I have some difficulty with Japanese 4

Hi guys,

This will be a bit rant-y, but I really need to get this off my chest.

What would be your advice on improving Japanese language skills in general? I have some really awkward difficulty in my class right now. My teacher is nice and all, but she is boring. She moves too slow, and I always move ahead of the whole class. The bad thing is, when we have the quiz, my mind always go blank no matter how hard and careful I have studied before.

At first, she only gave us 10 minutes for a 25-questions quiz. After failing two quizzes, I asked her for more time, and she said yes. But even so, I still couldn't do as well as I wanted. I still forgot a few things and ended up missing points. The last Kanji quiz, I only got 22.5/25. And today, we had a quiz on honorifics. I stupidly wrote nasarimasu and ossharimasu, instead of nasaimasu and osshaimasu. I also forgot what recommendation letter is in Japanese, so I missed half the points on that one as well. I am so jealous with the ones around me who seem to be getting perfect. This is after I already asked or more time. Would the professor think I am just trying to find excuses?

I have many Japanese students in my English class, but it's so hard to talk to them. I am not sure how to approach them properly, and they don't seem to want to communicate with me that much. Their English is around ESL level, so sometimes, they have trouble understanding what I said. And it's not like I am good at talking to people, either. I noticed that, after I say something like answering their questions, they would stare at me for 1-2 second awkwardly, and then look away. What's going on with this? :O

Sorry that I came across as ranting, but these things really frustrate me. Japanese was always my best and favorite subject, but things continuously become worse for me. Failing two quizzes really hit me hard, and not getting a good score as the others after asking for more time really anger me. :(

"What would be your advice on improving Japanese language skills in general?"

Well that's a goddamn easy answer. Practice. Practice by having conversations with natives, and outside of that you should memorize new vocab, grammar, and kanji(which you're obviously doing in class, but you can do more to speed it up if you want).

"She moves too slow, and I always move ahead of the whole class".

You see, this seems completely contradicted by what you say in the rest of your post. Obviously this isn't true.

Failing quizzes and being unable to complete them on time means you're doing something really wrong. You say you've carefully studied beforehand, but why then are you drawing blanks during prime time? I'm gonna take a guess and say this doesn't happen to you in your other classes. If so, then maybe you aren't studying correctly. Maybe you're over-studying, or maybe you're understudying, or maybe your study schedule is bad, or maybe you're just stressed out. Only you know.

"I am so jealous with the ones around me who seem to be getting perfect"

You should stop worrying about them right away. There's no point, and it'll only do more harm thinking about it. Some people can learn things quickly without studying. Bilingual people also have been proven to have advantages over others in learning new languages. They could also just be spending many hours studying or practicing. Of course, all of these could be possible reasons, but there's really no reason to think about it.

"Would the professor think I am just trying to find excuses?"

That's something that depends on your history with the professor and how well s/he knows you and your abilities.

As for your conversations with the Japanese students in your class, it's hard to say. Their English level is low, as you said, so they might not understand what you're saying. Or maybe they aren't familiar enough with the English language to know when something needs a reply or not. Or, it might also be you, as you've said you aren't good at talking to people.

Instead of dragging yourself up after failing your quizzes and finding the problem, you've seemed to bring yourself down mentally, which will only make it worse. The jealousy and anger don't help you either.

For the record, I'm also in a 4th term Japanese class.

The previous poster made a lot of good points.

Ask yourself a question: Why am I studying Japanese? If it is to get good grades, then I can't help you. I probably had a B average in my college Japanese courses. That was 30 years ago.

If your objective is to learn to speak and read Japanese, then don't stress about your grades so much. Focus on learning for the sake of building a good foundation in terms of grammar, sentence structure, etc., for you to build on in the future, not for the sake of acing the next quiz.

Even failing the quiz is good. I bet you now will never make a mistake about nasaimasu and osshaimasu again. So you learned from the mistake on the quiz.

I assume you are in high school. Maybe you need good grades to get into your dream college or whatever, but really, unless you are aiming to get into one of the top 10 schools in the country, getting an A, B, or C in Japanese is not going to really change what level of school you get into.

Assuming you are not gunning for an elite school, no one that you ever speak Japanese to is ever going to care whether you failed a kanji quiz or got a C in the course or whatever. They will only care about, "Can I understand him? Can he understand me?"

You can't really learn a language in a classroom from a textbook, at least not for most people. You have to talk with and listen to native speakers. If you plan on really learning to speak Japanese, you will have to go to Japan. Until you do that, your goal should be to build a solid framework, a solid foundation so that when you do go to Japan, you will be able to quickly understand how the language is used in actual practice, and to absorb the tidal wave of new words that you will encounter that you never saw in your textbook.

Use iknow.co.jp about an hour each day.