Me and my pen pal exchanged instagrams! So that’s fun! She sent me voice notes, and I understood them immediately! I’ve gotten a bit of confidence in my listening comprehension
I then sent voice notes in reply… and oh my goodness, talking to myself has NOT been enough practice there’s something so embarrassing when even the Instagram transcript thing can’t tell what you’re saying… it’s also possible that because it’s a voice note and can be re-recorded I’m overthinking it.
I don’t want to put a load of pressure on her, so I was wondering if there were any good speech recognition resources that y’all know of? Or is this just a “you figure it out when needed” thing?
If I ever go to Japan, I’ll probably get a tutor in the months before my trip to get more speaking time in regardless. I’m sure this is a weak spot for a lot of people studying from other countries!
Question for people whos first language isn’t English: how far did you have to get before you felt more confident speaking basic English? Was it A1/2, B1/2 or C1/2? Any tips to calm panic from not wanting to be misunderstood for now?
I’d love to learn from your experience because I have never gotten to where I am with Japanese in another language, and I’m a little petrified on what to do!
I honestly can’t remember clearly. I still have situations when I’m not prepared and haven’t spoken English in a while, where I may stumble over the most basic of English sentences. I think it doesn’t go completely away if you are not in the habit of talking in that particular language regularly.
People are still generally better at deciphering what the person wants to say + your partner will have a lot of context to help them understand you (compared to some machine transcription). I wouldn’t worry too much. If you don’t try to jump into the deep end and embarrass yourself a bit, you will SEVERELY limit your chances to learn. If it’s a conversation face to face (via camera or in person) instead of over messages, you will learn to judge by the other persons answers and facial expressions if you are understood or not.
It’s SUUPER hard in the beginning and the only thing that makes it easier is to actually say things.
You can train your muscles a little by trying to shadow other speakers. Look for some podcast or similar, record yourself saying the same sentence with as close a pronunciation as possible, and compare the two recordings.
The best training is actual conversation though.
One thing that might help you improve your mindset, depending on your own experience, is to take the position of the listener in your mind. If you got a message from your Instagram friend, and it wasn’t spoken in a perfect English accent and had some mistakes built in, how would you feel? Would you be mad at her for even trying, or would you feel happy she actually tried and communicated with you?
If it’s not for something super important where a life depends on it, I’ve never met someone that was unhappy I tried to communicate with them in their own language. Doubly so if the other person also has some experience learning a language and knows the hardship.
I’m an English teacher (business English and other types of classes, plus I’ve taught in schools, over 15 years of experience). Confidence depends on a lot of factors, like the situation and your level, but also who you are speaking to. It’s easier when you know the person fairly well or it’s a teacher as they understand you will make mistakes.
I’m C1 Spanish (we live in Mexico) and I’m confident in daily situations but hate talking on the phone, plus accents from Argentina or non-Mexican Spanish slang. For my Japanese, I find it less stressful to have conversations with my teacher, who is very patient, than my Japanese husband, who is sometimes very impatient! (We still talk in Japanese, but I would bring up topics with more unknown vocabulary in English.)
Practice reading out loud and shadowing videos (repeat what the video says) to get more comfortable with the sounds and pronunciation of the language. Duolingo has Japanese pronunciation practice as well, but it’s a bit more limited.
It won’t teach you a great deal of vocab, or grammar, but it will help you build the muscle memory for speaking simple sentences and have basic conversations- once you acquire this ability, it’s very easy to build on it with studying or through immersion.
Thank you for the encouragement! It’s honestly a bit like re-experiencing how I felt when I started learning Japanese, so I definitely needed to be told this is normal
I’ll definitely try and do this. I’ve been using Comprehensible Japanese so I have access to a bunch of videos with face on speakers!
Yeah I can see that, when you’re close to someone you want conversation to flow and not be interrupted. I stutter sometimes or can’t find words in English (my one and only language lol) and my husband and I mutually get a little annoyed when it’s in the middle of trying to explain a train of thought!
Fortunately, my pen pal is under the (correct) assumption that I’m bad at Japanese, and we don’t talk every day I could tell by her voice notes she’s playing it safe on my level haha
there’s something so embarrassing when even the Instagram transcript thing can’t tell what you’re saying… it’s also possible that because it’s a voice note and can be re-recorded I’m overthinking it.