So I did not expect this at all… I suddenly need to be conversational in about a month. I can read pretty much anything I want (my vocab is 13k+ right now), but I struggle to do any output and now I need to be able to at least hold a conversation with natives. I am so screwed. My listening skill is non-existent to start with because I was content to just read. I’ve not made a topic before, but at this point I am dropping my Anki SRS new cards and going to be focusing on getting to be at least able to communicate. For lack of another speaker – I am the go-between because I “know” Japanese. I am not prepared… it is a unique opportunity that I should not pass up though no one else can fill the role either. So I have a vested interest in coming across well.
I’ve never outputted before – stringing together even basic sentences without ruining the grammar racks my brain. I at least know the subject I have to discuss with natives. So the vocab is not a problem, the subject matter I am familiar with – to a point.
I am up the creek without a paddle on this one. Because I am completely lopsided on learning I will even do shadowing if possible. Is there anything like an old ipod system that I can use to dump audio to a system where I can auto-cycle through chunks with an old-school headphone jack? This sounds odd – but I need whatever it is to not have any camera or audio recording capabilities of its own. Bluetooth devices are not allowed, but I can one-ear if its tethered. At work I cannot use Japanese IME, but I can write on scrap paper for production. Since there is no point ever trying to write at the speed of speech, I am not sure how to use my idle time productively. All suggestions appreciated because as I mentioned – I’m pretty much toast otherwise.
Goals:
Be able to at least understand spoken Japanese at a slow pace. (Bare minimum)
Be able to hold a thirty-minute conversation at N2 level – mostly just listening with some premade questions on my part. Being able to understand the responses and translating follow-up questions is about the minimum, being able to respond on the spot is ideal. (What is expected.)
Side note: What person pronoun should I use if I am going to be talking to a bunch of younger people? I am not the senpai, but its “casual” business atmosphere. They are likely in their 20s, but I guess someone in their 50s might be the rep too… Thanks in advance.
2 comments
This similar thing happened to me, I read 12 books but couldn’t speak much. But I don’t know 13k vocab, your vocab is really impressive.
What I did is hired a tutor on iTalki and we started speaking just from the beginning. He has a textbook that is specifically for speaking. I can give you his deets if you PM me, or you can just find your own tutor iTalki has thousands.
Our lesson is like this:
1. Make small-talk (20 min)
2. Do textbook speaking drills (25 min)
It really builds confidence to do this. At first I was really scared, like, can this guy understand me? But guess what he can understand me.
For input you probably can input all kinds of grammar, but for output I bet you can’t construct all those grammars. What you can do is, get some basic sentence patterns down, XにYがあります, but not just that one, think of like 10 of those before your lesson. Practice those when you make small-talk. Just slot different things into your basic sentences.
Then like, think about transitions. It’s fun actually. Like, instead of です be like ですけど or ですから. Instead of just saying something be like それとも or たとえば at the beginning of the sentence. It’s fun too.
I had a period where i listened to Pimsleur a lot every single day, repeating lessons for retention. For me it worked very well getting quickly up to speed with both listening and speaking.