My level of understanding Japanese is satisfactory , N3-N2 level. I can read manga and sometimes japanese literature, and the only roadblocks are weird vocab here and there. But when I try to speak on a quick prompt i make in my head I cant let anything out beyond simple ~~~です~~~~ます sentences. All the grammar I know in my head seems to be trapped behind a door with no handle. Vocab is the same problem. Despite knowing much more uncommon or rare but still useful words, I find myself only leaning towards using the most basic words. Anyone have an tips on breaking this habit?
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You aren’t familiar enough with those rare words and grammar you know. You might know them if you see them but they haven’t become second nature yet.
Practice more reading and listening and it will come in time.
Italki might be good for you if you have some sort of deadline for a trip or something
If you are just having fun, just keep going and eventually you will get there
You need to practice speaking a lot more. Speaking is like sports, you have to actually do it a lot to get good at it, no matter much actual knowledge you have in your head. As they say in Japanese, 体で覚える.
Just need to input and read more. I would also recommend writing as an output. I’m never practicing my speaking but because I’m regularly (real-time) chatting with people in Japanese, I find myself naturally quickly responding in the best way I know. Sometimes that is in broken perfunctory Japanese but it becomes more and more natural the more I chat. To the point where my brain is starting to auto respond to things without me realizing it.
Practice practice practice. The way that you get better at speaking is by speaking.
There’s a difference between recognition and recall in memory. When you read you’re practicing recognition. You’re seeing the word in the TL and just have to know what it means. Recall is much harder and is what you do when speaking and writing. You have to produce the appropriate grammar/vocabulary word from memory. The way to get better at recall is by practicing recall.
Don’t forget, there’s more to speaking than being able to recall complex vocab and grammar. A huge part of speaking ability is being able to use what you *do* know, no matter how limited your knowledge, to communicate a message to the listener. There are tons of people who can recall complex grammar and vocab, but can’t put it together in a way that communicates an effective message. While on the flip side there are people with low level grammar and vocab who can use what they do know to have effective communication and make themselves understood. I would say the latter are better speakers than the former
Your understanding is always going to surpass your speaking ability.
And if you’re reading that well already I’d say inputting more isn’t going to help you output better.
Even accomplished celebrity polyglots/linguists will suddenly forget everything they know when speaking in situations where they feel pressure. Pressure may just be the presence of a native speaker.
The way to get past that is just speaking more. If the problem is related to nerves, then speaking more will make that fall away.
If the problem is not being able to bridge the gap between passive and active knowledge (which is totally an issue I have too), then again, speaking will help rectify that.
Speaking (and writing) are separate skills than reading and listening for a reason. It’s a part of your brain that you have to exercise. In fact, I write more than I speak… so I can write some things easily even though I can’t say the same things outloud as easily.
As an added example: I have a set of twin daughters. At a year – 18mos they were both at the same level of speaking. They knew the same words, they parroted the same things. At around 2, one got debilitating teething pain and stopped making noise entirely for about a year.
At 3 one was talking in partial sentences while the other was babbling, gesturing and screaming, and only using 1 or 2 words. However they both have the same level of understanding. They can follow the same instructions and understand the same concepts.
Now they’re 4. One talks in full sentences and the other is just now starting to string words together and is a little more willing to parrot. I’ve taught her sign to help fill in some of the gap as I feel part of the issue is she’s unsure of making certain sounds. 🤦♀️ not that she often uses those signs when she needs them… mostly it’s just a party-trick she does on command…
The point is, the only difference between these two is a 1 year period of not talking + continued reluctance to speak. The understanding is there. She has as much input logged as her sister but cannot produce. Though the more dhe produces the better she’s getting.
To get better at speaking you must practice speaking. All 4 language skills overlap a bit but not enough for 1 to totally fuel another.
It’s been mentioned already, but you need to spend more time in conversation, preferably in low pressure situations. You can throw money at this problem through iTalki if you do not live in Japan or know someone who will indulge you.
Having done all of that, you will STILL gravitate to your default comfortable patterns, but you will have added a few more. I live in Japan now and still have days were I just can’t express myself well.
We only have one word for “memory” in casual English, but it’s actually a pretty complex thing that encompasses multiple processes.
It takes much less effort to recognize information (reading/listening) than it does to recall/produce it (speaking/writing).
Unfortunately, this also means that you kind of have to speak a lot in order to get comfortable speaking. Input is wonderful for many things, but it just doesn’t put the same stress on your system as having to pull out words/grammar points on the fly does.
Try writing.
When you read, all you need to do is see and understand what’s been written already. When you write, you actually need to tap into your knowledge banks unprompted and put things together in your own.
Try writing a paragraph or two a day and see if that doesn’t get your brain working with making sentences
If you don’t want to look silly in front of native speakers, I’d suggest starting by writing answers to comments under youtube videos or something like this before speaking (or write on r/WriteStreakJP, but my first idea as the benefit of making you need to adapt to a context).
Since I starting writing output in english, my speaking skills greatly improved, even if I’m far from perfect as of now.
Writing won’t make you speak great, but it will certainly boostrap the mechanisms needed for speaking (structuring your own sentences, recall vocab, etc … )
All of your speaking practice, at this stage, should be shadowing. Memorize and repeat out loud real, native speech. If your speech practice involves “thinking out” what you are going to say then you are wasting your time. Speaking is more like martial arts than mathematics, you get better by going through *prescribed* motions over and over and over until they become reflexes. Only then can you combine these reflexive movements into a new, improvised movement that is tailored to the specific situation you encounter.
I know the feeling well. I’m only recently got to N3 level myself but I still speak and text like a N5. For example, I was chatting with someone in Discord and he would use んです form correctly but it didn’t even occur to me to use it. I understand what it is and does, but it hasn’t translated to my output.