the skin from playing round-wound strings, but I don’t get the chance to play often enough for them to heal and hold up to more playing. So then I play and the skin breaks again and it’s this whole big thing.
I suppose Japanese is like that. You’ve got to practice through the initial adjustment period, and it’ll take longer if you don’t do it as often.
I have to say that I agree with this. When I took Japanese in college, production was mostly stumbling around in the dark or copying existing sentences and swapping a few words. This time, I’m putting output on the back burner until I finish WaniKani and I’ve done enough immersion practice to understand Japanese at native speed without (usually) needing a dictionary. I’d recommend the same course of action to any other learner. Starting production too early will build a lot of bad habits.
That is nice! Keep up the good work! I know the practice is a bit tough and taxing, but I guarantee you that it is also a worthwhile experience! If you are still having a hard time, don’t forget to break down Kanji into their simplest parts.
Your explanation about bass guitar blisters made me think of the song Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes One of the bands on top of my mind with memorable bass play.
Looking up at the band’s wiki, I just learned something new about the bassist!
In addition to his bass playing, Brian Ritchie is proficient at the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute. He acquired a Jun Shihan (shakuhachi teaching license) in March 2003 from James Nyoraku Schlefer, and his professional name is “Tairaku” (“big music” in Japanese).
Renshuu.org might work well for you. It’s free and its grammar learning is pretty similar to BunPro, but it doesn’t directly link to resources. It does have paths based on the JLPT, textbooks, etc though. It also has production practice with haikus and weekly (iirc) open questions. It also has vocab, counters, and kanji practice.
Off topic but if Deepl has your antive language I’d recommend using Deepl and not google translate.
I know that feeling. When that happens I’ll always try to write a few more sentences with that sentence structure. The next time I know how to write it because I looked it up makes it worth it in the end.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at it. I think I saw it in my recommended apps on Play Store.
I’ll check it out too, I’m mainly using google translate because the app has voice recognition, it’s quicker than having to type the sentence (but strangely, the voice recognition works better when I talk in Japanese than when I talk in my native language )
Renshuu is awesome but I discovered it later after I subscribed to several platforms. It’s really underrated only a few people recommend it, which I don’t know why.
Apologies: this is a DeepL lecture rant :roIl_eyes:
I also get annoyed that DeepL doesn’t give the readings WHICH I REQUIRE, so I usually use Google Translate. (Plus, I “practice dictation” on the handwriting recognition pad). Now… either Google Translate has improved in the past few months, or else I’m just getting better at selecting sentence structures that it can morph into Japanese. Because it’s gotten noticeably better. Also… For one sentence, GT did waaay better than DeepL. Lately (out of curiosity), I sometimes run things through both to compare. (I’m getting tired of people immediately lecturing me about DeepL when I say I use GT).
I had this sensei who was maniacal about journal writing. She wanted us to produce an A4 every week. Ugh. At the time in my learning, it was quite difficult for me to get the creative mojo going for journal writing. For me its a personal thing; I don’t write a journal in my native language [english] so its twice as hard for me to generate content in Japanese because the inspiration / excitement just doesn’t exist.
I do however enjoy generating talking points prior to every class as that is a way for me to chat with my fellow students and sensei !! They are mini-journals of a sort.
Good luck with your studies!
One of the bands on top of my mind with memorable bass play.
(but strangely, the voice recognition works better when I talk in Japanese than when I talk in my native language 
)
(please come “guest post” random factoids on my 
