This article is a quick guide to learning to speak Japanese for beginners.
Specifically, it addresses several common problems beginning learners of Japanese encounter, and how to overcome them.
1.
Too Much, Too Fast Whether you're taking a beginning Japanese class or using self-study materials, as a beginning learner of Japanese you will find the new material coming at you fast and furiously.
You may be presented with a dialogue that introduces some basic grammar or usage patterns, such as greetings or introductions.
  Despite the fact that it doesn't get much simpler than that, you still may find yourself quickly getting lost.
This is a perfectly normal.
So what should you do? First of all, take a couple of deep breaths, and then realize that the key to language learning is repetition.
It might take you 10 or 20 times or even more going through a dialogue until you can understand it and repeat it.
The important thing is to take as much time as you need to learn each lesson thoroughly before moving on to the next one.
2.
Too Much Reliance on Textbooks Many beginning learners of Japanese who are struggling to grasp a new dialogue "cheat" by referring to their textbooks.
Instead of training themselves to recognize the speech by ear and produce the language out loud from memory, they memorize the dialogue using their textbook instead.
  Textbooks are fine for reference, but if you constantly use your textbook as a crutch, there is no way you will retain what you learn or process the increasingly complicated Japanese that will follow.
Therefore, resist the temptation to rely on your eyes and force yourself to train your ears instead.
  3.
Too Much Emphasis on Vocabulary building Another mistake beginning learners of Japanese make is to attempt to acquire heaps of vocabulary right away.
Don't waste too much time trying to memorize lists of Japanese vocabulary words.
Instead, focus your energy on mastering basic Japanese grammar and usage patterns.
After all, what good is knowing 1,000 Japanese vocabulary words if you can't even put a sentence together yet? Just be content with picking up the vocabulary that accompanies basic conversations that introduce important Japanese grammatical and usage patterns.
Once you have these down, not only will it become much easier to increase your vocabulary, you'll have the ability to use it in grammatically correct Japanese sentences that you can actually produce!