Goal Statement

I want to improve my intonation and my accent when I speak - my goal is to sound like a native speaker, even with a limited vocabulary or knowledge of grammatical structure.

To work on these things, I will go to しばたせんせい's office hours and also listen to recordings in Japanese and practice shadowing them - I think that intonation is my most important goal and that developing a Japanese accent can only come once I have some basic understanding of proper intonation, as while I will need to continue learning intonations as I learn new words I will hopefully become better at recognizing intonations from speech and perhaps any patterns I might pick up on. From my experience learning French, developing a proper accent is a long process and is thus a long-term goal for me, however I want to be conscious of my pronunciation early on as to develop good habits.

I think that listening to recordings and shadowing will also help me with rhythm and speed, which I could also certainly work on, and are obviously necessary to develop an authentic accent.

I would also like to improve my reading speed - I think the best way to go about this is simply to read the dialogues in the textbook, and similarly I can improve writing speed through the textbook exercises.