Hi All,
I’m really interested to know what resources are out there to improve Japanese speaking skills for an intermediate speaker.
A bit of background:
I was born and raised in Australia but parents are both Japanese. I speak almost exclusively to my parents in Japanese (I no longer live with them) and English with everyone else.
I’ve never had any formal lessons/been to Japanese school
I can maintain a casual conversation reasonably well but I do often have to ask what particular words mean.
This hasn’t really been a concern but I now work in a role in which it’s definitely advantageous to have a good handle on the language.
Any suggestions on where to start? I’ve read here that apps are geared more towards true beginners.
4 comments
Ah, heritage speakers.
If your reading skills are okay, I’d find books and articles that are about your level and read them to expand your vocabulary
Failing that, I assume your listening comprehension is pretty good, so a podcasts, television news and documentaries might be particularly useful.
Three words:
Reading, reading, reading.
What helped me back in middle school was Japan’s answer to Roald Dahl, 星新一. Find something that gets you hooked, and read.
When you say you can do casual conversation, what do you mean by that? For example, I’ve heard from heritage speakers who could literally only speak casually and felt very uncomfortable with です•ます even. How’s your literacy abilities? How’s your kanji abilities? Are you able to parse sounds (so if you hear a new word, can you tell what kana it’s made up of)? You said you’ve never been to Japanese school, so to what extent did your parents teach you to read? I think how well your reading and writing (composition, not hand writing) skills match your speaking and listening skills will make a huge difference in how you approach improvement
Yeah, I agree with other people. It seems like your problem is not knowing what to say/knowing what other people are saying.
Read, listen, and memorize what you see with something like Anki. TheMoeWay website has some great resources for this. TMW is a dedicated group of hardcore readers who are vocab savants. There’s tons of great resources and advice there for casual reading, academic stuff, news, etc