It looks like I took 中級から上級にレベルアップ！手塚先生のプライベートレッスン. I just noticed mine says private lessons and the other one doesn’t - but unless I blanked on it I don’t see it saying group lesson? Also it still says 1:1 授業 so…
The course I took was explicitly self structured:
【こんなあなたにおすすめ！】
・授業内容を自分で決めて、学習をすすめたい。
which is the sort of thing I tend to do, I’ve been burned a bit by over structured lessons in the past. She had what seemed to be slide decks for all kinds of situations and little quizzes, but I mostly ended up doing free talk and just having her correct my grammar or suggest more natural ways to say things. She seems like a very flexible teacher.
Thanks! I understand what you mean about overly structured lessons, which is why I’ve been wavering a bit. I do feel like it would be nice at this point to have some guidance on where to improve, but not if it’s too specific/doesn’t adapt to my actual skills right now. On the other hand, I often get a bit anxious when teachers just totally leave the topic up to me.
I have no idea when we’ll start it, but happy to make an informal thread and have joiners! I suspect given the leveling it won’t be a large enough club to need weekly posts
痴人の愛 wraps at the end of January so I’ll probably give myself a little 谷崎 break before jumping into a new one
I’m now 7 days into the challenge and have had 8.5 hours of conversation practice with 7 new tutors and 2 familiar tutors. Of the 7 new tutors I plan to rebook 3 while the rest I didn’t really mesh with, or in one case actively was waiting for the session to end.
Do I notice any difference in my Japanese?
I got some word choice recommendations from the tutors I plan to rebook which I’m going to try to work into my active rotation, and I noticed some topics in particular I struggle explaining which I plan to revisit and try to improve. I don’t notice myself speaking any more fluidly at this point, but I do have a bit more confidence when talking to new people which is something I was after.
I’m making anki cards of the suggested word choice changes as well, since I have some habits to break, and some new suggested ways of saying things. I’ve never done this before but I want to give it a try.
What haven’t I liked so far?
I’m noticing that my biggest frustration is tutors who think my Japanese is ‘good enough’ and let me get by making mistakes so long as I’m understandable. I had one tutor more or less say she didn’t have much feedback to give me because 上手
Basically just polite and encouraging conversation partners without much feedback. I think this is probably a strategy that works very well with beginners who need to build up confidence, and just generally are making more mistakes - getting corrected all the time might be awful! But it’s not a style that works for me and my goals.
What have I liked so far?
I’m at a point where I want more strict correction. Break my bad habits, tell me when my word choice is wrong, tell me when I messed up a grammar point. I’m not sad or upset, I’m a little embarrassed, sure, but I’m interested to know and am grateful. I’ve found three new tutors who are great about this.
What did I end up talking about?
Naturally I covered with pretty much every new tutor how/why/how long I’ve been studying Japanese. I also talked about how many times I’ve been to Japan and where I went while there. A lot about where I live. The basics.
I tend to prefer tutors where the conversation went off the rails a bit. So with the more fun tutors I talked about:
Drug laws in America / Canada / Japan
Gang violence
American and Japanese slang terms
The weird books I read and movies I watch (iykyk)
One tutor wanted to quiz me about how I would react to different social scenarios to learn more about American vs Japanese manners (and vs some other countries as well) and that was pretty amusing
Sounds like a fun time so far! You may have mentioned and I probably forgot, but are you using any particular one service to book the tutors? iTalki or some such?
Yep, just italki for the new tutors. I have one tutor who I’ve worked with for a long time and she only does private bookings anymore, but italki is the easiest way to find new people.
In the sense that they were entertained by the conversation, yes. Visible interest in the conversation definitely shot up. So far haven’t found anyone saying they’re into the same things beyond one guy saying he likes dark shows/movies (did not provide examples, but I will ask for them next time if I remember).
I am now 14 days into the challenge and have had 16.5 hours of conversation practice with 12 new tutors and 2 familiar tutors. One of my tutors this week was a rebook from last week. Of the 6 new tutors this week, one of them I’m planning to rebook, four were ok but not quite what I was looking for, and one I was again desperately waiting for the conversation to end.
Do I notice any difference in my Japanese?
I feel like I’m getting worse if anything. This week was a rough one. I keep staring down the limits of the grammar forms I use easily and fluidly, getting tripped up by formal vs casual Japanese (hot mess flipping back in forth in some convos because some tutors are so formal and some so casual and my poor English brain doesn’t register it until late) and find myself completely blanking on words I know I know.
What did I end up talking about?
Drugs. I seem to always talk about drugs and drug laws. Also guns. And general laws in America. But also: animals escaping from zoos, キラキラ names, ハサミ男 (go read it, it’s great), and Japanese vs American relationship norms.
And of course: have I been to Japan, do I like Japanese food, why am I studying Japanese, etc
I don’t have much to comment on this week. It was mostly just kind of tiring.
I am now 21 days into the the challenge and have had 23 hours of conversation practice overall. 16 have been new tutors and 2 familiar. Of the tutors I met this week 2 were rebooks from this challenge, 2 were well known tutors, and 4 were new.
Of the new tutors I met this challenge, was one great and I plan to work with her again, one was also good but their availability didn’t align with my schedule very well, and the rest were ok but not quite what I’m looking for.
How am I feeling/thoughts so far
I feel like I’m officially over meeting new people. I don’t want to 自己紹介 anymore. Make it stop.
I’m aiming to not have any new tutors for the final week if I can help it.
Last week I felt like I couldn’t hold a conversation and was a stumbling mess. This week I feel like I’m more or less back to normal. I still can’t express myself how I’d like to, but I have a few more phrases in my back pocket to pull out as needed. I’ve continued adding words and phrases to my anki ‘recall’ deck from my tutoring sessions.
I feel like there is a definite ‘quality vs quantity’ thing going on here. While I’m sure every hour spent talking in Japanese helps, the teachers I like, who actively correct me, I walk away from feeling like I’m actually improving because I know a new or better way to say something. When I’m not corrected it feels like a bit of a waste and that I could have just been talking to myself.
What did I talk about?
Lengthy conversation about different types of fortune telling. Tried and failed to explain my job, I need to work on that. Not great at doing it in English though either. Discussed various pros/cons of Japanese vs American social norms and work culture. Talked about authors I like and what authors they liked.
Rattling around the idea of doing a writing challenge next year, but rather than X number of days I think it will be X number of characters. I need to think on it a bit.
Haha yeah that’s what I struggle with the most as well - in any language Most people are so far away from tech (mentally) that they can’t imagine there are people who create the software they are using daily. Most people I talk to arrive at the mental model of “I create websites” or “I create excel sheets” while it’s actually closer to “I create a browser” or “I create excel”
So much this! When I book a tutor, I tell them that I want to be corrected, and if they don’t do that, I won’t book them again because they don’t give me any value but cost me money.
I am very happy that I have a few language partners now who correct me quite a bit, but it took them a long time to get to that point (in one case it took them 2+ years). I feel the main problem with getting corrections for me is that I can pretty much talk freely (but riddled with errors, and of course not being able to properly express everything I want to say, but it’s kind of ok I guess) and my impression is that they (especially the females) just don’t seem to notice errors as much once the conversation gets to a certain level of fluency? I can’t really imagine how that works - for me every time somebody makes a mistake in spoken or written language, it’s like a big red buzzer firing in my head but maybe that’s a bit special anyways? But it feels like they really need to get used to discovering errors, if that makes sense. (One even told me that I don’t make errors which is really nonsense and I don’t think she said this out of courtesy or something, but who knows).
There are also services where you can get corrections on written text, which might be of better quality than oral corrections Never tried them though.
100% this. I’ve started saying something along the lines of ‘I keep hackers out’ because a decent chunk of my job lately is security tasks, but even that feels like I’m giving a weird/limited view of my job But explaining more just tends to lead to confusion…in both languages as you mentioned
I also noticed that women were far more likely to just tell me my Japanese was great and not correct anything. While the men weren’t correcting me across the board to the degree I was looking for, I don’t think a single one I met with didn’t correct me at all.
I know this feeling One of the tutors I met with in the first(?) week said something along the lines of not knowing how much I needed conversation practice because I was already fine.
That all said, I’m planning to keep meeting with 4 tutors I met during this challenge (although not at the frequency I have been ) and it’s two men, two women. I don’t have that many data points, but the two men are late 20s/early 30s and the two women are in their 40s (well, guessing for one since I haven’t asked her her age). It kind of makes me wonder if older women just feel more comfortable correcting people?
edit: Though I did just recall that I met with 3 women in their 50s/60s and they didn’t correct me much at all So maybe just luck of the draw on that one. Both have relatively ‘strong’ personalities as well.
I’ve used LangCorrect in the past and it’s been hit or miss. Some people give very solid corrections and nitpick my Japanese and some people just kinda loosely correct a couple things and call it done I might do some LangCorrect again but also maybe HelloTalk and try talking to people on Discord?
I think with writing output I’m going to stress less on being corrected for every single thing and focus more on expanding my range of ‘active’ vocab and grammar forms. I do that in speaking too, of course, but writing gives me time to think and check my work as I go.
My feeling is this is a very important point indeed. Anyways, happy to hear that you found some people who seem helpful to you!
The site I was recently pointed to is called Speechling Speechling - Speak Languages Better and the corrections seem to be done by professionals, which sounds like it might yield a somewhat different quality… Haven’t used the service yet, but if you decide to try it, I‘d be happy to hear your opinion.
Oh I remember seeing this the other day. Unless I’m mistaken it’s 100% voice output, though? I’m planning to continue with conversation tutoring in the new year (just…1-2 lessons a week instead of 7-8 ) and focus more energy on writing.
Yeah, it really depends on the level you’re at. Right now I have a tutor for Korean that only corrects me when I make the same mistake several times, which is great because otherwise I would never get to speak more than a couple sentences. For things that I repeatedly get wrong though, like which number system to use, she always corrects me right away.
But at a more advanced level, you’d definitely want to know what the few mistakes that you do make are.
I definitely feel the job explaining problem. Trying to explain what I do in my internship without using any scientific jargon is already borderline impossible both in English and in French. Doing it in Korean though … That just crosses into a level that I’m not even close to. Let’s just say that trying to explain how DNA editing works to my tutor was a mistake and I will never be doing that again.
On another note, I feel like the more I read the natively forum, the more I want to start learning Japanese. Everyone’s motivation is contaminating me!
I actually did a language exchange for a while with a woman who worked in a lab doing various studies around reproduction and I really enjoyed talking about her work But it’s only enjoyable if the other party already has a decent base of knowledge in the area you’re talking about, otherwise it’s not particularly fun in any language.
Japanese has such a lively community! I’m hoping more Korean learners join, although I gather the Korean learning community is more speech-focused than text-focused overall so Natively maybe captures fewer of them
)
I suspect given the leveling it won’t be a large enough club to need weekly posts 
Most people are so far away from tech (mentally) that they can’t imagine there are people who create the software they are using daily. Most people I talk to arrive at the mental model of “I create websites” or “I create excel sheets” while it’s actually closer to “I create a browser” or “I create excel” 
but maybe that’s a bit special anyways? But it feels like they really need to get used to discovering errors, if that makes sense. (One even told me that I don’t make errors which is really nonsense 
Never tried them though.
) and it’s two men, two women. I don’t have that many data points, but the two men are late 20s/early 30s and the two women are in their 40s (well, guessing for one since I haven’t asked her her age). It kind of makes me wonder if older women just feel more comfortable correcting people?