Japanese speaking practice and JLPT

On March 26 2012 02:00 Phrogs! wrote:
Yay thanks for replies :D Yeah, I've got to keep working on my tone. I've been learning for about 3 and a half years now. No courses or anything. I probably spend about 5 hours a day talking to japanese friends and watching Japanese TV and such. Come on native speakers! ^^

On March 26 2012 02:07 tenacity wrote:


May I ask why you learn Japanese? Just for your personal pleasure? How do you keep up your motivation? Kudos to you

On March 26 2012 02:47 dormer wrote:
Yeah, if that's your speaking level, I wouldn't worry too much -- like you said, you're at the point where you can just have fun with the language and use it naturally with friends and "real" stuff like TV, so the smaller points of like accent and intonation will come with exposure / time. I think it's hard to point out specific things like that because depending on the person, situation, mood, what they want to say and how they want to say it, a lot of that can change, so it's better to just learn "naturally" from real life situations (or even TV talk shows / variety shows, though be careful of Japanese dramas because the actors are usually really hammy and don't quite sound like real people :-p).

Do you have any plan of going to Japan in the future? That's always the best way (and sometimes only way imo) of learning to sound more "natural," but it's also quite far from UK, so not always practical :-p Definitely a great experience though, if there's anyway you can swing it I definitely recommend it. Your Japanese is good enough already where you'll be able to get involved, get around, get by, make Japanese friends fairly easily I'd imagine.

Are you studying / have you studied for JLPT specifically before? There's some odd stuff that you won't really see much outside of the test, so if you haven't studied specifically for it, it might catch you by surprise. Most of it is quite useful, though, and it's a good clear goal to study for. There are really good books for each section of the JLPT, and full practice tests you can do. I'd recommend trying a practice test if you have the time / motivation, it'll give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. Generally, since you watch TV and talk to Japanese friends a lot, listening probably isn't too hard. Reading can be a little complicated and you don't have a ton of time for it, but it depends on the article. If you're reading novels and stuff on your own, though, that helps a lot. Kanji and grammar can be a little iffy because there's always some strange stuff that you normally wouldn't see, so unless you've studied it for the test and manage to remember it there'll always be stuff that you don't know. But that kind of thing is also not terribly important, imo -- if you're okay with the "real" skills of listening and reading, and you're okay with most of the more common kanji and grammar, it should be fine.

On March 26 2012 04:30 solidbebe wrote:
Japanese is a language I would love to speak! If I'm going to learn another language it would be Japanese, just seeing you speak makes me want to too! Learning a language, especially something as difficult as Japanese takes a ton of dedication and time though . That's what's kinda holding me back.

On March 26 2012 04:36 Stratos wrote:
Good luck man and props for taking up such a difficult language and actually mastering it.

On March 26 2012 04:47 Phrogs! wrote:


Go for it man :D I won't deny that it takes a lot of time and dedication (especially kanji) but allow me to make a really cheesy metaphor haha: it's going over a massive hill! The first half is an uphill struggle but once you get to the top (=once you reach the level where you can enjoy "real" native Japanese) then it's a nice, relaxing stroll downhill from there! Boom. What a metaphor. :D

On a slightly related note, all the Europeans like you (just guessing by your country) who have amazing English were a huge inspiration to me when I started learning^^

On March 26 2012 04:52 solidbebe wrote:


haha that's cool to hear ^^ English is pretty much the easiest language simply because it's everywhere. I could speak reasonable english with people from england/america when I was 12 . Ah just thinking about all this makes me wanna learn some Japanese! One thing I have going for me is watching anime. Which I can only imagine helps.

Nice metaphor by the way , that's exactly how learning a language is.

On March 26 2012 05:06 Phrogs! wrote:

Sigh... jealous of Europeans
Yeah, watching anime has got to be a plus! How about, keep watching your anime (and try Japanese drama too if you haven't already!) and then maybe get a Japanese phrasebook and learn some of the basics (internet helps!) and see where it takes you from there^^

On March 26 2012 04:47 Phrogs! wrote:

Aww thank you :D I don't know if you can say I've mastered it yet but I'll keep going till I definitely have!

On March 26 2012 05:16 Stratos wrote:

I'm sure you will. It's essential to get past the first few steps to truly fall for the language IMO, if you lose hope earlier on, you're pretty much doomed to fail. And a lot of people do, indeed. I know I got pretty overwhelmed just by trying to learn the korean alphabet, it took me about 4 months to get used to it. I'd rather not even imagine my struggles with the japanese writing system :D Maybe one day though, I'll think of your success then haha.

On March 26 2012 05:34 13_Doomblaze_37 wrote:
Being in japan is the best way to get better at japanese, there is no substitute. I learned 3 years of high school japanese in 1.5 years of living in japan, and i passed level 3 a few years ago when there were still 4 levels. I was going to take level 2 but I stopped really studying, and im gonna try to take it in school next year for an easy grade ^^.

Level 1 is brutal, my dads fluent and he failed it a few times before giving up and saying whatever, I can work in japanese i dont care anymore. You want to do a LOT of specific studying with the books. The books are very good for studying, and give you a majority of the material (all dat kanji), so you'll be fine with any of them.

Being a gaijin, nobody gives a fuck if your accent and intonation are good, they're just impressed that you speak it. That will improve on its own when you're there though, and if you're serious about getting it really good, get a tutor, as they will be able to make it sound like a native speaker.

On March 26 2012 07:01 dAPhREAk wrote:
sound quality is not so great on the video so hard to tell if these are your issues or the sound quality.

your japanese is good. dont use "eh" so much. its the equivalent of "umm" and not so great. enunciate more. you are swallowing your words. japanese is a very flat language, so keep as much intonation out of the words as possible.