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Would you be open to speaking more about your experience? What level of Japanese did you have prior? And now? I swear by coaches/instructors in other areas of

Would you be open to speaking more about your experience? What level of Japanese did you have prior? And now? I swear by coaches/instructors in other areas of my life, but haven’t had much luck with language teachers. I’ve had private teachers with middling success (great at correction, bad at longer term planning), and found I had more improvement by self-studying.

mcqueenjordan 3y ago
I took it in high school prior (for two years), so when starting, I knew ~all of the kana characters, maybe a dozen kanji characters, and had a very solid pronunciation baseline, but had mostly forgotten how to conduct basic conversations or talk about anything of substance. I've since moved to Japan, so it's hard to disentangle my immersion experience from 1:1 learning, but I was pretty much able to conduct any conversation that I needed to have, including fairly abstract ones, when I first moved here. In the interim year since, I've continued the 1:1 lessons and obviously improved a lot naturally as well. I've had multiple people ask me if I was half-Japanese (I'm not) and other people tell me "it would be rude to say you're good at Japanese; it's more apt to say you can just speak it normally." Other people don't mention it at all and just treat me as they would any other Japanese person. (Which sometimes backfires because they use high diction or very arcane expressions and idioms.) For me, the key was finding a 1:1 teacher that I could meet 2-3 times a week (we met remotely over Skype), and I mixed basic conversational practice in along with targeted grammar study. iTalki is where I first started down this path of 1:1 tutoring, (where I found my first few teachers), and it's worked out great for me.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  How did you structure your Italki sessions? Did you just do conversation practice or did you leave it up to your tutor? Also, do you have any recommendations for good online tutors (on Italki or elsewhere)?
  - mcqueenjordan 3y ago
    I structured my hourly classes with a rough target of 20 min of free-form conversation (usually on a topic or two I or the sensei wrote down in a shared google doc ahead of time) followed by 40 min of structured lesson prepared by the sensei (grammar, vocab, textbook stuff). I can recommend Yuri T on iTalki.

mcqueenjordan 3y ago

I took it in high school prior (for two years), so when starting, I knew ~all of the kana characters, maybe a dozen kanji characters, and had a very solid pronunciation baseline, but had mostly forgotten how to conduct basic conversations or talk about anything of substance. I've since moved to Japan, so it's hard to disentangle my immersion experience from 1:1 learning, but I was pretty much able to conduct any conversation that I needed to have, including fairly abstract ones, when I first moved here. In the interim year since, I've continued the 1:1 lessons and obviously improved a lot naturally as well. I've had multiple people ask me if I was half-Japanese (I'm not) and other people tell me "it would be rude to say you're good at Japanese; it's more apt to say you can just speak it normally." Other people don't mention it at all and just treat me as they would any other Japanese person. (Which sometimes backfires because they use high diction or very arcane expressions and idioms.) For me, the key was finding a 1:1 teacher that I could meet 2-3 times a week (we met remotely over Skype), and I mixed basic conversational practice in along with targeted grammar study. iTalki is where I first started down this path of 1:1 tutoring, (where I found my first few teachers), and it's worked out great for me.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago
How did you structure your Italki sessions? Did you just do conversation practice or did you leave it up to your tutor? Also, do you have any recommendations for good online tutors (on Italki or elsewhere)?
- mcqueenjordan 3y ago
  I structured my hourly classes with a rough target of 20 min of free-form conversation (usually on a topic or two I or the sensei wrote down in a shared google doc ahead of time) followed by 40 min of structured lesson prepared by the sensei (grammar, vocab, textbook stuff). I can recommend Yuri T on iTalki.