Hi everyone,
I have come to realization, that my Japanese isn’t improving and it shows due to me being close to failing my classes 🥲
From understanding written Japanese I would be around N3 and maybe N2. I still struggle actually speaking and understanding spoken Japanese. One way to improve myself would be meeting up with native speakers and simply talk. I do have japanese friends that could help me but I’m very much an introvert, having phases being a literal hermit…
So sometimes I would rather stay home/those friends would rather meet up irl etc.
So I thought, as recommended from a friend, who also started this way, is to use VRChat to practice languages!
I am very new to VRChat, have really no clue how it works and such and I’m in general very awkward. So I would like to ask those, that have such experience, where to start, what to keep in mind and the like. I have had uncomfortable online experience before, so I would like to be as careful as possible for the start!
Thank you!
4 comments
Regarding being awkward:
Maybe try reading books like “the art of civilized conversation” and “The First Minute” and try to apply the info in your Japanese conversations.
Regarding VRChat:
There are a lot of very weird characters, not just visually, so take care of yourself.
I just go on the en-jp exchange server, walk around to all the groups talking, find one that’s having a normal conversation with some decent japanese speakers and say hi. When there’s openings in the convo I jump in. While kinda weird irl, it’s normal in VRChat to just walk up to people already talking and jump in.
You can set your skill level so everyone can see where you’re at, and you can set a flag that tells others whether or not you want to be actively corrected.
I think it’s a pretty fun and positive experience.
To add to u/AdamTheD, in talking to a lot of people, the ones who succeed at using VRChat for language acquisition are the ones who force themselves to stay in their TL.
Now that there exists a chat-box, you can ask whoever you’re talking to to type out whatever it was you didn’t understand.
For speaking (and I know, it’s awful) both the American I was speaking to and my Japanese friend who learned English this way, recommended using a translator to construct sentences. And also to help translate, again, things you can’t make sense of.
I do more the former than the latter. If the translation I’m given isn’t ideal usually the person I’m speaking to will repeat the line with better wording. 🙂
Contrary to how we usually think, it’s a very handy tool to get you going. I know as I’ve worked on speaking more my mind will go completely blank and I’ll forget an embarrassing amount of my vocabulary.
Cluster is the vrchat for Japanese people, so give that a shot