This was so unexpected. And this phrase has been said about my house a good few times recently, so I laughed. 
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ナニ？！？！
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OMG I forgot that part, too, I’m dying over here. Oh god *catches breath *
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Hopefully they can help you out! :o Good luck!
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My speaking skill isn’t good but I’ve noticed my listening skills have gotten really good at least!
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I guess this is pretty much “just do it”, but for me what kinda helps is to book the lesson and then let future-me suffer the consequences!
The booking process in itself isn’t really that stressful, but once booked I know I’ll actually follow through even if I don’t feel like it 
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It can help if you shift your goal for a lesson from qualitatively performing Japanese well (I hope to speak fluently/with good grammar this lesson) to quantitatively performing Japanese a lot (I hope to speak at least 5 different full sentences, and ask at least 5 different questions/speak only in japanese for at least 5 minutes). Ultimately, the point of speaking is communication, so any communication, even if its ungrammatical and unnatural, as long its intelligible, is a win for you.
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I agree! More than improving my speaking ability (which it has), I feel that the greatest benefit of regular conversation practice has been to make me feel much more comfortable speaking even though I make a lot of mistakes!
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Mistakes serve as triggers. They allow you to identify what you don’t know so that you can fix it. If you never try, you’ll never realize what you don’t know 
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Sounds familiar. I think it was part of the Ice Skating Manga Takeuchi Sensei drew… Well it worked for the protagonist.
@Conan: On stage or on a podium, just imagine the audience is sitting there naked. 
Forgot to update ya’ll, but I DID IT :'D I found a really nice teacher and we’ve had some awesome lessons together! It makes such a difference talking with a native speaker and having them be able to teach you, I feel like I learn so much with each session.
It was definitely nerve wracking at first, especially since my Skype didn’t work and I had to use my phone :'D But she was super patient, understanding, and not at all judgmental.
If anyone is feeling anxious like I was, or if you’re on the fence, it’s worth pushing through! (Try using some of the awesome advice from all the amazing people in this thread, it really helped me!)
Cheers ya’ll! Thanks so much again for the help <3
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it’s probably not only social anxiety that hampers you, it’s also self-consciousness.
start by writing short texts and read them aloud until you feel you get out the words without a hitch. read kid’s stories out loud, or 昔話 like 桃太郎.
the next step would be to record yourself while reading, then listening to the recording. you’ll have to do that often, depending on how much you hate your voice, but it’s important that you get used to your voice speaking in japanese.
then talk in front of a mirror. look at your mouth moving while your speak, watch your body language. get totally used to this to the point where it’s perfectly normal. this part is the hardest and will eliminate your self-consciousness completely.
beginning speakers usually have times when they miss a word or a grammar point and freeze. if you feel you’re getting lost in your own speech, stop. use something like というか to bridge between your aborted sentence and something similar, but shorter.
take a step back from what you’re trying to say.
“i had a headache after work yesterday, and since there’s no doctor close-by, i went to a hospital to get some meds” is what you want to express. if you cannot do that, do it in chunks.
“after work i had a headache. there’s no doctor near to my home. i went to a hospital instead”.
this gets the meaning across just fine, and doesn’t sound “stupid”.
learn to use words like 物、こと、場所、状態. you don’t know what a fishing rod is in use, 魚釣りのやつ works just fine. 病気な人の行くところ is great. 車を直してくれる人 is zero problem. we do this in our own mother tongue, and japanese people do it as well.
それにさ、あれってなんだっけ、ほら・・・雨の降ってるとき使うやつ、単語忘れた
this is better than freezing and shutting up.
there’s more tricks, like “building islands of competence”, where you work out phrases and vocab for a certain field/situation, like “at the doctor”, but those might not be necessary, depending on your overall level (which i don’t know).
good luck
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I do this all the time, and I also text in Japanese to my fluent friend. That is great practice for me because I get to read the texts before I send them and have to write them in my mind before I write them for real. This also prepares me to speak those sentences later when my friend follows up on the texts with speech.
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Thanks for the advice! For me personally, it’s not all all self-consciousness. I know I suck at Japanese and I’m gonna suck for a long time. It was really just mustering up the courage to talk to someone xD
Those are great practice tips though, thanks for sharing ^^
Have you looked into HelloTalk? You might like their service
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And your story is why I say everyone should do an iTalki lesson, even if they don’t intend on continuing with them. A lot of us go months or even years into learning Japanese without speaking face to face with a native in the language that we’re learning. But how you feel after that conversation is magical.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that the little mistakes you make and getting things swapped around is found to be super cute to the Japanese. Soak that up before you get too good. lol
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I’ve pretty much always been talking to natives, so never really had that first “Whoa I’m doing it!” moment, however, I got into a situation where I needed to call somewhere to make a reservation for something with no way around it. I was sooo nervous. Called about 5 different places before I was finally able to make my reservation, but when I did, I jumped around hooting and hollering for a good 10 minutes. lol
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