tldr: looking for advice on how to get better at speaking to prepare for a course in Japan at N4+ level with an Italki teacher.
So I’m planning to go to Japan to do a 2 months long course in Coto Academy Yokohama. Thing is they are only planning to start classes in two levels which would be suitable for me – one is kind of low, the other one is kind of high compared to where I’m at now. Of course I want to punch above my weight but after a skill assessment, the teacher there told me I would need to drastically improve my speaking if I want to have a chance to join this higher group. **What do?**
Current stack:
* Daily Anki for vocab
* YouTube teachers for listening 1h/day
* 2x/week 1h sessions with teacher on Italki
* 1-2 exercises daily from the Genki workbooks to keep refreshing the grammar points learned previously
I like my current Italki teacher but **I’m looking for some speaking-focused exercises or course book I can follow with her** for 2 months. Coto are using a book called 『Weekly J』[https://amzn.asia/d/dGDKWcP](https://www.italki.com/open?target=https%3A%2F%2Famzn.asia%2Fd%2FdGDKWcP) which seems to be focused on speaking, I’m considering getting it and following it with the teacher. I have no idea if the book is any good though.
I don’t need to expand my passive vocabulary but I need a structured way to practice using it so that it becomes my active vocabulary. Please advise, what worked for you?
Thanks guys.
2 comments
Lesson outline (45 min):
* 20 min: freetalk
* 25 min: speaking drills
for speaking you may want to speak to a human
you have some options: hire a person (iTalki) or make friends (helloTalk or…uh real life)
There is a textbook which focuses on speaking exercises only (from the ground up) called できる日本語. However it’s 100% useless without a tutor. So don’t go out and waste money on it.
Plus, if your tutor has it, you don’t need it either. It’s that kinda book. My tutor uses this sometimes with me and it’s good way to drill speaking.
DM me if you want the details of this guy, or you can just find your own tutor on iTalki, I think there are like over a thousand Japanese tutors on there.
Start calling people on HelloTalk. It’s free to talk to people. Call people anywhere, make friends. We live in a time where you can instantly speak to natives without being in person