this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
11 points (92.3% liked)

Japanese Language

1403 readers
1 users here now

ようこそJapaneseLanguageへ! 日本語に興味を持てば、どうぞ登録して勉強しましょう!日本語に関係するどのテーマ、質問でも大歓迎します。 This is a community dedicated to the Japanese language. Feel free to come in and ask questions or post your thoughts and opinions about this beautiful language.

Feel free to check out the web archive of r/LearnJapanese's resources if you're looking for more learning material or tools to aid you in your Japanese language journey!

—————————

Remember that you can add furigana to your posts by writing ~{KANJI|FURIGANA}~ like:

~{漢字|かんじ}~ which comes out as:

{漢字|かんじ}

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Has anyone used Italki or a similar platform to aid in their studies?

I'm considering taking weekly lessons with a tutor, the main goal in specifically improving my speaking.

I've lived in Japan for a few years and work in a Japanese company and while my comprehension is okay, my output is terrible and I always hesitate to speak.

I'm hoping a tutor would give me some real-time feedback on my speaking and help build my confidence.

I don't need a professional teacher / structured lessons and I guess my budget would be around ¥2000 for the hour (is it reasonable?)

Please let me know your experiences.

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did italki for around 2 years between the stints when I lived in Japan, and I found that it improved my comfort level with speaking dramatically. My tutor did not provide me with highly structured lessons; each weekly conversation was simply free dialogue, so it really was just to exercise my speaking muscle, rather than rigorously learn vocabulary or grammar structures.

If you are in a spot where you feel like your passive vocabulary is significantly larger than your active vocabulary, it might be worth giving it a try. I would describe my experience with italki as mostly positive, and I have recommended it to my friends.

[–] Zealous 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing, did you stick with the same tutor throughout the 2 years?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think I had three or four tutors, but one in particular I stuck with for about 18 months straight.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Have been on italki for two years. My teacher uses tprs and I've found it very valuable. It gives me a great opportunity to catch new things and explore nuances.

As an example, the other day we came across そっくり and used it as an opportunity to explore when to use that or -よう or -見たい.

Its also nice to be able to try out constgucts that seem correct from immersion, but end up sounding weird