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December 01, 2005

Still more Skype: Someone, please speak to these people!

Somewhere in Tokyo a professor or two recently told his English classes to use Skype to get some English conversation practice. How do I know this? I know this because The Mixxer, a great language exchange site, has recently had about 3 dozen new users from Japan who are looking to practice their English. Now the number of Japanese looking to practice English is almost double the number of English speakers looking to practice Japanese.

If you have any interest in speaking Japanese at all, no matter what your level, sign up at The Mixxer and help out a few of these people!

Permalink | Posted by Joe at December 1, 2005 11:09 PM

Comments

Seems like everybody's looking for English language help or tutors rather than offering anything Japanese. Though a lot of them say they will exchange Japanese for English tutoring, that doesn't exactly inspire learner confidence for me.

"I'm a Japanese student who wants to study English more. If you can teach English, please teach me, I can speak Japanese and help you too."

Quite a big difference between "I want an English teacher" and "I can speak Japanese (which will help you realize that you can't)."

There doesn't seem to be any teacher-material types there. Have you actually found the mixxer useful in pursuit of your studies?

Posted by: raize at December 16, 2005 01:00 PM

Thanks for your comment. You raise a very good point. You're right: there probably aren't many actual teacher-types there. However, I doubt that many English speakers/Japanese seekers are much in the way of teachers either: have you looked at the native English speakers list? Yikes.

Tangential rant: anyone who thinks he's going to learn Japanese by finding a free "teacher" on the internet and speaking for a few minutes every week is just as deluded as those who think that they're going to learn Japanese simply by going to a class for an hour per week.

It doesn't work that way. (I'm getting to your question. Really, I am.) Learning a language takes a lot of time, and in that time it takes a lot of repetition. The old saying is true: Repetitio mater memoriae. You don't learn a language by reading a vocabulary list and grammar description for 10 minutes; you don't learn a language by watching anime for an hour per day; you don't learn a language by talking to your Japanese friends for a few minutes.

Learning a language takes consistent effort over a rather long period of time. You need to hear it and speak it and study it every day, and you need to practice it too. I don't have any Japanese friends I can practice with regularly in real life, but through The Mixxer I've found a few conversation partners. On average I was speaking with them about once or twice per week, but going to school last semester killed that schedule.

To answer your question (finally), yes, The Mixxer has been helpful. I didn't go there looking for a teacher, but someone with whom I could practice. I don't expect "Japanese lessons". Rather, I practice basic conversation and try out new things I've composed based on the grammar and vocabulary I know.

Knowing a language isn't listening to a sentence, analyzing the grammar and fishing in memory for the vocabulary. Knowing a language comes when the language itself no longer gets in the way of the content. I practice basic conversation so that I can get to the point where I don't have to compose my words consciously or analyze the other person's words, but rather can focus on the content of what's being said. It's a slow process, and even slower when you can't practice frequently. However, it does work. I'm able to understand spoken Japanese better than I could 6 months ago, and can speak it more accurately and quickly, more unconsciously, than I could before.

The usefulness of the conversation partners isn't in their teaching Japanese lessons, but in the practice they give. The knowledge and the feeling of speaking to a real live Japanese person in his/her own language--and having him understand you--is a great motivator to keep studying and practicing.

Posted by: Joe at December 16, 2005 09:52 PM

Wow. Well said Joe. Would you mind if I posted it up on our site at japanesejapanese.com?

If anything, you reminded of why my situation is different than that of many others. Things like themixxer aren't useful to me because I can walk outside my door and start speaking Japanese right away with any of my neighbours, or anybody in the city for that matter. I tend to ignore the fact that others can't sometimes.

In my situation, I find that because I consistantly run into conversational partners, I'm on the lookout for a mentor these days, which is as you say, not likely to happen on internet sites such as that.

Again, I'd love to post your comment up with your permission.

Posted by: raize at December 18, 2005 12:56 AM

You can feel free to post the comment at japanesejapanese.com (great site!), but be warned that I'm going to post a much more polished and coherent version in an essay I'm writing.

You're right: there are plenty of us who don't have quick and easy access to native Japanese speakers--in fact, I didn't know a single one until I was 37 years old, and I know many people and have lived all over the midwestern US. For people like me (who envy people like you, by the way), The Mixxer is a great resource for finding native speakers. They can't take the place of Japanese teachers, but they can provide some good practice.

Posted by: Joe at December 18, 2005 08:33 AM

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