I’ve been studying Japanese for about 1 year now. I’m currently taking the JLPT N5 exam in December and Finished through Genki 1. I’m currently on Genki 2, but it’s very difficult for me. I would say I’m a strong N5 / borderline N4. The goal is to talk and communicate with other people. However, my speaking and listening is REALLY bad! It takes me a while to form sentences on my own without seeing them written out. I’ve taken 2 Italki lessons and they didn’t go well. I couldn’t say really anything besides some one liner statements. Am I just not ready for those lessons yet or should I focus my studying on something else? What do you think would be the best for me to improve the fastest?
You weren’t perfect from “go”? Time to quit. /S
Joking aside, the reality is there is no special pill that will make you magically better over night. If you wanna get better at listening/reading/speaking/writing, you have to do more listening/reading/speaking/writing.
Practice makes perfect.
One thing that might help is pick something simple, like your self-introduction, and record yourself saying it. And then do it again. And again, and again.
Have someone watch it and point out anything you’d like them to help you with.
Add to it, try creating new parts on the fly. There are lots of ways to do it.
Well then I would venture you may not be a “strong N5 / borderline N4” at listening and speaking. Which doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it means iTalki is probably the best thing for you at this time.
It means those lessons are what you need the most.
My Japanese speaking ability trails my listening comprehension by quite a lot, because I have many more opportunities to listen to native speakers (through online broadcasts, anime, news, sports, etc.) than I have to “produce” spoken language. However, each time that I have visited Japan (three trips, so far) I have been able to ‘get by’ with my barely-passable speaking skills.
I have found that it helps to be able to recite from memory certain lines from textbook dialogs that I had studied (even from long ago), retaining the basic sentence structure but modifying the words to fit the specific situation that I’m dealing with.
It also helps to plan out a variety of sentences ahead of time that I am likely to need. For example, the usual ones having to do with where I come from, how long I will be visiting (including which parts of the country), why I have studied the language (I have a ‘canned’ response about how and why it became a hobby of mine), foods that I like, and so on.
Of course you can’t plan out everything in advance, but you can cover a lot of territory where you can speak with some level of confidence. At the same time, you don’t want to give others the impression that you understand more than what you actually do - so it’s a bit of a balancing act.
But what I’d like to do to improve my speaking abilities is to do what some call ‘shadowing’, namely repeating the words of a recorded speaker, either via reading from a transcript in a book, or by playing back a sentence at a time from a broadcast or other online source over and over, trying to say the words at the same time as the recorded voice.
A major problem for me is that I still tend to try and combine Japanese vocabulary with English speech patterns - which can end up confusing a native speaker who hears the words that I speak but they feel that my speech is somehow ‘off’. I’ve had that happen before, which then causes me to go back to the sentence patterns that I’ve learned, in a way that is more natural for native Japanese speakers to understand. I still have a long way to go with that before I can truly become comfortable with proper speaking.
Well, I’m exactly the reverse. Maybe we should travel in Japan together, then I can do all the speaking and you can do all the listening.
I was gonna say “I don’t know how it’s possible someone could be good at speaking and bad at listening” then instantly thought of my parents… So the point still stands if we are talking about language learning.
I don’t know how it’s possible to be good at listening.
My brain simply just doesn’t want to process the incoming signal.
My brain hates names. So I’ll hear everything and then as soon as they tell me their name, my brain ducks and weaves, then throws it out like this guy makes LeBron cry.
I guess it would be hard to be good at conversing while being bad at listening, but speaking can be done solo (even in the presence of others).
there is no magic pill
keep at it
when I first started learning Japanese (~6 years ago) did a few things
but with respect to italki
make sure you keep up the regular practice
if you have a teacher or informal tutor you like
see if you can book a weekly same day/time regular lesson
but key thing is limit it to 30 min.
(if you have a teacher you like and they don’t do 30 min blocks, ask if they can do it for you, they can essentially schedule whatever works for them - so long as you both agree)
The hardest part about italki in the beginning for me was trying to find a teacher/tutor that would take a completely new learner (at the time I just started - barely learning hiragana)
In any case, after a while you’ll feel less stressed and can bump that time to 45 or 60 min.
It really helped when I wasn’t in the mood or not motivated
but knowing I had a paid lesson waiting and it’s only 30 min
was always happy I did it and finished
Also kept a journal and wrote down much of the stuff in the beginning, the teacher would type it into the chat (and I’d rewrite it later)
One thing that I did notice made a huge boost in my Japanese skills was one particular instructor was insanely strict. ZERO english. like uhhhh but if i I don’t know the words…
the instruction was find another way of saying the same thing. It took maybe 4-6 weeks but it really did force me to not flip back to english and did notice made a huge step change in what I could do. A good teacher is amazing! (albeit can be super frustrating )
I still have a regular call once a week that’s more casual and even if I’m not feeling it, by the end had a fun hour and it flew by! At one point I had 3 lessons a week but have dialed that back cuz life.
Just keep practicing! and practicing and practicing and ugh it’s a long long road
try to enjoy the journey!
part of the trick is to think in Japanese but how you do that w/o translating in your head
super easy to say but … oof!!! takes time - a lot of it!
Just two and you’re already freaking out? You should give yourself some slack.
Communicating is a skill in and of itself. Separate from understanding the language when spoken to. To break it down further. Listening and reading are also two separate skills, the same way writing and talking are.
If you haven’t practiced these skills, there is no way you’ll be good at them. So be kind to yourself and make all the early mistakes you need to in order to improve. Even if they’re frustrating, both during and in hindsight, because on paper you feel like you should know better. And likely while reflecting, you might find the spaces you’re lacking.
As frustrating as those feelings are, all they mean is that you know where you need to improve. Even if that where is extremely vast.
I’ve been diving straight into native material and circles since I started learning Japanese pretty much straight away close to a year and a half ago now. Even as recent as January, I was feeling incredibly frustrated that my communicative abilities were nowhere near my comprehension skills. I’d reflect back on stuff I’d said in hindsight and would be so annoyed that I didn’t say things this or that way. Or worse, even in hindsight, I wouldn’t know how to convey or bridge things the way I can in other languages.
And those moments helped me grow. The past month or so I’ve finally gotten to the point I can comfortably have long, fairly deep conversations about whatever the way I would in English. Music, games, culture, childhood experiences, even some politics. Maybe not perfectly. I still get corrected every now and again. Or ask “How do you say this again?” “What do you call that again?” But all of those moments are further steps upon the ones I have taken in the past. You don’t get there immediately, and even going fast can feel slow in the moment. Day by day nothing changes, but looking back things can be extremely different after all.
But really, the only answers for skills that need to be practiced is to practice them and not be too hard on yourself in terms of the inevitable frustrations you’ll feel.
Hey, would like to recommend group classes at JOI : https://www.japonin.com/
They’ve been running online classes for years - way before italki. I haven’t used them for some time because their class schedule and mine no longer align, but they are great at getting people to feel comfortable talking and they are fabulous at explaining difficult concepts in simple Japanese - they will only resort to English if all else fails. If you’re nervous, start at a level below what you think you actually are and if they think you should level up, they’ll tell you. You may be taking a “grammar” lesson but you’re simultaneously practising reading, speaking and listening.
They have a few teachers - try out several to find the one you like. I liked some more than others, but only disliked one.
They do offer private classes but they’re more expensive and in my opinion much less fun.
I knew a Japanese guy who was exactly the same
You could always take an online Japanese class. I’m doing one at the moment and learning to speak in a structured way is very helpful. Plus being with other learners gives you confidence as everyone makes lots of mistakes. However I think Japanese sentence structure is so different from English, that in the end it will require a huge amount of repetition before feeling natural. Certainly I am a very long way from that!
I noticed that you didn’t say anything about Kanji or Vocabulary, are studying those on another platform besides the Genki textbooks?
My experience with learning Russian is that the biggest improvements with the language came from lots and lots of reading of simple sentences from sources like Tatoeba after getting a grounding in the alphabet and vocabulary. But even when I could read/write I still had a very poor ability to speak/listen until I practised those
duck.ai:
The term you’re looking for is “transfer of learning” or “transfer of skills.” This concept refers to the idea that skills learned in one context may not necessarily transfer to another context as expected. When people assume that skills in one area will easily apply to another, they may encounter the “transfer paradox,” where the overlap between skills is less than anticipated. This can lead to the realization that different skills may require distinct knowledge and practice, even if they seem related at first glance.
I’m in the same boat as you. I’m really trying to work on my listening for the N5 because I don’t feel particularly prepared.
I don’t know how you’re studying, but you’ve just got to get some opportunities for speaking practice to be able to improve. It has been suggested to me that I start narrating my day in Japanese when I’m alone. I take online and in person group classes specifically so that my learning will include some speaking. Where I take classes also has monthly “chat” opportunities that i really need to get my self to take advantage of.
Maragoto has a text that focuses a lot more on a speaking, and if you aren’t able to use it in a class environment it has a really good website that includes an opportunity to record yourself and play back so you can hear your speaking, so if the italki thing is too nerve wracking for you at the moment I’d suggest checking that out.