JJapanese

Best practice for Conversational Fluency

I recently purchased Genki 1 text book to self study. I thought chapters 1 and 2 were very helpful, but now getting to Chapter 3 I’m lost. It took away romaji, which I know you don’t want to rely on but I’m really just trying to be conversational. I can read hiragana and katakana but not knowing mostly any words I feel like you just flip back to the vocabulary sheet a million times. I’ve heard Genki is more for a “class” atmosphere since a instructor would help to follow along with. I’ve been using Duolingo on the side and feel like I get more out of that. Should I just keep powering through or can you recommend additional things I can do that would benefit me more by wanting to learn to speak it mostly? Thank you!

4 comments

  1. FWIW, I think you cut yourself off from a lot of valuable learning resources by not learning to read at least at a basic level, but if you’re determined that you will *never in your life* want to read Japanese and so the time invested would be totally wasted, then…

    — Cut-n-Paste —

    “I just want to speak and never read”

    There is a book series called “Japanese: The Spoken Language”, and also Assimil,
    Pimsleur, Berlitz, and the other usual suspects have listen-and-repeat style
    audio courses.

    A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (a great grammar reference) includes
    romaji so you can still use it, and its Intermediate/Advanced companions.

    — Cut-n-Paste —

  2. I remember having the same thought when I started but take it from me, the best way to improve speech and comprehension is to also learn to read. You’re just handicapping yourself otherwise.

    Unless you never plan to advance much further than こんにちは、トイレはどこですか

  3. Being completely unable to read Japanese as it is would hamper your conversational ability. From rampant use of homonyms, which are easier to differentiate if you know kanji imo to Japanese people writing out words to clarify meaning, to the fact that texting is as common there as it is here, I don’t think one can call themselves “conversationally fluent” without knowing how to read.

  4. If you go to OTONews app I think you can scan the code on the book and get access to the listening exercises, which have a lot of conversations to listen to.

    Also drill your vocab. You won’t understand a lick of conversation without knowing the words first. How hard would it be to understand things in your current language if you couldn’t?

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