It happen to me a lot, when I having conversation with my private japanese teacher, I want to use some word I study with wanikani, as in “burned” it to memory (supposedly) and I just can’t bring it to me. I try to remember it and I lose my concentration in the process. If I’ll try to remember it during wanikani’s training, no problem, I’ll know it, but during real conversation - nothing..
Maybe you have any tips on how to strengthen the memory for quicker pull of words?
Maybe not a tip, but you just have to keep at it! The more output you do and the more that you use the words that you learned on wanikani, the faster you will get! And if there’s a phrase or word that you forget during class, later on in the class or day or week, try to use it again. And if there’s a word that you learn that you think will be useful to use during conversation, try to use it as soon as possible.
Different skills, different contexts.
Your experience is normal and generally, extra steps are required. Wanikani is for learning Kanji. The vocabulary is to support the Kanji learning. However, everything furthers - especially if you can apply your Kanji learning to reading (check the SatoriReader thread), you can boost input understanding that should lead to output skill. See also about shadowing.
If it’s a manageable number of words per 会話 session, make a note of them and review them - chances are they will then become more accessible as low(er) effort output.
It’s two different skills.
Wanikani trains recognition
What you need in conversation when you’re speaking is recall.
For people who are newer to language learning or some comparable skill it can seem like a small distinction to make. There are also plenty of cases where just by learning to recognize something you can recall it. But unfortunately the only way to reliably get good at recalling all words is to practice recalling them. You don’t need to be with a tutor to do this. Even writing something out in a Google doc or to chat gpt and attempting to recall words is enough to help you start improving.
Maybe it would help to have a list of 10 words written down and to send it to your teacher before class. In class, you could have some sort of bingo card challenge for 1. using the word and 2. using it correctly (which your teacher can verify). It depends if this is motivating for you: in my previous job, I taught primary school, and it could work well in a classroom setting.
Thats really interesting! thank you for the explanation
I agree.
Also, you can talk to yourself in Japanese. I watch a lot of Japanese news (I live in Japan). Sometimes I watch a segment where they interview people on the street about something and I try to answer the questions they ask.
Do some drills of conversation with some vocab from WK and keep doing your conversation. Whatever vocab that you use and rhe more practices, you will succeed more.
Maybe, this would help?