Conversational Japanese Classes for Teen and Parents
My family started doing Duolingo Japanese lessons over the summer in preparation for a family vacation to Japan next summer (2025). My soon-to-be 14 year old would like more practice speaking Japanese with actual people. I know Laney College sometimes offers conversional Japanese but I’m not sure we’re up for a full college-level course. Can anyone recommend any East Bay rec programs that might offer conversational Japanese or a beginner language program for teens and adults? Maybe a synchronous online course?
Arigato gozaimasu!
Aug 26, 2024
Parent Replies
You might see if someone from the Oakland-Fukuoaka Sister City Association could help - I'm not sure about classes, but they might know someone who wants to practice conversation with you. https://www.oakland-fukuoka.org/
Hi,
Me and my family started learning Japanese in Spring of 2023 in preparation for a trip that we took in March/April 2024. My son was 13 at the time, now 14. He has taken classes through Polyglottist (synchronous group classes over zoom), Berkeley's ATDP summer program (six weeks in person), Laney (Japanese 2A and 2B online), and Concordia Language Villages (immersive summer camp in person, has online classes as well). None of these are strictly conversation classes, but all had speaking as a component and helped him develop.
We recently hosted a Japanese exchange student for 10 days through the Oakland-Fukuoka sister city association, which was great and gave him lots of opportunity to talk with all the students in the delegation during their visit. (They are taking applicants now for the delegation to go to Fukuoka next summer, in case he's interested.)
These days, he's doing free language exchange sessions online using VRChat with https://www.vrlanguageexchange.org/ and, I think, some chat rooms on the Japanese Academy discord server.
Hope this helps!
My 14-yo would be open to Japanese conversation with your kid and giving tips on Japanese learning. If you're interested, send me a message through the site.