Itch scratched

[chard]

In my article The three month itch last week I had a really good moan about my school, the course, and my problems learning Japanese. I was in a really bad mood, if you couldn't tell. Well, things are quite a lot better now.

The course director obviously got wind of my discontent, because he came and sought me out on Thursday, and spent over

Comments

[bookly]

Oh, yes, one other point about my own experience, just for the record: I spent close to three months studying Japanese intensively before I went to Japan; two of these months were in a class very much like the one you describe, and the third was at Berlitz (which, incidentally, I found almost useless because of its lack of structure and inability to deal with students who had progressed beyond the basics but weren't yet conversational). When I got there, it took about three months (with almost no additional classes) for me to come up to speed with speaking and listening. I sometimes describe myself during this period as feeling that I was building a bridge between my brain and my tongue (or ears, as appropriate).

I suspect that, since you're in Japan and absorbing the language passively from your surroundings as well as studying it formally in the classroom, once you have a chance to get out there and start communicating, it will take you much, much less than three months. You'll also have the benefit of a much larger vocabulary than I had; once my "bridge" was built, my relative lack of vocabulary was perhaps the biggest obstacle to my understanding and fluency.