I started learning japanese maybe a month ago, and have got 80% of hiragana down and all of katakana. I study japanese in my university, and have been enjoying it.
Only problem is conversation; and being fluid. I can’t find myself remembering, understanding or even pronouncing the words / conversations, which makes me nervous in class (everyday we practice conversation in front of the class, maybe 2-3 convos). It’s making me not enjoy communication to be honest, bringing me anxiety and all. I can barley present normally in english lol. Anyways, is this just a case of “practice makes perfect”? so rereading these conversations, understanding what each word means and doing that over and over? Thank you!
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not going to lie you said you started ” month ago” . you can say the same with insert language here im fluent. unlike popular beleif those youtube videos get fluent in 4 weeks is 100% BS
just keep at it you got this.
ive been taking Japanese for 2 years now (part time) as a 4th language and I still have issues with fluency and conversation. I can suggest an iTalki for more practice or play an online game like Apex on the JP servers.
edit: added my experience
So how long did you think it would take to learn a language?
Language learning takes time. No one is expecting you to be totally fluent in a month.
Not to detract from your anxiety, but really – no one cares and everyone in your class probably feels the same. Everyone is afraid of making mistakes and thinks people are going to make fun of them and the teacher is going to belittle them.
That’s not going to happen. If you can’t SAFELY fail in class (make a simple mistake), your learning environment is toxic. Make your mistake, laugh about it or get your feedback, make a note of it and move on. If someone makes a mistake, praise the effort.
You’re not going to be the best your teacher has seen, more are you going to be the worst. You’re most likely going to be middle of the road. Some wins, some losses. A few strong points, a few weak points.
Yes, practice makes perfect. That’s what studying is. Going over things until they’re in your long term memory. When they’re in there, recall is almost automatic.
What materials are you using in class? Shadow and practice the dialogues from the textbook. Change them to suit you.
Make and use flashcards on Anki or Quizlet or something. Make a friend in class and quiz each other.
Hire a tutor to help you study and help coach you.
This is why some people advocate a silent period, the anxiety you’re building up is probably overall more harmful than not being great at having conversations in front of everyone at one month.
The pacing of most University classes is absurd so I don’t blame you for feeling anxious. It feels like they don’t give you time to really retain anything before moving on and you’re in an environment that makes you want to compare how well you’re doing to everyone else. First of all, focus on what’s directly in front of you and not what’s coming up a week down the road in the syllabus. Second, you can “repeat in a fluid manner” at this point but not “converse in a fluid manner.” Don’t get worked up over it. There’s no way that after a month you’d be just casually making plans and having full on conversations. You don’t have the vocabulary, grammar and experience for that. If you’re noticing some of your classmates doing it, it’s because they didn’t come into the class knowing nothing at all. Some of them might even be highly advanced and just taking the class for basically free credit. Speaking of your classmates, have you tried studying with them, using flash cards, practicing speaking .etc?
What you *can* do, is use the vocabulary you’ve been given and what you *do* know right now in the moment and burn it into your head. If you’re having trouble with pronunciation, there are literally endless videos on YouTube for things like “Basic Japanese Greetings.” I have one that I recommend specifically called Japanese Apple. If you go to their channel on YouTube, you can look at their playlists. They have a Hiragana playlist, katakana playlist and a speaking playlist of videos. I would highly suggest checking those out to follow along with to practice reading and pronunciation.
I commented this on another post but I’ll reiterate it here because I feel like you need to hear it:
Japanese is a language that for an English speaker, takes about 2200 hours or so of study and practice to become competent at and I’m using “competent” loosely here because it’s reliant on *how effectively* you’re utilizing that time. You’ve been at it for about a month. There are people who’ve been doing it for 10 years and still come across words, dialects, phrases and kanji compounds they’ve never seen before. It’s not a hopeless endeavor by any means, it just takes practice and good foundational skills and knowledge, which is what you’re learning right now. It’s the same thing with English. For example, you’ve been speaking English your entire life right? A native speaker? So, why don’t you know all the phrases, words and terms that are used in the surgical field? Why don’t you know what they are? Because you’re not studying and practicing them. The advantage you have in English is that you know the grammar points and pronunciation already, so you just need to know the context of the word or phrase.
That’s what you’re studying and learning right now for Japanese. You’re never going to be a walking dictionary. What you can become is someone with a strong foundation of basic knowledge who can come across words and phrases and learn how to utilize them. It comes with practice. I know its hard not to get frustrated with yourself and confused, but remember that you can ask questions. If you keep at it, it’s just a matter of time and patience. It’s not a race to “be the best at Japanese”, it’s a learning experience.
Also, if you can’t make or afford physical flash cards, check out the tanoshii Japanese website. It’s free, and there are katakana, hiragana, kanji, sections .etc where you can pick and choose what you’re wanting to study and practice and drill and quiz yourself.
yep, just keep at it
when practicing new vocab or grammar don’t just rote repeat it, use it in sentences, speak them aloud to yourself, write them, read them in sentences
knowing a word and having it accessible to you as you communicate are two different skills and both require practice
There are people who have studied for years who can’t have a proper conversation, so expecting anything other than basic phrases and vocabulary after a month is unreasonable.
Fluidity is an ongoing process. I recently stepped back in levels because I felt I hadn’t absorbed the vocabulary I needed to keep up with my grammar, and I realized in the less advanced class exactly how much my fluidity had improved as I’d studied past that level the first time. I remembered being slower and stumbling more then, and I see the same in my classmates who are covering it for the first time. You’ll likely find in a year that you’re much more fluid than you used to be, and a year after that you’ll be even more so.
That’s why forcing people to speak from day one sucks, lol.
You’ve only been at this for a month, man. It’s totally normal you can’t speak yet – you barely know any words or grammar at this point! This shit takes time.
Just keep talking, read aloud to yourself and shadow. You’re only a month in- you’ve got this!