Language schools in Japan or homestay options

[EdMcMayhem]

I currently live in Nagasaki, and have been studying Japanese for about a year and a half.

I feel like my Japanese is at a pretty good level, but I'm still not satisfied. My goal is to be as fluent as a native speaker, and in order to do that, I feel like I need to quit my job (English teacher), and do something "drastic" like joining a language school, or just simply doing a homestay.

I don't really know much about either one, and while I'll be doing my own research, I was wondering if anyone had any advice/suggestions.

Ed

[mieth]

well, I am speaking from the position of someone who went to a Japanese language school for a year and a half and a Japanese university for a year. you obviously have a degree so you don't have to be concerned about your visa being dependent on a school. If I were you I would save your money and watch TV all day long. With he money you would have used for the language school, I would put instead towards a private tutor to correct your grammar and pronunciation. Have them read to you and stop them when you don't understand. Have them create transcripts for videos that are in Japanese that you like from youtube. Read to them and have them correct you.

As far as the home stay goes, I find that the people who are typically are interested in those are people who are interested in your language in the first place. So if they have any level of competence in English you will be in a battle over which language to use. It is a very uncomfortable experience. I had a Japanese roommate for over a year and it was tough. Although my Japanese was fairly good, we still ended up speaking in English because his English proficiency was a little bit better than my Japanese. Then what happens is you just spend your time by yourself instead of interacting which is the whole point in the first place.