Tips for Speaking a Second Language- February 15th

Since I'm an American in Japan and my native language is English I have been trying to learn Japanese. I've studied Japanese on and off since jr. high school, but I have found that learning a second language is school is a lot different then actually using the language in everday conversation with native speaker. Not only that, as an Assistant Learning Teacher or ALT I've had the amazing opportunity to teach English to students as thwir second language. So through my own experiences of learning Japanese and teaching English I have come up with 3 tips for using your second language no matter what your level is: 

1. Use the language that you know  

It is impossible to know every word in a language and you don't have to in order to be considered fluent. Also in the middle of conversation you won't always have a dictionary handy. So don't worry about being perfect and use the few words that you do know and the pthwr person will be able to piece togetherthe  meaning. 

2. Use examples or references that tour audience is familiar with to help explain your point.  

This is pretty straight forward, but a lot of people end up having conversationa where literally everything needs to be explained because they use references and examples that their audience don't know. So picking up a few useful examples of popular culture from your audiences home country will take you a long way. 

3. Observe and use your surroundings

We live in a global society where a lot og things are similar or universal. So sometimes you just have to point and have your audience pay attention to something to help explain tour point without even knowing the words. Sometimes your audience will even say the word of the thing you pointed to and bam you've learned a new word.