Ah! I wanted to say something else. Production is generally the last step in language learning. @Windgreen ‘s comment reminded me of this.
There is learning (grammar, vocabulary, etc), practice, noticing, and production. An example of noticing is when you see the kanji you have been reviewing in wanikani in a manga or hear it in an anime. Hearing or reading vocabulary/grammar many times helps you remember the meaning but you also learn when it is appropriate to use it. It takes a lot of repeating and noticing to then produce vocabulary or grammar correctly. But production is the last step of ‘learning’ vocabulary or grammar in another language.
Input is important for reading and listening, but for speaking and writing output is really important. Learning, noticing, practicing, and producing are not linear. I think learning a language is more cyclical (which can be really frustrating). Don’t feel discouraged about having a humbling conversation. I have them at least every 2 weeks. But I use to have them every day. Just keep practicing!
i need to do more of these when i go back to tutoring. When my and my partner were on our honeymoon, we went to a bog standard restaurant and were looking for seats… I was doing alright until she asked smoking or non smoking （喫煙か？禁煙か？） and I, who had never heard the terms before, completely froze up, at which point my wife had to swoop in.
My husband does a fair amount of swooping lol. But he usually repeats what they asked and sometimes adds a gesture to help with the meaning, giving me the opportunity to answer (very gentlemanly and teacherly of him). But it is really hilarious when he repeats it and I have just never heard the vocabulary before.
I did an average of 4 italki lessons a week for about 4 months. Some of them were half an hour right after I woke up and got some coffee in me. Some were right before I went to sleep. The first lessons were, of course, embarrassing. But, I stuck with it, and found the right italki teachers. Then one day, 4 months in, I went to an event in my American city, held entirely in Japanese and attended by mostly Japanese people and was shocked at how much I understood and that I was actually able to converse naturally with my table mates. For me the trick was finding the right italki teachers (I tried a bunch) and just sticking with it.
Normal. Those massive efforts to get all things together: new words, new grammar, new adverb, words order, suddenly remembering that WK vocab being used, and so on.
I have 1-hour twice weekly lesson via discord. My sensei is so good that she asks proper questions and inquires more when needed. 30 minutes talk and then 30 minutes grammar with more talks to emphasize the grammar points.
For the past few weeks I’ve been doing AI chats and lessons with Langua (LanguaTalk). It’s my first output practice, and in spite of it being “only AI”, I’m finding it valuable to get my brain juices flowing trying to figure out the words to say, trying to recall vocab and grammar to some extent, saying things in any old way I can, and then getting interesting AI feedback (not just in the conversation itself, but in the “report” at the end). It’s MUCH cheaper than real-life lessons, and of course not as good, but comparatively on a per-cost basis I find it a good deal, plus you can take your time formulating a response in your head, so it’s like an “in-between” solution for practice. I definitely recommend it. (I’m WK level 25)
PS - It’s also fun to tease the AI with outlandish things, like telling him I saw a monkey riding a hippo or a whale flying through the desert sky! You can definitely have a bit of silliness that you probably wouldn’t otherwise do.
I had similar trepidations as I prepared for visiting Japan: all my studying had been focused on reading and my capacity to speak was non-existent. Despite that, I acquitted myself well as party spokesman and even got asked how long I’d lived in Japan, which is an SSS-tier nihongo jouzu I’ll treasure always.
Here’s what worked for me:
I had a goodly vocabulary from studying kanji, and I had a reasonably firm grammar foundation from Bunpro. Recognizing words made it easier for me to guess the meaning of a sentence even if I didn’t understand the grammar, and understanding grammar let me guess the meaning of any words I didn’t recognize.
I studied specific “scripts” on YouTube so I could anticipate, recognize, and answer questions when checking into hotels, buying snacks at a konbini, &c
I used a little bit of Duolingo to round out some “conversational” Japanese scenarios.
I used a pitch-accent plug-in when studying vocab and practiced saying each word aloud whenever I typed it in. I also repeated each sentence in Bunpro with the same intonation as their voice actress. I got told my accent was really good (for a foreign tourist, presumably), so this talking-to-myself practice seemed to help make my speech intelligible.
My weakness was still understanding all the things that could potentially be said in a completely unbounded conversation, so I’d initiate conversation whenever possible so I could steer it towards areas where my understanding was strongest or ask (especially yes/no) questions I’d be able to understand the answers to
If something unexpected came up, I’d quickly look up normative ways of phrasing it on my phone before beginning conversation
Sometimes, people replied in English, in which case I’d take the hint and continue in English myself. “Eigo jouzu!” is amazingly powerful; responses varied from uproarious laughter to pride to stunned silence. I was surprised how many people knew English or wanted to practice English; I certainly don’t know all the languages random tourists speak in my own country
The class I take is for foreign residents living in Japan. I highly recommend this course because it is free and they even send you textbooks. But you have to live in Japan. Here is a link for the information for applicants.
The class I take is for foreign residents living in Japan. I highly recommend this course because it is free and they even send you textbooks. But you have to live in Japan. Here is a link for the information for applicants.
Speaking used to be my worst skill, now, after a couple of years of italki lessons, it’s the one I’m the most comfortable with.
It takes some time to find teachers that are right for you, so just go through those 30 min sessions 1-2 times a week, until you feel like you found a match. Repeat until you identify 2-3 teachers you’re happy with, and then just rotate between them. After 3-4-5 months, update to 60 min sessions. I don’t make any specific plans for those sessions, or ask for anything more than 普通の会話. Wherever it takes me. But we end up doing lots of different things anyway, from grammar drills to reading and writing haiku, from Tokyo museum impressions to speculating about who was really behind Oda Nobunaga’s murder. So now it’s fun. A lot of fun.
What else is helping? Shadowing and podcasts. Comprehensible input doesn’t have to be boring, and now there are plenty of podcasts to choose from. If it’s difficult, use the ones with Japanese captions. If it’s still difficult, feed the podcast transcript to chatgpt and it will help you to make sense out of it. Then listen again. And again.
OMG, I super relate to that formal Japanese, which is said three times instead of changing the words/ form used, hoping that you will understand by the third time. I have found that only a handful of people I have interacted with actually know how to change the words used to make them easier to understand, rather than just reusing the same words at a slower pace.
I wonder if it’s because they learned it as a set phrase, or just can’t conceive of how to make it easier if it’s something they’ve heard all their lives
I can’t think of any English example, but I guess it would be similar to asking you to write the tip in America, but if you aren’t American, or have no idea what a tip even is, the waiter/ress would probably do the same thing and repeat the same phrase 3 times instead of connecting the confusion with pure lack of that linguistic knowledge
Edit to add: Maybe it would go easier if after the third reply saying something along the lines of “その言葉がわかりませんので他の言い方を使っていただきますか？” Like, sorry, I don’t understand that word, can you please say it a different way? because maybe that would make it click faster than “easy Japanese” if they assume they are already speaking easy Japanese
