frustration...

[josiah]

Hi everyone!
I've been studying Japanese for over a year now, and been listening to japanesepod for a while as well...
Maybe it's the way I learn but I don't seem to be making any progress with the fact that I'm also a terrible procrastinator. and a perfectionist...
I have a Japanese fiancee and she's coming back in three months time, her english is much better and so we often speak just english with a few random jp words here and there.

If I were to catorgarize my ability, it would be somewhere between beginner lesson 45-60 and I can't seem to make any progress beyond that... I've subsribed to the premium content and I just feel stuck...

[jemstone]

do you often speak japanese? or you just go for lessons and listen to jp101?

chances are, if you don't speak it often, you may feel stuck and unable to communicate because of the lack of real communication experience.

i feel my japanese is stuck too! but that's ok coz i know i don't have the chance to speak it and that is the main cause of it levelling off.

[i_broke_down]

Something that helps me sometime is I'll figure out how to say something in Japanese ahead of time and then make it a point to use that construction sometime when I'm talking to a Japanese person.

After I've used that type of sentence construction in a conversation a few times it becomes easy to recall it, then I can just drop some different words into the sentence to make it work for whatever the situation is.

ex.

すしを食べましょ。
すしをたべましょ。
sushi wo tabemasho.

Shall we eat sushi?

So now that I've made it a point to use that sentence in a convo, the next time I'm discussing what we should do I can recall that construction and just drop a different food type in there and say that.

[HelixSundown]

A procrastinator and a perfectionist? I'm not sure what either of those has to do with learning a language.

Judging from what you say, you sound like you are at the level I am sitting at right now. One thing I do to help myself practice is, even when I'm talking to somebody in English, I throw in some Japanese along with the English. (Sometimes out loud, sometimes not... XD ) While I talk I imagine myself having the conversation in Japanese and think, "Hmmm, with what I know so far, how would I say what I'm saying now in Nihongo?" I find this really helps because it keeps me thinking in Japanese, and prevents me from getting stuck with just some phrases I've overheard. It encourages me to create new ones out of formats and structures I have some idea how to use. It's like putting something together out of Lego you know, try and arrange the pieces in new ways to make what you want. Maybe you do this already, maybe not, but it's fun and I think it's really useful.

[josiah]

Thats an interesting idea Helix, tell me more!

[Outkast]

Can't agree more with "trying out" various constructions. I'm an intermediate level learner currently in month 4 out of 12 of my year in Oita, Japan for study abroad, and I can tell you first hand that the ONLY things you will remember in Japanese are the things you use frequently. It's not enough to study passively- you must actually use whatever you want to learn in real life for it to stick.

Great practice comes from writing a regular journal or essays that gets reviewed by a someone who knows correct Japanese (to point out weird, incorrect, or non-standard usages), and from having conversations in Japanese with someone who can speak Japanese fluidly (to ingrain vocab and grammar constructions by using them, and so that you can imitate how the Japanese speaker uses those things.)

Ganbatte yo~