Jisho.org Forum

That's more of my problem too. I'm doing free conversation with my teacher for 1h to practice, but that's still 1h/168h a week and I run into the same problems with her. Only thing I can suggest, is find people to talk to in Japanese, and try. When you hit that wall that you don't know what to say, say that part in English, and move on in Japanese. Write the notes and talk to your teacher. This is what I'm going to try at work with the Japanese staff.

What sort of level are you at now? What book are you using? Do you have people to practice Japanese with? The biggest thing is that it just takes a while, so keep at it. Some general advice is to go through supplementary books, make up conversations in your head, look up/ask someone about things that stump you a lot, and start watching Japanese shows.

If you suck at speaking Japanese, that's what you need to do. Practice makes perfect. Find Japanese people on Skype, go to Japanese forums, go to Japan, find Japanese people in your city or town.

As other people have said...

If you were more specific about your situation we could maybe give more specific advice but basically the best thing is to talk to someone Japanese. If you live far from any kind of Japanese community, you could try http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/ to find a conversation partner.

It takes a while. I've been in Japan for 2 years and 4 months now. I couldn't keep up a conversation for about the first year I was here. It was really frustrating. I had only taken 1 summer school course before I came. I studied really hard and went to a Japanese class in Japan every week for about 8 months. Now I can blab on and on for hours.

I recommend the same as the other people. Use the internet. But in addition, if you want to learn more natural everyday speaking, try reading Japanese manga. I'm no linguistic genius, so one hardship I had was that I studied all these books and grammar points, but I still couldn't understand what people were saying. There was nowhere to see a natural conversation written down. Spoken Japanese and written Japanese are two different worlds, so the only place you'll see a "slowed down" version of spoken Japanese is in Manga.

Through this method, I learned many short-cuts and forms which are "technically" incorrect Japanese, but which are used by almost everyone. For example the textbook will teach you "～して　＋　しまいました"　but I probably only hear that 25% of the time. Usually people say "～しちゃった" which is a corrupted form that carries the same meaning (and doesn't appear in any textbook I've seen). Also you'll see how certain letters are "smashed" in words. 分からない -> 分かんない (ら is smashed into an ん)

Find a Manga you like. There are SO many Manga out there. A lot of them are stupid, just like any form of entertainment. But, I highly recommend Crayon Shin-chan! It's seriously hilarious and is one of the few comics (in any language) that makes me laugh out loud. Even if you don't understand the Japanese, you can at least laugh at the pictures ;-) It also contains many things from a Japanese kid's point of view, so if you didn't grow up in Japan (like most of us here) you'll at least gain some insight in to what it might have been like. Thus increasing your understanding, and opening up the door for more conversations.

I myself have difficulty in opening conversation.
THat is just normal considering one is not native to such language.
BUt that could not be a problem.

@santoryuu3
Try to watch japanese cartoons with subtitles.
Or mangas will do.
ANd...
1. Study lots of grammar.
2. Practice reading japanese sentences (if you have some text books or pamphlets given from your sensei).

Also, dont be afraid opening with conversation with your teacher.
Im talking based from my experience. It is difficult to open a conversation especially if we think hard.
So, try to relax and talk what you really want to say.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone,
I'm using minna no nihongo 2 book and studying for the JLPT3. (most of the people say its the best book for teaching and my teacher uses it with me so yeah, but im not too fond of it.)
I haven't tried reading manga in japanese only in English lol and animes do not really help you in my opinion (i have seen more than 700 episodes of animes in total, subbed) it helps with new vocabulary but not speaking skills. However, im going to try watching them in RAW i believe it will make a difference.

Watching anything subbed is useless. If you have subs, you will read them, whether you want to or not. Watching ANYTHING unsubbed however makes a huge difference.

Hmmm... I've never used minna no nihongo so I'm not sure exactly what level volume 2 is at (I browsed them before, but I thought they looked pretty boring also), but if you're interested in some other books, here are some suggestions. Of course, it's good if you have a big Japanese bookstore around you with a Japanese language section that you can browse, to see what looks good to you. Personally, I think it's good to use several books/sources/approaches at once, so you can solidify what you've already learned and get some more perspectives and practice with Japanese.

I started off with the Japanese for Busy People books, and I think those are quite good. Last I knew there were 3 volumes, going up to an "intermediate" level---the 3rd might be appropriate for you, but I'm not sure on the level.

UH Press has a series that's not bad, and reasonably priced, called "Learn Japanese." It's a little spartan on explanations and slow on introducing kanji, but has lots of exercises and covers a good amount of material.

If you need help with basic sentence constructions, there's a "Japanese Sentence Patterns..." book that's pretty good.

Another series I like, but is mostly written in Japanese, is the 日本語生中継 series. It focuses on real-life conversation and listening to the dialogues over and over again I think helps a lot with listening comprehension and speaking.

If you like manga, there are a couple different "Learn Japanese through Manga" series, though as I recall they don't go too advanced (they may have more volumes out now). I'm not sure they're worth purchasing, but they might be fun to read through in the bookstore.

Okay, those are my book suggestions. Certainly it's very helpful if you can find a conversation partner, and when you're by yourself just make up conversations. As Tobberoth says, watching things raw is typically much more helpful, though depending on your comprehension ability, it may be a good idea to watch it subbed first so you know what's going on.

By the way, since several of us feel like we don't get enough practice with Japanese, has anyone thought about having threads in Japanese for people to practice here? I realize that it's not exactly what the forum is for (I think), and people have mentioned some other sites for this, but I was just wondering... Maybe having threads where people ask and answer questions in Japanese?

it would be great ... :)


But my problem would be my pc - it can not read japanese characters. Up to now, all i can see is garbled characters here... Which means, if there is a thread to practice japanese conversation, i can not able to join..:(

jaganshi,

do you have japanese fonts installed on your computer? if you're running windows, you may need to install them separately, either from the install disc or i think you can download them from the microsoft website. for macs, they are installed by default. the other thing is to check the encoding format your browser is using for that page. you want to select japanese/shift-js. this page has some info (i think there are some pages with more detailed info out there but i don't remember what they were now).

http://japanese.about.com/od/fonts/a/displayjapanese.htm

I'm probably like everyone else. I'm Learning Japanese and I use this site to right in Japanese blogs etc, and help with my grammar, but I need to find people who are japanese so I can work on my conversation skills. I watch anime, I know whats going on but I can't seems to find out how to write out the Kanji sometimes.

Anyway I'm registering to a Japanese Community Service Group which help Japanese people coming to US find their way throughout the City, in return this can help me learn japanese when I reside. Since I am an Musician and Artist, Japanese has become one of my major studies.

For what it's worth you could try watching clips on NicoNicoDouga for more exposure to both spoken and written Japanese. I'm honestly not sure of how effective it would be, but I doubt it would be a detriment to learning the language.