Postby Javizy » October 27th, 2008 12:03 am
You guys should find a penpal for voice chats or some other way of speaking to natives. Even if you haven't tried speaking properly before, if you've studied a fair bit, you'll probably be amazed at the words and structures you can conjure up, and that you can actually hold a conversation for a couple of hours.
That's what happened to me, anyway. The areas I was weak in were the ones that can only be learned from speaking itself; overusing ね, ます and です slipping out (sounds pretty stupid in casual conversation), loads of really basic grammar errors that I knew I was making, but couldn't keep correcting, and obviously a lack of speed at constructing sentences on the fly.
So, if this was some sort of Bible tale, the moral would be to hurry and take the first step, so you can start working on the next ones. It is definitely a good idea to get in as much shadowing as you can beforehand, so that you're easy to understand, though.