Recently, I had a speaking test in my Jpn class and I did real badly on it. I completely blanked multiple times and struggled to understand my classmates even if they used words and grammar I’ve studied before.
Does anyone have any tips on how to improve on these? Sources, techniques, routines, etc. The more specific the better. I’m at a real loss as for how I should go about this.
If you’re in class, I highly, highly recommend finding a study buddy and practicing the material you’re learning. I’d start with going over the book work, and then practicing what you’ve learned to practice more natural conversations with one another.
The only way to improve your speaking and listening is really to do it, and if you’re in class you’re lucky because you have a lot of other people who probably would like practice with this, too.
Sorry I forgot to add. Classes are ending soon and I won’t be able to attend any JPN classes for a few months. So I’ll be running it solo for a while.
If you have spare money, I recommend something like italki tutor sessions. Where you can have a native Japanese tutor help you with everything! This is the most time efficient, but it’s also the most expensive per minute.
If you don’t have money but have a LOT of time to throw at the problem, you can find some really good language partners on Hellotalk, or Tandem. But between the searching time (1/50 people you meet will be good partners in my experience), and the expectation that half of your time is used to teach the other person it’s VERY time intensive.
If you need cheap and fast, then you lose on quality. Reading on a site like NHK Easy. You can practice speaking and listening and speaking by shadowing what you’re reading. Most of the articles have native reading videos to pair with them! But the downside is you don’t get a partner to practice with.
Thank you! I’ve heard that watching shows in Japanese helps too. But I’m not sure how to go about that. Do I just watch and see what I catch and what I don’t?
I’m still trying to get in to watching shows. I think it’s still a little too far out of reach for me.
I watch with Japanese subtitles at 75% speed and I feel like it takes me 90 minutes or more to watch a 20 minutes show because I have to rewind so much and look stuff up.
I think NHK might be a bit easier to practice, before you move on to find yourself some easy shows. But if you enjoy anime, perhaps you won’t mind the difficulty. It’s definitely more fun than NHK.
Websites like learnnatively.com can help you find some easy shows and movies for your level. But even the lowest shows are n4, and quite hard in my opinion.
And when watching anime, you lose out on the speaking practice. It’s probably not the best shadowing material, if you want to sound like a normal person.