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Need advice on refreshing Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| metavirus Newbie United States Joined 6343 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 11 24 July 2007 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am a lawyer in Manhattan and may need to work on a project in Japan in the next few months. My boss said that he'd like me to become "conversational" in Japanese but not to the level of actually conducting negotiations in Japanese or anything like that.
I took Japanese for 5 years way back in high school and college and only got to what I would describe as "Intermediate" (i.e., just shy of conversational). It has been 10 years since I used the language at all and I am super rusty (only probably at a "Basic" level now). I would appreciate any advice on (1) what does it mean to be "conversational" in a language [the level I would need to be, so says my boss], (2) whether it would be possible to become "conversational" in the next couple of months, and (3) if it would be possible, what should I do to get there? As you can imagine, my days are full up and I would need to work on my language skills in the evenings and on weekends. Money wouldn't be a concern. Thanks in advance for the advice! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6396 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 2 of 11 24 July 2007 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
...and why don't you ask your boss what he means?! Edited by furyou_gaijin on 24 July 2007 at 6:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| metavirus Newbie United States Joined 6343 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 11 24 July 2007 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good question. He's big on me figuring out things on my own and probably wouldn't like to be bothered with the question. Any suggestions?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6646 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 4 of 11 24 July 2007 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil just put out a two volume Japanese course using English as the
Base language (search amazon for Japanese with Ease). It consists of many short dialogues (all in Japanese) with transcripts. The dialogues are structured so that as you go through them, you internalize the use of the language. Do a search on this site for "Shadowing" for a very effective way to use the Assimil courses. Also, the Linguaphone Japanese course (linguaphoneusa.com) is reputed to be very good (though quite a bit more expensive). That might be another option for you. You may also find the following page to be interesting if you'd like to learn Japanese to an even higher method (and the Assimil Program mentioned before would be a good beginning foundation for this harder core method) alljapaneseallthetime Edited by awake on 24 July 2007 at 7:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7031 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 5 of 11 24 July 2007 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
The Assimil course is good. If you just need to make small talk the Pimsleur course could be an option for you. If you don't need to read or write, it is a good choice since it is all audio. Each lesson is 30 minutes and is nice to take on a commute. Do a lesson in the morning on your way in, then repeat it on your way home. It is rather expensive, but that doesn't seem to be a concern. You might want to go for Berlitz also, if you want to hire a private tutor and have plenty of money. Good luck and welcome. Edited by orion on 24 July 2007 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6396 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 6 of 11 25 July 2007 at 5:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Be very pragmatic about this. Lawyers usually don't have time to take a sh$t, let alone properly learn a language of this complexity. Don't even start going down this road if you have no geniune interest in properly learning it. And if you do, prepare yourself for a long and bumpy ride with a lot of work, no matter what some websites may tell you.
The first question to ask is: is your 'conversational' ability ever going to be put to test? If not - don't bother studying, mission accomplished. Time spent: 30 seconds reading this message. If yes, how will it be tested? If it is by interrogating Japanese colleagues you work with, just memorise 50 random phrases out of any conversation guide (shouldn't be a problem, if you studied the language a long time ago) and frequently use these phrases on appropriate occasions: even with half of that effort, everyone will readily testify that your Japanese is 'o-jouzu'. Mission accomplished. Time spent: 3-4 hours. If you envisage that testing might occur in person (if you boss ever comes to Japan), the approach is still not dissimilar. Refresh the katakana and the hiragana (with a special attention for katakana as it's by far the most informative), memorise the above random sentences + several dialogue patterns. Ideally, you are looking for a set of phrases that allow you to lead a conversation with ANY person for two or three minutes or so, from start all the way to a point where you make an excuse for switching back to English. If phrases are chosen carefully, it's possible to turn ANY conversation so that you are totally controlling its course for a few minutes. It's not difficult to figure out how exactly this can be achieved, lawyers and salespeople usually have excellent verbal abilities anyway. It's important to remember to 'control the frame' at all stages: it is, in fact, unnecessary to give a direct response to any questions (especially to those that are not understood!) but it's ok to ask questions of your own, especially if you can predict the answer and play it back appropriately, etc., etc., etc... Not dissimilar from some advanced street pick-up techniques. :-) Needless to say that phrases for use in your coversation need to be perfect in grammar and pitch: have them drafted by a native speaker and have them recorded - at a real-life speed - and learn to deliver them with a confidence of a native speaker. The right accent and intonation are all-important (and unfortunately always a big issue for English-speakers): you can get away with a lot of bad grammar and very few phrases if your accent is perfect. If it's not - you have to compensate by being slightly more eloquent. Once you're created an illusion that your Japanese is perfect (1-2 minutes will usually suffice to impress the sh&t out of most people), eject from the conversation by claiming false modesty, polite desire to include your non-Japanese colleagues or - the best of all - flattery to your interlocutor's English skills. Mission accomplished. Time spent - a few hours at most refreshing katakana (reading and guessing the meaning of English loan words on the internet for practice works the best); 30 minutes or so designing one or two strategies, 30 minutes for assaulting a native speaker (of your gender - this is very important in Japanese!) and recording their delivery; a few hours of listening (can be done in planes and cars) and rehearsing. Once again, I can't stress enough that the most important elements of this approach are: confidence, flawless delivery and highest attainable quality of the (limited) vocabulary - that's why it's important to have someone to come up with the native equivalents for you, not to translate them from English or take them from a text book. And if I were to leave only one element: Confidence. Don't let others know you are making mistakes and they never will notice. Or they'll think it's a new standard. I have succesfully taught friends to bluff their way in various languages as described above and have one friend who is a natural: his command of Dutch amounts to 20 phrases at maximum and he understands about the same amount, yet he is a genius at remixing whatever he knows and can last in a Dutch coversation up to 10 minutes before people notice he's taking a mickey with them. In fact, I have been caught by him myself and it's always a great fun to watch. However, if you're less cynically inclined than my humble self or are prepared to put in much more effort than absolutely necessary, you're welcome to follow any of the courses suggested above... Good luck. Edited by furyou_gaijin on 25 July 2007 at 10:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| metavirus Newbie United States Joined 6343 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 11 25 July 2007 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the great advice, especially Furyou. That is really helpful. In general, I expect that I will need to get up to a level of proficiency that would allow me to carry on in the periphery of a business negotiation, sometimes without dropping back to English. The actual negotiation would likely be in English.
My two strengths back when I learned Japanese were my grammar, pronunciation and intonation and my weaknesses were Kanji and retaining vocabulary (the two more memory intensive aspects, of which my memory is very hit-or-miss). I can still read hiragana and katakana but not too many Kanji. Let's take for the sake of argument that I spent a few evenings a week and one day on the weekend for the next month and a half studying with a private tutor at Berlitz and a few hours a week during the day with one of the recommended audio courses. Without knowing more, any idea how much my language skills could improve in that time? Thanks again for the advice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6396 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 8 of 11 25 July 2007 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
Enough to confidently offer some coffee to your negotiation partners and chat to them about the weather. Which might be just what you need in the periphery of a business negotiation. And while doing that, you're bound to make some keigo mistakes which may cause a few chuckles or some embarrasement to all present, depending on the situation. But then again - in some situations even that might be conducive to creating a good atmosphere in the negotiation room and foreigners can get away with pretty much anything without losing face these days... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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