In old versions of this guide, Chain Item #3 was just “Grammar.” However, the better I get at Japanese, the more I appreciate the value of speaking practice in the beginner stages of learning. Part of this appreciation came from the influence of sites like FluentIn3Months.com, which put a huge emphasis on speaking, and part of this appreciation came from seeing the disparity in the Japanese level of my non-Japanese friends based on their exposure to lessons and structured speaking practice.

Also, I think that it's worth noting that the lack of speaking practice in English, among other things, has done extensive damage to the general English competency throughout Japan. Some people study and study and study, but they still can't form sentences. Structurally speaking, Japanese and English are quite different. As a result, if you're still thinking in your native language when you try to form sentences, then it will take a long, long time. So maybe you can write a nice journal entry, but you can't get through your self-introduction without stumbling over your words. This was exactly the problem that I had a few years ago, when I moved to Japan with a lot of Japanese in my head, but no experience getting it out of my mouth. Yeah, it was pretty easy to deal with this problem, because of the mountain of information I'd piled up in my brain, but it still felt like quite a clunky transition, and it's a transition that I wouldn't have had to make if I'd simply practiced speaking in a structured environment consistently from beginner level on up.

You want to be able to converse in Japanese, right? Well, people who practice conversing are the ones that are good at conversing, which means that we have little choice but to…