Progress update after 100+ hours of hellotalk.

So I’ve done prob anywhere between 110-120 hours of hellotalk in the past 2 weeks. For people that wonder how I have so much time available: I not only work 3-4 hours a day but I’m also a short sleeper (average 5-6 hours of sleep a day: anymore than that I don’t feel good). I work from home, when I work that’s also the time I use to do speaking output. I have a couple of friends on hellotalk that doesn’t mind talking to me while I work. If I really push myself I can prob do 13-14 hours a day.

Also note that I’ve doen anywhere between 150-200 hours of pure conversational lessons before being comfortable enough to use hellotalk.

The first few hours of using hellotalk is probably the roughest, since I was only used to speaking 1 on 1 with my teacher. But after that it was pretty smooth, a lot of people on there are not even serious about learning languages and they are pretty happy just to talk in your target language if you join voice rooms.

I can feel myself improving really fast, even my Japanese friend commented on how fast my speech has improved in such a short period of time just from mass outputting. A friend of my said if a ruler is 10cm, you’ve probably moved around 2cm. I’ve met this friend roughly 6 days ago.

I’m still doing 1 hour a day with my teacher, he used to give me a lot more corrections when my sentences sound weird or if my grammar is wrong. Now he is mostly focusing on pitch because he also thinks that i’d be more beneficial for me at this point. There are still some pitch mistakes here and there, but a large portion of them has been ironed out. I was planning to do another 1k hours with him, but at the sudden boost in speaking I might only need another 100-200.

After around just 2 weeks of output, a lot of speaking has kinda become automatic, which is a really nice feeling. Expressions are less awkward, and my word selections are a lot better. My Japanese friend also commented that my word selections are much better than a lot of learners that come onto voice chats.

I’m planning to keep this going for a few months if I don’t burn out, and see how far I can take myself in terms of speaking. Also note that I’ve read around 20 light novels and watch a few hundred hours of videos in the past 4-5 months. That’s all the study I do for Japanese. I only studied basic grammar at the beginning and used to use anki, which I have now deleted.

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