How To Improve Speaking In Japanese

You will reach a point in your Japanese studies where you will want to start speaking …and you will find it difficult, so it is only natural to ask how you can improve this skill.

It is a pretty simple process to improve your speaking, which I will go through below …but it will require a good amount of effort and some time.

Put the work in and you will see your Japanese speaking abilities increase, so let’s look at how we can do that.

Speak More

The plan to improve your Japanese speaking ability can be explained in two words …speak more.

This is all you need to do to make progress. I know it sounds too simple, but really that is all you have to do.

Right now you do not have much experience. Even if you have been studying a while, you still don’t really have that much speaking experience when you compare yourself to a native. Even a Japanese kid will spend all day speaking non-stop and when you compare this to your few occasional attempts to speak you can really see why they are so much better than you …they have just spent longer speaking.

There is nothing stopping you from getting this experience, you just need to spend more time actually speaking and getting the words out of your mouth. The more you can do this, the easier it will start to feel. 

Practice The Japanese Sounds/Pronunciation

A lot of the inexperience you will be suffering is the simple fact that you are not very proficient at making the correct Japanese sounds and this is something you must practice.

You will be very good at making the English sounds, but that doesn’t help with your Japanese. You need to actually get your mouth and tongue moving and force them into the slightly different positions that are required to make the Japanese pronunciations.

This is why just generally speaking more will help you improve. Every word you say is forcing you to use this slightly different sound system and the more you can do this, the better you will become.

You can also just word on the individual sounds, going through each letter and trying to get the sound right, you can also do this with words, trying to pronounce them correctly. It can seem tedious, but these little steps will help your over all speaking ability so it is worth your time.

(You can read more about – Why Is Japanese Pronunciation Difficult)

Talk To Natives

One of the easiest ways to practice your speaking is to just talk to native Japanese people. This will be tough and super stressful for the first few times, but really nothing else is going to improve your speaking ability in the same way.

The whole point of learning and wanting to improve is probably so you can actually speak to natives, and you might feel like you are not ready for this yet, but this fear will really get your brain into panic mode.

You will get that “sink or swim” feeling and in most cases you will rapidly start to improve as your subconscious brains starts to understand that this is a skill you need to be good at.

You will usually walk away from a conversation with a native absolutely mentally drained, but also feeling very positive. It can feel really good when you realise you managed to communicate, even if it was far from perfect.

Finding natives to speak to is going to be done through Language exchanges and you may find some of the people you speak to also give you tips on how to improve your speaking, they might notice little mistakes you are making and they will help you correct this. 

This is certainly the most stressful way to improve, but it works very well.

(You can read more about – Japanese Language Exchanges You Can Use To Help You Learn)

Talk To Yourself

You can also improve by talking to yourself and I know some of you will worry about making mistakes, or just that this is strange, but don’t worry, give it a try.

You can do this in your head, which isn’t perfect, but it does get your brain forming the words and getting everything in order and this whole mental process is something that needs practice, so even if you are just talking inside your head, it helps.

Ideally you want to talk to yourself out loud and while this can make you look insane, it will improve your speaking ability. You are also doing what I just mentioned above about getting your brain to form the words …but you also have the added step of sending this information to your mouth and creating the sounds, which is exactly the type of practice you need.

If you also keep things simple, you can’t really go wrong. Practice what you know is correct and focus on that. If you are not too sure about something and worried you will make a mistake, don’t say that thing, instead look it up and see how close you where …and then say it properly.

As I keep saying, you need to speak more to improve and speaking by yourself is really going to help increase the amount you are actually speaking.

Read Out Loud

Another very good way to improve your speaking is to read out loud. This is sort of like the above point, about speaking out loud, but there is no risk of making a mistake. 

The whole mental side of the process is removed here. You don’t need to think about what to say, or doubt the word choice or worry if you used the right sentence particle …and this is because it’s all written down in front of you.

You just need to be able to read …and speak. This is really going to allow you train the action of your mouth without having to really think about anything else and while this may seem pointless, it will make you more comfortable with just talking out loud and it will make it easier for you when you actually want to speak in real situations.

Do Shadowing

Shadowing is another way that you can improve your speaking. This is just copying what you hear, so it is like reading …maybe better.

You have to know the correct sounds to make when you are reading, where as shadowing you just have to listen and copy exactly.

This is another activity that isn’t really going to train your mental processes, as you are just copying …but it is going to train your mouth.

Again you are going to get words coming out of your mouth and if you are copying correctly they will be at the right speed and intonation and this will help you when you are speaking in a real situation later on.

(You can read more about – Is Shadowing Useful For Language Learning?)

Pay Attention To Pitch Accent

One thing you should be paying attention to when you speak, is pitch accent. This often seen as a pretty advanced skill, but when you speak to natives they will always say this is what is missing from a non-natives ability.

They will always say we sound slightly off and if we really want to improve, this is something we should focus on and it will make the difference.

I think there are many other things you can focus on first, such as just increasing your understanding and general pronunciation of Japanese, but you will reach a point where taking the time to really pay attention to pitch accent will give  you noticeable improvements in your speaking ability.

(You can read more about – Should You Focus On Japanese Intonation (Pitch Accent))

Use A Tutor

Using a tutor is a form of speaking to a native, but you are going to get so much more from this type of interaction.

A tutor is actually going to be able to help you improve. They are actual teachers and they are going to give you advice on how to improve the areas you are lacking in.

This level of help is not always a guarantee with someone on a language exchange, which is exactly what you are paying the tutor for. If you tell the tutor you want to improve your speaking ability they will make this happen.

Learn More Words

Pretty much everything I have said so far has revolved around practicing more and of course that is going to help you improve …but you also need to expand your knowledge.

If you only know 100 words and even if you master saying all these, you are still going to be quite limited to what you can say, so really you need to make sure you are still learning new words.

You will of course reach a point where you know enough words to be comfortable speaking in most situations and maybe then you can slow down how many new words you learn, but until then, you should be making a real effort to learn as much vocabulary as possible. 

There will be a direct correlation between the amount of words you know and your ability to speak, so the more you learn, the better.

Spend More Time Listening To Japanese

I think it is also important to mention that if you want to get good at speaking, you need to first get good at listening.

Spending more time listening is going to allow us to hear how people actually speak and we are just subconsciously going to get a better grasp of the flow of the language and this will in turn help improve our speaking abilities.

You will of course need to practice your actual speaking to get better at speaking as I have discussed above, but listening does help with the mental framework you need to actually form the language in your brain, so it is an important part of the process to improve.

Conclusion

As you can see the overall process to improve your speaking isn’t too hard, really you just need to do more.

Of course the reality is that this is much harder to and it will be struggle. However if you can just stick at it and keep trying to do as much as possible you will start to get comfortable and you will start to feel confident and more importantly, you will improve.

If you work on this enough, there is no reason why you can’t speak to an extremely high level in Japanese.

(You can read more about – Should You Try and Get A Japanese Accent?)