Hello everyone this is my first post so I hope I don’t break any rules. I’m hoping to do a foreign exchange in Japan for 4 months starting in April and don’t know any Japanese. I’ve learned Chinese for two year and would say I’m above average for that learning time. I only say this because I know the written language translates to a degree. Besides that l’m taking a language bird course to get a high school credit before I leave in order to do the program. I don’t have any expectations of fluency but I need to be able to communicate and survive with my host family and school while diving into the culture. If I allot and hour a day for the next 8 months what is the best route to take before I arrive to be able to communicate.
3 comments
Your host family and Japanese people in general will have very little expectations from you regardless of your age.
You can learn the language anytime of your life. If I were you I would save up as much money as possible to explore the country. You’ll catch the back end of cherry blossom season and have several other flower varietals blooming during your stay. Probably the best weather of the year until July. Golden Week and some other blocks of holidays. Festivals, matsuri, seasonal foods, etc.
You didn’t say which city you’ll be based out of. You might find Osaka easier to practice your Japanese than Tokyo for example, so good to travel.
Be independent and I hope your family, host family and schools are cool with you traveling. Have fun.
You:ll be fine. I knew a high school kid who came here for an exchange, he picked up the language pretty quickly after a few months of total immersion.
I’d suggest Duo Lingo to help with survivability. Now, this is absolutely no substitute for proper study and will not provide you with fluency or really much literacy at all. However, it will give you the basics to allow you to get around town, order things in restaurants, shop, and just generally survive without needing to mime everything.
It won’t give you a thorough understanding of the language, but it can give you some basic VERBAL competency with some listening comprehension to deal with simple day to day things in a relatively short period of time.