I’ve been taking Japanese classes for a year and a half now (to be more accurate, I’m almost 2 terms through my second 3-term year). They’re at the Japan Foundation, and I’ve really been enjoying them (highly recommended!). I’ve had the same teacher the whole time, who I really like; and though my classmates have fluctuated a little bit, there are some of us who have taken all 5 terms together, and another bunch I met in September when two classes merged. We have a Facebook group where we post about Japan-related subjects, and it’s a fun class environment.
After the fall term this year I was a little less excited than normal about signing up for the term starting in January, but I did anyway because I didn’t really take the time to sit down and think about it. Now that this term is drawing to a close (our final test is April 7), I still haven’t shaken that feeling, so I’m finally sitting down and thinking about WHY I feel that way.
I’m still committed to learning Japanese - I feel like I still have a long way to go, and Countermeasure will definitely be going back to Japan in the near future, so I’d love to improve enough to be able to converse with people there. However, I feel that while I’m learning a lot in class, I’m beginning to thing it’s not the most effective way for me to be learning right now.
By far my biggest weakness in Japanese is conversation. My listening is poor - it takes me long enough to translate that I get lost very quickly, and I’m bad at recovering - and I’m slow to come up with responses. All the grammar I’ve learned goes out the window when I didn’t fully understand the question and am scrambling for a response. In class I’m continuing to learn new grammar and vocabulary, but I feel like my conversation skills are not progressing very quickly. We do practice conversation in class, but it’s usually very specific conversation related to the topic at hand, so I can follow fairly easily since I know what to expect and have clear guidelines on how to respond. I’m trying to watch some anime and listen to Japanese podcasts in the meantime to improve my listening but I don’t have a ton of time to devote to that (see my last blog post).
I’ve also been pretty busy lately, and have been letting slide the ~15 minutes of practice/homework every day that I did for my first year of classes. Instead I find myself having to do a big chunk of work on Sunday or Monday before my Tuesday class to catch up, which isn’t the most effective way to absorb the information. Classes take up about four hours of my time between class time and commute, and homework an additional few hours, and I’m beginning to resent that time a little which could be put towards other interests. Having two weekly evening commitments is kind of the maximum I feel comfortable with, and (since Countermeasure is non-negotiable) it’d be nice to put that second slot towards something else after spending a year and a half on this.
Given all that, I haven’t decided 100% yet but I’m leaning heavily towards quitting my class after this term. I feel like I’m letting my teacher and classmates down somehow, and I’m sad that if I restart I’ll have to wait until this time next year, and likely have a different teacher and definitely different classmates. But I think it’s not the most effective way for me to be learning right now. Instead, I’d like to contact some of my Japanese-speaking friends and see if they’d mind getting together once in awhile to just chat in Japanese so I can practice listening and responding. If I can do that on a regular basis, supplemented with Duolingo, other apps, and the Japanese club at work (which is basically a study group), hopefully I won’t lose everything I’ve learned and can start to strengthen those weak areas.