Goal:
Besides avoiding the ingrained habit of changing the intonation in questions, which I think I can do as long as I consciously think about it for a while, I can't think of specific things that I want to improve about my Japanese pronunciation. That is not to say that my pronunciation is perfect, far from it, but I can't pinpoint any specific problem that I could work on. However, there is something that I can work on improving for my speaking. My Korean teacher has pointed out to me that my problem is often that I speak too slowly because I am always trying to make perfect sentences. As he says, when speaking, I don't always need to use complete, grammatically perfect and complex sentences. It is more important to get used to speaking at a "normal" speed (a speed close to what would be normal for a native speaker) and to be able to sound natural – even when hesitating or not knowing what to say. Although this is harder in Japanese because I don't have as much vocab yet, my goal will be to increase the speed at which I speak, not just the words but sentences in general. This should help with the problem I have of completely forgetting intonations when I am hesitating.
Activities:
I will keep going to language table at least once a week and watching anime, and doing some shadowing of the anime. I will also try to do some "official" shadowing so I can get more feedback on my pronunciation – let's set a goal of one shadowing exercise per week. I will try to speak more at the language tables, and to use more Japanese when talking to my Japanese friends.
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