Whenever I come up with a sentence to say or write, and I post here asking for corrections, the feedback is always that my sentence organization and word choice is very unnatural. I'm struggling on how to to improve this, especially because I studied Japanese at university for four years so I've had more than enough practice.
I know that I shouldn't think of a sentence in English, then translate it clause-by-clause into Japanese. Instead I think of all of the ideas and details I want to mention (not in any specific language), and then I express them one by one, but I think this still ends up seeming like I translated directly from English.
For example, here's a sentence that I recently posted here asking for correction:
日本に興味ある人は多く、別に日本に住んだり働いたりしたくないけど、日本で旅行だしたいな。その逆、アリゾナには観光のことがあまりないから、俺は旅行したくないけど、住みたいんだ
And here's one corrected version that somebody kindly wrote for me: 日本に興味ある人は多いが、彼らは別に日本に住んだり働いたりしたいわけではなく、日本に旅行したいだけなんだ。俺にとって、アリゾナはその逆だ。観光のことがあまりないから、俺は旅行したいとは思わない。でも住みたいんだ。
I've heard both that my sentences are too long, and that my ideas aren't connected well.
How can I fix this? I know that I need to consume more native speech and writing, but I've done that for a long time and clearly it hasn't helped enough, I don't think I'm learning properly from these native resources.
by OkIdeal9852