Hi I’m just looking for some advice on tutoring and how to approach this situation below.
My wife has surprised me this year for Christmas by reaching out online and somehow finding a Japanese person in our small town to spend half an hour each week tutoring me in person.
They are not a tutor per say, but do work in education (not language related). They saw my wife’s post and thought it would be a fun opportunity to help me in learning Japanese. There is no structure in the meetups and they will just help me in with whatever I ask them to.
I feel like I’ve been thrown off the deep end here though, as I was happy cruising along self studying. And feel I’m not at the level to start output yet.
I’m not using a text book but instead working through a structured flashcard app called Jalup along with Bunpro and Anki. So I feel like it will be difficult to help me with my studies.
My main goal in Japanese is to be able to have conversations, but I wanted to work through and finish Jalup and Bunpro before starting output.
To give context in my ability. Low N4:
Finished Anki core 2k
Finished RTK 1 year ago but have not revised since I finished
Lv 20 on Wanikani but have quit to allow more Bunpro/ grammar time
Finished Bunpro N5 and 20/176 N4
Hoping to get to around a N3 level by the end of the year.
Looking for suggestions on how to approach these meet ups to get the most out of them. Would it be good to start outputting now instead of waiting till I’m further through my studies?
Thank you in advance for any advice or suggestions.
8 comments
The best way you will learn is practical application. Sticking your nose in a book only goes so far, you sound scared to push yourself and you shouldn’t be. Trust in what you DO know, and admit when you don’t know something. Have fun and learn, you’ll never get another opportunity like this. If you studied one thing and get told another, trust the person. Have fun!
Have them teach you greetings and vocabulary. Sentence structure is different on Japan so maybe they can show you how verbs go at the end. Sorry, I never heard about your apps before.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I don’t think there’s such a thing as not ready/ too early to start output. I understand that there can be downsides to starting early, but imo these are both outweighed and somewhat mitigated when speaking with a native speaker who can correct the larger mistakes that are made.
I started pretty much from the first week by joining native language groups of Japanese uni students wanting to talk to foreigners in Japanese. I understood very little but in terms of motivation, learning, and tracking progress I’d recommend it 100% of the time.
For me, output has been a really nice way to track progress, in the sense that I one week I could struggle in certain conversation topic, that months later is easy. I also think it’s good to find holes in your learning, for instance when talking I realised that my grammar for comparing things was weak, so I then know to revise that.
In regards to how to structure the lessons, what I did was as the week went on, I would just write down either random questions, weak grammar points, or sentences that I see online where I just can’t understand why they mean what they do. Half an hour will go by super quick so it’ll have to be a supplement to your solo learning rather than a fully structured approach imo.
It sounds like a great idea and present!
I hope any of this can be helpful and wasn’t too ramble’y, it came out a bit longer than I’d anticipated.
I’d seriously consider getting a textbook and working through it, and using the book in your lessons so this person has some guidance as to what to assist you with. Like, don’t just stick to the book deeply during the lesson, but review things and run the “group practice” stuff with them. I’d personally suggest Genki for this, it’s decent for self-study. Trying to teach myself Japanese without a textbook was a huge mistake at first, I wish I had just sucked it up and plunked down the $30buxx or whatever on day one.
I would also suggest, as other have said, to use a textbook and go through it with them. When I teach I have some students who prefer less formal lessons, but having a textbook in the background as a guide has always been helpful for me, both as a teacher and as a learner. Good luck! Have fun with it and don’t worry
Having taught children to speak English I can only advocate for the only method I’ve ever seen achieve native fluency….
Try to say a thing, have the native correct any mistakes you make, you repeat the corrected phrase.
Language is learned in phrases not words, sure at first you learn baby vocab, but it’s not long before kids stream whole sentences at you, and you correct the words with the incorrect tense, or plural form, or add in missing grammatical components.
“Today I runned a race”
“You *ran* a race”
“Today I ran a race”
Or
“I buyed an car”
“You *bought* *a* car”
“I bought a car”
I think it’s a great opportunity/chance, that I’d personally loved to have. I can understand being nervous though, and maaan is it hard for me (still) *speaking* Japanese. You should imo prepare well enough to be able to form super simple sentences, but other then that if the other person speaks English/your native language as well, I wouldn’t be too anxious and take the risk.
I definitely think speaking with a native Japanese speaker will help you get further along in your studies, but I agree can definitely be scary (hopefully they will have some level of English to help you along in conversation, though).
I would say that if you’re working out of a textbook that reciting the dialogues with the tutor and having them clear up any confusing parts for you would be a good use of your time. As a former beginner Japanese TA in college, I also think that asking questions about grammatical structure/syntax, correct particle usage, and conjugation could be a really good use of your time.
Hopefully this helps! That’s thoughtful of your wife I hope it doesn’t stress you out too much tho!