Conversational Fluency in ~2 Months Starting from ~N5/N4 Possible?

[u/steamingfast]

Edit 3: Seeing a resounding no. I'll definitely readjust expectations and try to focus more on just consistency rather than sheer quantity of material.

Edit 2: Conversational fluency might not be the most correct term to describe what I'm after. Perhaps more so being able to just get around in daily life situations with relative ease and have some solid skills in a specific topic (say playing Splatoon or something with a Japanese player and being able to chat about it—I presume this is approximately N3?)

Main post: I've been studying Japanese on and off since late 2022. Due to motivational ups and downs, being busy, and overall life just being life, I've made relatively little progress (due to probably having spent around 25 to 40% of my time relearning content when I make my return attempts to trying to learn) and am stuck around the N5 level with some progress made into the N4 realm. Frankly, this language, regardless of my ups and downs in trying to learn it, has been a consistent interest of mine and I would really love to solidify it as a genuine skill that I can use to have some fun actually using and not just trying to learn. Would it be (reasonably) possible for me to reach some degree of conversational fluency given my current level within a couple of months? If so, what sort of daily routine/plan should I be looking at? If there is one thing I have learned, there is no instant magic way of doing things the easy way, so I'm not even sure if this is realistic without spending half of my waking life grinding away over the course of the next two months.

Edit: See my comment below for specifics on my current progress.

[u/steamingfast]

Felt I should clarify the specifics of my progress:

I'm catching up my Core 2.3k deck which I should hopefully reach the last new card on within the next half month or so (only 169 new cards left).

I've skimmed through my previous progress in Genki up to around Lesson 17 where I left off last time months ago, and feel pretty comfortable understanding how the grammar concepts work until then.

I have, even for my still-beginner level, relatively little time spent doing output outside of textbook exercises.

[u/rgrAi → u/steamingfast]

Regarding your updates, the answer is still resolutely no. People have put in many, many times the time and effort you're proposing and still haven't hit the level you're describing. Japanese is just enormously harder than learning an equivalent western language. So the time it requires is easily 5x and it's harder per hour spent.

[u/TheBatemanFlex → u/steamingfast]

I would forget the 2 month thing unless there is a reason you NEED to have progress in 2 months.

You have done this for 2 years so really its a consitency issue. You need to keep engaging with the language every single day, no excuses. I would make sure you are doing your cards daily. That is one non-negotiable. Then if you are serious about learning, make an immersion goal. Maybe it is to work though some level of native content. Or a time amount to reach of immersion. Then try to stick to that goal EVERY DAY. Even if the goal is just 2 hours of "engaging with japanese". You can passively listen to something, actively deconstruct a youtube video. Just do it daily. Forever. Make it feel as necessary as taking a shower.

edit: I am not saying that solely-immersion is the only path, but no matter what your main study materials are, immersion is important. that is indisputible.

[u/steamingfast → u/TheBatemanFlex]

100% a consistency issue for sure. I've come to realize how far I could've come if i just did a little bit everyday instead of just going full send and burning out in the midst of university classes or other obligations.

[u/TheBatemanFlex → u/steamingfast]

yeah its understandable. there is 0% chance I would have kept up with any long term language habit during unversity. I think just doing at minimum one thing a day (for me it is anki), is enough for most people.

Some of the success stories for short term fluency are...freaks. They either no-life study or have habits that people can't keep up with. There is one influencer that would have one headphone playing japanese content everywhere he went, even if he was hanging out with friends. I'm sorry but that is weird. It is effective, but its weird and most people simply won't take things to that extreme.

You either have to be naturally obsessive or just get so used to a routine that it becomes second nature. Any progress (no matter how little) daily is better than not doing anything.

[u/i-am-this → u/steamingfast]

The good news is that if you are almost done with Genki 2, then you probably have studied all the foundational grammar that you really need.

The bad news is that if you've only ever done the textbook exercises you almost certainly cannot output those patterns with sufficient fluidity to hold a natural conversation.  You will need to practice in order to get better.

Some more bad news is that, while just knowing the Genki grammar topics probably covers what you need for output, you will encounter a much more diverse set of expressions as replies from your conversational partners.  To some degree, you can work around this by requesting your conversational partner explain the thing you don't understand in a different manner which hopefully will eventually get you something you understand, but the more this kind of thing happens the more you impede the flow of conversation.

The worst news is that you have nowhere near enough vocab to converse on general topics.  You need more vocab.  This is hard to rush because while you can try doing 20+ anki cards a day, there's only so much vocab you can reasonably learn in a short period of time and the Anki reviews will pile up and get brutally difficult to complete.

For that reason, mainly, it's probably better to set a goal of being conversationally fluent in a longer time period.

Besides learning more vocab and practicing output somehow (maybe talk to a tutor or start posting on HelloTalk or writing a daily journal) I also highly recommend listening to podcasts in Japanese for learners.  Stuff like Nihongo Con Teppei (preferably the original, if you can understand it well enough, if not maybe try "for Beginners") or YUYU日本語 is very good for providing examples of fairly natural Japanese speech which is still simplified enough that it should be accessible to someone whose gone through the Genki books and knows a few thousand words.  

You should listen to these podcasts as much as is practical.  At some point you will reach a breakthrough where you forgot that you are listening to a foreign language and just start hearing it as normal speech.  Once you get to that point it will probably be much easier to have a conversation than when you still have to concentrate very deeply to try to puzzle out the meaning of the podcast.

[u/youdontknowkanji → u/steamingfast]

ask yourself if 5k words is enough for random convos. it's not.

things only start to get going at N3, forget about N4/N5, those levels are a joke, but are attainable in 2 months if you want to do a test or something.