Hi! They say that the best way to improve is to expose yourself to Japanese people. The thing is I did… and I couldn’t even follow at all. Whenever I try to talk, I get scared and can’t think of anything. At all. I usually try to type, but they usually talk so I couldn’t participate then.
Other than answering workbooks, are there any ways for me to improve on how to make grammar fast?
I just started doing journal in Japanese today and I’m looking forward to my results. And oh, since I’m confused with grammar, the only thing I can reach out to is chatGPT. I ask it whether my grammar is correct, and whenever it corrects my grammar, I try to ask why and a lot of stuff abt grammar.
I think I am not ready to talk with people (even in basics) yet. I tried using that app and man, they are all fluent and conversational.
The only thing I’m improving is Kanji. But what’s the use of it if I can’t even apply it?
What did you do to improve? Thanks! Please share your experiences. Thank you!
5 comments
> They say that the best way to improve is to expose yourself to Japanese people. The thing is I did…
please do not do any thing illegal or inconsiderate
joke aside I think you can talk on the discord or get an iTalki tutor or try r/languageexchange GL
It’s fine to just listen first, take some time to get used to it if you need to. Then you can start typing, and over time you’ll be able to time more than more, then also speak eventually
>I couldn’t even follow at all.
So is your understanding lacking on top of your inability to output? Might want to get on that then. Maybe try looking for videos of people discussing your hobbies in Japanese.
>the only thing I can reach out to is chatGPT.
Uh. No. And I must insist, I mean **FUCK NO.** That is neither your only resource, nor is it anywhere near the best. Depending on how much Japanese you already know outside of verbal communication, I’d say it’s easily one of the worst.
Look into something like LangCorrect for your journaling. The corrections will be done sentence-by-sentence by an actual human who understands nuances (which you can further clarify by providing your intended meaning in English). If you don’t feel comfortable letting a real person read through your thoughts, there might be some other fundamental problems unrelated to language as to why you’re having communication problems. But that’s just a layman guessing.
As for tackling verbal communication directly, you might benefit from a tutor. I don’t have much experience, so I can’t give you much info on that.
– Running a daily journal is definitely a good idea, but might be worth getting help from a more proficiency learner and/or a native (iTalki, etc.?)
– Using chatGPT for conversation practice is fine, but asking it to evaluate anything is **not** a good idea. chatGPT operates on probabilities and word-like tokens. It doesn’t actually understand what you write, just gives the most plausible response based on your input. You can even ask it and it will tell you truthfully.
– You can try VR Chat going to servers for foreigners. Perhaps that would be less stressful? 🙂
It’s totally ok to be lost at first. It’s actually *normal* to be lost at first. This is a totally normal part of the learning process. You’ll probably find one on one conversations to be much easier. Just keep at it. Watching YouTube videos of people engaging in free form conversation will help you improve your listening comprehension. Being confident that you understand what other people are saying can help give you the confidence to jump in the conversation yourself
If you want to improve your extemporaneous speaking abilities, here’s an activity I have my students do:
Give yourself a topic. Start simple like “weekend plans” or “favorite foods.” Then record yourself speaking for 1 minute. Don’t worry about perfect grammar. Just try to get words out. If you don’t know a word, either try to say it another way or just say it in English and move on. When the minute is up, go back and listen to your recording. Don’t worry about any mistakes you may have made. That’s not what we’re focusing on right now. Just count how many words you were able to say. Record this number. Repeat this exercise once a week or so and track your progress over time.
Then go and write about the same topic for two minutes. Same rules. No googling, no looking up unknown words. Don’t worry about mistakes. Just write. At the end of two minutes count the number of words (or maybe characters would be easier for Japanese) you were able to write. Write this number down track progress over time.
You can work on grammar and shit during other forms of practice. The whole point of this specific exercise is to work on your ability to produce speech fluidly