Practicing speaking in the comfort of your own home

Ok, basically I'm just curious if anyone here knows of ways to work on speaking on my own time by myself. The reason I'm asking this is currently I'm in a small country town where the nearest speakers I know of are an hour and a half north and I want to work on improving my ability to speak until I can find some people to work with. Pronounciation has never been a problem for me, but I know being able to say what I want to say without stopping to think for 5 seconds to a minute is something I currently cannot do so working on that is what I'd really like to focus on.

Any help is graciously appreciated.

Wow, I just gave this same adivce to Slider:

You need a study-buddy. Is there anyone in your area who wants to study Japanese? Even if both of cannot speak Japanese at all, it is a good idea. I have some ideas on how to make it successful.

Any possible partners in your area?

Another good way is to try recording yourself when speaking then play it back to see how you sound. This can allow you to focus on things your saying that don't quite sound the same as a native speaker. My immersion Japanese program records you responses and allows you to play them back to hear you pronounciations, it focuses alot on speaking and i think it has helped me when I get comments about how well I pronounce some japanese words. Just a way i think helps when you have no one to speak with.

Buntaro: I have a friend who wants to learn, I also practice alot with my japanese friends but I am interested in your ideas on this if you would like to further explain some.

talk to yourself. really!
speak in laud in Japanese whatever you think. I did this in English when I was learning. And try to THINK in Japanese(not translate to). If you can think in Japanese, it won't take 5 seconds for sentence to come out.

sorry, easy to say....

Yeah, I agree with Damicci and nekomusume, talk to yourself and record your voice while your speaking japanese. I would also recommend listening to japanese as well. It'll help your brain learn the language quicker. At least it's helped me out.

I talk to myself and other people as well. Everyone at work now greets me with "Ohayo" and keeps asking me how to say other stuff.

I wish I had your problem. I'm the only native English speaker in my home. My own kids are monolingual Japanese speakers even.

talking to yourself is a great help!
If not, you might try some audio cd's with japanese lessons on it
If you have iTunes on your computer, go to the Music Store and type "Japanese", you can hear some audio fragments from that cd.

Offcourse, if this is a good way of learning it, I don't know since I don't use it myself but it can always come in handy

Buntaro said:

Wow, I just gave this same adivce to Slider:

You need a study-buddy. Is there anyone in your area who wants to study Japanese? Even if both of cannot speak Japanese at all, it is a good idea. I have some ideas on how to make it successful.

Any possible partners in your area?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately no. Otherwise I wouldn't have made this topic. The area I live is like 60 miles west of Toledo out in the country where the only other language we have outside of English is Spanish. If that was the langage I wanted to learn, it would be cake with all the illegal immigrants in the area, but I can't say I like Spanish outside of ordering mexican food.

Damicci said:

Another good way is to try recording yourself when speaking then play it back to see how you sound. This can allow you to focus on things your saying that don't quite sound the same as a native speaker. My immersion Japanese program records you responses and allows you to play them back to hear you pronounciations, it focuses alot on speaking and i think it has helped me when I get comments about how well I pronounce some japanese words. Just a way i think helps when you have no one to speak with.

Click to expand...

The thing is pronounciation has never been my problem and my professor and TAs always commented how well it was. My problem comes more from the fact that if someone were to talk to me, my response time is slow because I always have to think about what I want to say instead of just spitting it out.

nekomusume said:

talk to yourself. really!
speak in laud in Japanese whatever you think. I did this in English when I was learning. And try to THINK in Japanese(not translate to). If you can think in Japanese, it won't take 5 seconds for sentence to come out.

sorry, easy to say....

Click to expand...

This is a good piece of advice and I will try it out. It's one reason I wouldn't mind living and working over in Japan for a year merely to force my mind to think in Japanese and avoid any English distractions that surround me. But since that isn't an option at this point in time, I'll try to think in Japanese and avoid any English interferance.

mikecash said:

I wish I had your problem. I'm the only native English speaker in my home. My own kids are monolingual Japanese speakers even.

Click to expand...

Must be a pain when visiting your side of the family.

syntax said:

talking to yourself is a great help!
If not, you might try some audio cd's with japanese lessons on it
If you have iTunes on your computer, go to the Music Store and type "Japanese", you can hear some audio fragments from that cd.

Offcourse, if this is a good way of learning it, I don't know since I don't use it myself but it can always come in handy

Click to expand...

It does work in a way, but more for my listening rather than my speaking. It's what my sensei suggested to do though when I asked her and since then I've tried to watch what Japanese TV shows and movies I can without the subtitles and listen to the Genki dialouge audio and music that I have. They've really helped with my listening, but I still suck at talking.

Thank you to everyone who has replied so far. I'll take your suggestions and apply them to my study to try and improve with. I know I shouldn't expect to be conversational after one year of study since even with English (my natural language) it took me many years until I could speak conversationally.

but I know being able to say what I want to say without stopping to think for 5 seconds to a minute is something I currently cannot do so working on that is what I'd really like to focus on.

Any help is graciously appreciated.

Click to expand...

Another thing about thinking and translating from English is that you may be expecting to be able to say things in a more complicated way than you've been exposed to in Japanese. I know it must be really confusing after just a year, not even knowing for sure whether you have a good response at allﾂ。ﾂ。ﾂ。ﾂ。much less how to use it naturally.

My best advice is to simplify everything as much as possible, pretend like you're a kid learning English all over if that helps, and even try posting some of your conversational fragments here for help if that isn't too embarrassing.

全く別の言語として覚えていくしかないですね。
使っているうちに慣れてくると思います。
がんばってね！

Elizabeth said:

Another thing about thinking and translating from English is that you may be expecting to be able to say things in a more complicated way than you've been exposed to in Japanese. I know it must be really confusing after just a year, not even knowing for sure whether you have a good response at allﾂ。ﾂ。ﾂ。ﾂ。much less how to use it naturally.

My best advice is to simplify everything as much as possible, pretend like you're a kid learning English all over if that helps, and even try posting some of your conversational fragments here for help if that isn't too embarrassing.

窶牢窶堋ｭ窶｢ﾃ岩?堙固陳ｾﾅ津ｪ窶堙??堋ｵ窶堙??o窶堋ｦ窶堙??堋｢窶堋ｭ窶堋ｵ窶堋ｩ窶堙遺?堋｢窶堙??堋ｷ窶堙仰。
ﾅｽg窶堙≫?堙??堋｢窶堙ｩ窶堋､窶堋ｿ窶堙嫁?ﾂｵ窶堙ｪ窶堙??堋ｭ窶堙ｩ窶堙?ｽv窶堋｢窶堙懌?堋ｷﾂ。
窶堋ｪ窶堙ｱ窶堙寂?堙≫?堙??堙仰！

Click to expand...

I think that is very good advice. It seems to help me alot when chatting with my friends. I know I may sound like a lil kid talking to them but they understand that. They also simplify thier japanese for me til I can reach a level of understanding that they can speak more advanced. Probably be a while though. I too think it is very hard to think straight japanese. I always find my self translating and speaking almost at the same time to try to keep a constant conversation going. Very difficult fo rme as a beginner.

The most important things when speaking with a Japanese person are to relax and be able to make them feel comfortable, esp ones not used to dealing with foreigners, with friendly conversation that they can understand. I don't know anyone who values difficult, convoluted sentences or hard vocabulary. They don't even speak that way themselves.

I think in your case stutz it woul dbe hard to practice talking to your self, your going to need some type of study aid, like i mentioned before I have the immersion cd's that ask you questions and allow you to anser them reading a dialog it may help speed up your responses. And listening to yourself from a recording can also pinpoint some areas your getting hung up on with your responses. Just constant repeating I guess would help too. I really don't know what else you could do to train yourself to respond faster in japanese but more association with japanese people. or questions. Like try asking yourself questions on a recording then play them back and respond to them.

Remember also there are numerous possible ways to say anything in Japanese, the grammar is more flexible than English, and still be understood.
文の中の順が変わっても意味は変わらない場合も多いですよ。

Concentrate on learning basic nouns, getting the right verb tenses and particles (ni, de, wa, ga and o) more than word order or stringing together a full sentence. Study hard and best of luck !

本は読む勉強になるし、ビデオなどは聞き取りの良い勉強になると思います。