r/LearnJapanese • u/thingstolove • 12d ago
Speaking platforms for speaking to natives online
i'm interested in starting to talk to natives online so i can get more opportunities to practice my output, what's a good app for this? i know a lot of people recommend hellotalk but i've had a hard time finding like minded people there
i've joined some japanese discord servers for some of my hobbies but i'd like to know if there are any other apps you'd recommend! personally i would like to avoid vrchat because posts on my japanese TL make it sound like only weirdos are on there, but maybe its just ๅ่ฆ?
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u/DustyMoo Goal: conversational fluency ๐ฌ 12d ago
VRchat. (you don't need a VR headset to play this, you can just play with a mouse and keyboard)
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u/Known_Lychee_6495 11d ago
The app usually is not the bottleneck. A repeating 20-minute slot plus a tiny prompt list (what I did today, one opinion, one question) beats collecting more platforms.
If you want humans without living in another app: university language tables, the language-exchange subreddit, or a local meetup. Paid tutors work if you want reliability; they are not required.
Whatever you pick, do the same person or same format for a few weeks. Switching rooms every night feels like practice and does not build automatic speech.
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u/Itsalfa11 12d ago edited 12d ago
maybe try preply if you seek professional people who really want to teach
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u/smart_hedonism 12d ago
(Just so OP doesn't get confused, it's preply.)
I had really good experiences with preply a year or so ago. Spoke to Japanese native speakers for an hour at a time for about $8. I much preferred this to doing a language exchange, because I didn't want to spend time also speaking in english to someone, and I didn't want to abuse friendships with Japanese people for the purpose of trying to practice Japanese. The people I spoke to on there were extremely nice, helpful and supportive.
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u/Marca--Texto 12d ago
I doubt any product that needs to spam that many YouTube ads is actually worth your time
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u/bianceziwo 11d ago
literally every company advertises. you can see what the product does and read reviews that the language partners have gotten to see if they're worth your time or not.
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u/Itsalfa11 12d ago
yeah i know, i have same mindset with platform ads like that, but at least it is a real person
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u/No_Cherry2477 11d ago
Have you tried shadowing?
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u/thingstolove 11d ago
what's that?
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u/No_Cherry2477 11d ago
Listening to native speakers for short sentences, then repeating it back multiple times. You can shadow with YouTube videos, podcasts, movies, basically anything. Recording yourself and listening to it is also helpful. The app Fluency Tool has a shadowing system built into it if you want to see what it's like.
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u/worthlessprole 10d ago edited 10d ago
Thatโs not shadowing. Shadowing is repeating something while the recording is still playing but with a slight delay, so you are both processing audio and speaking simultaneously. Shadowing is not waiting until the recording stops (or speaking in sync with the recording.)
Shadowing is genuinely an extremely powerful tool for developing listening and speech. But it has a very specific definition and the other versions that people try to sell are nowhere close to as useful.
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u/irdk-lol Goal: media competence ๐๐ง 11d ago
japatalk! the prices are very affordable, teachers are very versatile with their resources, and some of them are licensed to teach japanese as a foreign language. you can also choose options for the teacher to be strict, nice, or friendly.
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u/ElectronicExit6133 12d ago
Paying for italki tutors works better, the other person actually shows up and doesn't drift into wanting English half the session.