anon · 3mo
hey chee! and followers HAHAHA i just want to ask tips as someone who's self-studying a foreign language, how do you gain confidence in speaking? how do you convince yourself that what you're doing is right despite not having people around you to correct/affirm you? i've been studying jp and kr for years on and off because i cant gain the confidence to continue it for these reasons. i can understand quite a bit when i watch kr and jp stuff and i want to "answer" ? kind of ? using my own words/forming my own sentences but it sounds silly knowing that i wouldn't know if what i said makes sense or is grammatically correct, you know what i mean? would appreciate any answers for this HAHA thank you so much!
oh man. this is honestly,,, my biggest struggle right now in my language learning journey. I'll try to give my two cents on learning japanese as someone who lives in japan lol and hopefully someone who reads this might help with korean too!
So first i wanna point out that it's perfectly normal to be this way! Producing a newly learned language through speech is the most difficult part of learning it! And like you said, it's hard without actually getting feedback to correct your mistakes and practice further. Honestly, even though i live in japan and mostly only hear japanese being spoken around me, my hearing and reading skills have greatly improved but my talking skills are almost non existent lmao. because A) i am not much of a talker anyway and less likely to talk when i know I'll be making mistakes lol and B) because Japanese people are almost always too polite to correct me when I'm wrong as long as they understand what i mean 😭 which is nice of them and all but it means i never improve lmao so yeah, the struggle is real
The second thing i wanna say is that while it might seem convenient and easy to try to search for other people who are learning these languages and try to learn/practice with them, it would ultimately reach a limit considering you both are still learners, and might even result in learning something wrong (especially when it comes to tones and intonation which is a vital part of speaking japanese - and Korean surely)
SO. the end result here is that you need something more professional. If there courses available by institutions or by the embassy/consulate where you are for example. Or online, using one of the apps where you can talk with native speakers and get feedback from them (and most likely help them learn English or your first language in return). An example of these apps is hellosensei and italki. I personally have not used either but i do know a couple of people here who used them to learn Japanese so i say it's worth a shot. Also important to note that this is general advice and i am not aware how much you are willing to spend on learning (if at all) so hopefully one of these options seems suitable to you and your conditions 🥹
Sorry I couldn't be more help but good luck on your journey to learn honey!!!
