Chris, Thank you very much for your answers and encouragment. I am more than happy to answer your questions. My interim method consists of correct pronunciations, observation, and imitation or copying. 1. Correct Pronunciations I could not differentiate differences between Enlgish L and R. To do so, I tried to pronounce any words including L and R such as world, religion etc and recorded my own pronunciations of those words repteadly for the adjustments like dancers dancing in front of mirrors while looking at how they are dancing. International phonetic Alphabets also helped me a lot. This gave me better listening skills and confidence. 2. Observations I recommend that my students go to language exchange event once a week to observe how native people speak and pronounce words including non-verbal expressions such their tone of voice, facial expressions, body posture. I further recommend that they listen more than speak Japanese. To do so, I teach them simple interrogatives ( and interrogatives plus prepositions such as About what? In Japanese, interrogative plus particles). Our conversations or dialgoues are fundamentally composed of asking questions and answering them. In this way, they can maintain a small dialogue with native speakers (For beginners, 10% speaking/90% listening is still rewarding. Alternative for language exchange is watching a movie with this intent. 3. Imitation or copying After observing, what I want them to do is copying. When I was a kid, I was trying to speak English like my favorite actor. In the context of language exchange, my students will bring what they heard in language exchange and discuss them with me. And then I encourage them to copy those expressions. Seemingly, it is working rather than teaching grammars. Above anything else, my students are having fun with it! If you can recommend anything for students to improve speaking skills, I woud like to know them from your side.

Hi Akihisa I agree with most of what you say. Let's start with the bit where I slightly disagree: I teach English, and have taught many Spanish students, and I speak Italian at B1/2 level. That level of Italian is enough for me to be able to understand the gist of some Spanish speaking TV. Of course I need subtitles (in English) to understand it properly, but I mention it because I want to give an example of how similar the Spanish and Italian languages are. But I'm not sure that Spanish people do find it as easy to learn English as it is for them to learn Italian (I can't comment about French). But yes, I imagine that Japanese is much more difficult. Therefore my experience of teaching English to Spanish students is almost exactly the same as you describe your experience of teaching Japanese. People are nervous about speaking for all of the reasons you have described. And actually, in my experience that's not just true of many Spanish students. It's true of the vast majority of all students (whatever country they come from). And it can be very difficult for them to feel that they are making progress. Especially once they reach intermediate level. A large number of Italki students haven't had the opportunity to speak (when learning at school or through traditional methods) and that's why they come to Italki...to have that opportunity. It's difficult for students to remain motivated. However, teachers are also human, and it can be difficult for us to remain motivated also. You are not alone. You are clearly a conscientious teacher who cares about your students, and is willing to question your methods in order to improve. Don't beat yourself up! Sometimes we help some students, sometimes we don't. But I am aware that all of the above is a little bit of a generalisation, and as you rightly said everyone is different... and so I am interested that you said that you teach people in the way that worked for you... what is that method? And do you ever vary it?