Can anyone help?

[coolfire]

Hello

My name is steven and I love japanesepod101. You are doing a great and wonderful job. If anyone reads this I sure could use some help. Well you see I am a beginner but I keep spinning my wheels. I understand the lessons, the vocab, for example I can memorize all the vocab all day but when it comes time for me to make sentences I still cant. Like I said I understand the lessons but yet I still am having alot of trouble. It is like there is still a missing link. I am not sure what is going on? Also the lower beginner lesson has vocab and lesson notes but when you go to grammar their is not much their. Well in any case my question to anyone is I am spinning my wheels is their anything you can suggest? Also maybe you could suggest your approach on how to do the vocab and explain some of the other content for the lessons? Thanks for your time. [/b]

[ggenglish]

i know very much how you feel. i felt very much like you did a while back. still do in fact. but it is getting better so keep at it. i'll phrase this from the first person so i don't appear arrogant. This is just how i felt, maybe you can relate. the more vocab i gained the more confidence i felt and wanted to start using it. however, i couldn't for the life of me express my thoughts one bit. i realized that my problem was i was thinking english and trying to translate. i've found japanese just to different of a language to be able to do this where i've had success in other languages before.

So, in realizing this i've sort of approached things differently. I stopped trying to express my thoughts and feelings and instead simply reiterate and repeat the sentences i have learned or that have been presented to me. It started off boring (i'd always talk about the weather, haha) but after a while i found that i could experiment a bit. I'd learn new adjectives and verb conjugations that changed things around. I believe it was the habit of writing these boring sentences that gave me confidence to try and write a third more interesting one if you know what i mean.

So I guess my suggestion is to simply practice what you've learned even if it's boring or not true. Say its a nice day out even if it dark and gloomy. haha. Draft emails and then delete them. Draft forum posts and then delete them. Good luck, don't give up and try not to be discouraged. The more you learn the more you realize there is further to go and it's hard to benchmark your progress. However the fact that you want to try and express yourself is progress in itself.

がんばりますよ！

[UliS]

Should you not know of this site already, it will make real contribution. I think this site is just fantastic. And, because the site is all about grammar, maybe it will help you with your problem too.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/