Im looking for some tips at getting better at Japanese.
I took Japanese in college, up to what should have been an N4/N3 level, but it was a really bad program and when I switched to a different program at a new school, the professor said it would almost be best to just start from scratch. I am unsure what the consequences have been, but I can tell that something is not quite clicking. Japan is my yearly trip, and I have been 3 times so far, and every time I go it seems to always kill my confidence a bit.
As of right now, I can read and write FAR better than I can converse. With time, I have been able to strengthen this skill greatly as I have continued to drill myself on kanji, mostly by studying, followed by identification practice tests, followed by more studying.
While I admit that studying kanji itself is almost useless as its way more effective to study it in context, it has at the very least familiarized me with the importance that radicals play in identifying kanji themselves.
Plus, my biggest weakness prior to doing this was vocabulary. I knew a good deal of the grammatical structure, but knew so few words that I couldn't parse anything together. The biggest reason I avoided vocab was because in the beginning, it was all in hirigana, and it was too confusing trying to learn particles and words at the same time while its all in the same alphabet.
Studying kanji helped alleviate this as I could learn vocabulary at the same time as kanji. Plus, my experiences in japan have provided some of the contextual learning I am missing.
But as I have gotten better at identifying kanji, I have also realized that I am horrible conversationally.
I can ask basic questions, like where is __, what is __, how much is this, numbers, and some other outlying phrases like where are you from, what is your name, etc that Ive learned from the beginning of class, and general greetings/sayings like the many hellos and good night, and of course, thank you, excuse me, and im sorry.
But the moment I ask a question like "Do you have ___" and the other person opens their mouth, unless its a simple yes or no, I am lost. When I ask things like this and they give me directions, I can sometimes pick out words like left, right, above or under, as well as the different particles and end markers, but everything else sounds like phonetic soup.
When I ask someone to write it down for me though, even if I dont know how to pronounce the kanji, I can usually somewhat understand what they are saying. For some reason, its much easier for me to visualize what they are trying to say this way, and it helps me get a clearer picture of the sentence.
I admit I have caught myself doing that thing where I subconsciously assume that I am not going to understand what that person is saying, so instead of actually listening to them I just nod my head. This past trip I promised myself that I would try to actually listen, and I found myself pleasantly surprised at times – yet, its still not sufficient enough for me to feel confident when I say I know a little Japanese, at the very least.
I have been considering Pimsleur to help with the audio aspect, but I am unsure if its worth it. Duolingo is basically useless as most of the concepts im familiar with, so i just treat it as review.
I am starting to feel slightly at a loss. I have been learning as I go with phrases and memorizing the phrase as a phrase as not as words with meaning which has helped, but that only goes so far when it comes to understanding what someone else is saying to me if it isnt a phrase I have learned before.
Any tips are appreciated!
by bnedxddy