Comments on: Speaking: Don’t Be Clever, Cheat

By: emad

emad — Sun, 31 May 2015 05:42:11 +0000

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By: Tyson

Tyson — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:28:49 +0000

I do this for Chinese situations by finding a chinesepod lesson on the topic, grab the associated transcript and vocab list, then email myself the vocab list. During the conversation I’ll keep the email open on my smartphone just in case I need to look a few things up.

Takes about 2 minutes and saves me at least 5 minutes of fumbling around in the conversation. Haircuts, pharmacies, buying a phone, getting the house painted – all can be easier if you have 4-5 key words fresh in your mind. And I find using these words in real life is worth 50 reps in terms of sticking in your mind.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:41:00 +0000

This is basically what I tell newbies who are scared of talking to a native speaker for the first time to do prior to their first language exchange (via skype): write down a bunch of questions and statements that you think you might want to use during the conversation and practice saying them before hand (use forvo for any words you’re not sure how to pronounce). This will make you MUCH less nervous and the call MUCH easier to conduct, primarily because now you’ve completely eliminated the possibility of the “oh god I can’t think of anything to say” nervous silence that everyone’s terrified of.

Cheers,
Andrew

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:42:20 +0000

Oddly enough, index cards are one thing I couldn’t actually reliably find in Japan, haha. Just some crappy overpriced ones on amazon.co.jp. Had to get those babies shipped in from the states.

By: 安藤

安藤 — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:23:03 +0000

Mm, yeah, this is a good idea. I never thought about writing things down and carrying that with. Typically what I’ve done when I know I’ll need to go somewhere new is I’ll do some domain-specific reading (need to pull some money from your overseas bank account? read about banks and cards) and learn the new terminology, but NOT look up the actual information I need, that way I’ll be forced to ask questions and figure things out in person.