How do you keep yourself motivated for learning another language? I feel my English has gotten so much better. However, even though I can feel my English has been improved, sometimes I can't keep myself motivated for it. I mean, I just feel down and wish I could speak English like a native speaker. Say, I feel down when I find that I don't have many vocabularies. I do understand that it takes time and I have to devote myself to learn it. I'm sure many people here experience the same thing. What do you guys do whenever you lose confidence in your learning? For me, I usually watch Japanese TV shows, read manga, play Japanese games or eat something yummy(this works pretty well for me lol). I come back to my native language for a moment and after that I feel refreshed and I'm like "Okay, now it's time to get to work!" Though I sometimes feel down, I never thought I'm going to give up learning English because that defeats the purpose (I'm in the US to study English) and I find it very interesting. Thanks to be able to write/speak in English somewhat, I've got many friends from all over the world that I wouldn't be able to meet if I didn't have enough English skills. So... I guess my friends make me motivated, too? Well, it's great have nice friends for sure. Thank you for reading and have a good day.

The only way to improve my speaking skill In Japan, we start learning English from 7th grade and we usually study writing and reading plus a bit of listening NO speaking. Now I'm 23. So I've studied English for more than 10 years! (Actually I'm surprised at this number) Though I have studied it for a long time, I think my speaking skill isn't good enough. When I was 21, I decided to go to the US to learn English more efficiently. As a result, I've been in the US for more than 2 years. Even though I'd studied English almost 10 years, I literally couldn't speak English at all. I could say something super simple like "I'm from Japan. Nice to meet you. How are you? I'm fine. " To be honest, I was very shocked that I couldn't do well with my spoken English. I had struggled a lot. I still have trouble with speaking English sometime but it has gotten so much better. I've been here only 2 years but at least I can communicate with native speakers. Of course I have hard time with understanding what they mean or hearing what they just said. The reason why my speaking skill gets better is sinply I have to talk in English. I have to use it as a tool to communicate with people here. Since I'm a very shy person, it took long time to get used to it. The more I'm used to talk in English, the more I can speak English. Language is a tool for me and you have to figure out how to use it. That's the answer that I came up with. It's very simple but my personality(being very shy) interrupted my progress. It was very challenging for me to not be afraid of making mistakes and to talk to people in English. Though I said my English is much better than before, I still want to improve it as much as possible and that's why I'm here, italki. There're so many chances to be friends with English speakers here. I thought "if there's a chance that you can grab it, then why not?" Well, I don't know how to wrap up my notebook entry... I just wated to say, all you have to is speak, speak, speak, and speak! to be able to conversationally fluent in another language. Thank you for reading and have a good day.

About a week has passes since I joined italki I joined italki because when I watched a random video from Youtube, a British Youtuber said that he learnt/studied Japanese on italki. Then I thought "Hm, maybe I can help someone who wants to learn Japanese? And maybe I will get to learn English from someone?" I'm a very introvert person and whenever I talk to someone for the first time, I get so nervous, like, I don't know what to talk about, though, I really want to improve being socially awkward and my English skills especially listening and speaking plus my pronounciation. I don't know if my accent is strong Japanese accent but I do have one. I don't mind having an accent but I wanna improve it so that I'm not gonna make people confused. Anyway, after I joined italki, I already got to talk to so many people! I mean, maybe not that many, but I didn't expect that I could talk to people from all over the world so soon. Some on italki, some on Skype, including video chat and regular conversations. It's really fun to talk to those friends whom I've already talked. Of course, I'm expecting to see more people to talk to, too. Since I'm just done with my final exam just an hour ago, my spring break has begun! I will be able to get to talk to you guys more often. Anyway, have a good day! Ps. I'd be more than happy to get corrections or other phrases that sounds more like native English speakers say. :) I mean, the word choice and how they explain things would be different from a person to person, I think. I hope you will get the idea that I'm trying to say.

This is my first notebook entry... Where do I start? Okay, so this is my first post on italki and I don't know where I should start... I guess I'm going to introduce myself. I'm Yohei, from Japan, 23 years old. I'm currently in the US as a college student to study English. Although I'm in the US, I would like to talk to anyone who speaks or wants to learn Japanese from all over the world. For me, I think it's very important to understand many variety of English accents. Although I'm a college student in the US, I don't know if my English skills are good enough, especially speaking and listening, because whenever I read books, there's not so many trouble with understanding but when it comes to speaking/listening, my brain's just about to explode. I mean, words won't come out from my mouth because I don't know how to speak English (I hope you would understand how I feel if you are also a learner of new language) and don't really hear what they are saying. If they talk to me somewhat slowly, then, yeah, it's much better for me to understand. So, I really, REALLY want to improve my conversation skills such as learning conversational phrases, my pronunciation, and being socially awkward. So if there's anyone who'd like to help my English, I'd appreciate a lot. Of course, I'd like to help anyone who wants to learn Japanese! I'm not a qualified teacher or something, but I'm Japanese and I do speak Japanese native level. So if you want to be conversationally fluent in Japanese, I'm here. Anyway, I think this is my current thoughts on my English. I guess I'm going to introduce my hobby and stuff. I love indoor activities such as playing games, listening to music, reading books/manga, fashion, watch TV shows/anime on Hulu or Netflix, oh and actually I like weight training, too (I'm still pretty skinny, though, just like to work out!) I love Persona3/4, Final Fantasy 5, 7, 9, iPhone apps (coz I don't have consoles that needs TV and I don't have TV), Minecraft which is currently my favourite. I love Visual-kei music! There are to many to name, though. Just ask me what is my favourite bands are. :) I love various kinds of books/manga, but not a big fun of romance. I love to watch anime on my laptop, too. And TV shows. Currently I'm following The Walking Dead (just started watching from season 1 on Netflix, though) Well, I guess that's it for now. Thank you for reading my post. Have a good day!