にほんご101 Speaking Goals and Activities

Goals:

• Be able to speak faster. This is important because it not only reflects an improved comfort and ease in speaking にほんご, but it also reflects an improved understanding of sentence construction and vocabulary selection.
• Improve my intonation. Intonation is very important as different pitches may cause phrases to mean different things. Sometimes I confuse intonation with intensity while speaking and emphasize words/phrases by speaking louder rather than by changing the pitch.
• Converse more naturally with others. For me, it's important not just to be able to speak well but to be able to speak well with others. Oftentimes, I practice phrases by speaking to myself in my room. With practice, my speaking (in my room) eventually gets to a point where I feel confident about it, but somehow, I tend to do a lot worse when actually speaking with others (like in class)....

In the end, these objectives all contribute towards the ultimate goal of being able to speak more fluently in Japanese! がんばります！

Activities:

• Go to the Japanese language table every week in order to practice speaking and listening. Hopefully I can also learn new phrases at the same time.
• Watch anime and practice transcribing and shadowing at least one or two short segments per week. My goal is to learn new phrases and practice speaking and listening at the same time (this will be more intensive). I'm currently re-watching Gintama (銀魂、one of my favorites), which has a colorful cast of voice actors, so it should be fun to shadow some of them. I'm also looking forward to Haikyuu!!'s return in the fall. I will also repeat simple phrases each episode without pausing the episode (this will be less intensive).
• Self-study: Practice the phrases we've learned in class on my own and do extra exercises in the Student Activities Manual in addition to the homework problems. Occasionally (monthly?) read various Japanese texts aloud with a friend who has a strong knowledge of the language (try to learn some kanji at the same time!).
• Go to しばたせんせい's office hours once a month to practice speaking. Perhaps I could compile a list of the phrases I shadowed and bring them or practice the phrases that we've learned in class.
• I also have a playlist of anime music that I'll share here, though I don't want to set any concrete speaking activities related to music because I'm a terrible singer. I'm also a fan of OSTs, which don't usually have lyrics (I'm currently obsessed with Boku no Hero Academia's).