"I found that if I'm not outputting Japanese after consuming a lot of learning it, it doesn't really stick to me, and makes it harder to want to learn more."
First, get rid of that kind of thinking because that's normal and your brain won't let you use most of what you learn. Especially in Japanese compared to other language.
If you don't know about what "passive" and "active" vocabulary are, you should search it. But basically :
- Passive vocabulary -> Words (and even kanji or expression) that you can recognize but cannot use
- Active vocabulary -> Words that you can use (for various reasons)
70%-90% of your vocabulary is composed of Passive vocabulary. Even for natives.
Your brain do that because it can't make all of that vocabulary active. It's like a trade-off. Passive vocabulary takes less space in your brain. And that's what allow adult natives to remember absurd amount of vocabulary. Like 60 000 words. And I suspect that in the case of japanese, it's even more than that. Because of kanji and how they act like a natural mnemonic to recognize or even guess the meaning of words.
All of that to say, you're not doing anything wrong so far. That's how it should be. As long as you are able to renshuu quizz and maintain a high percentage of correct answer, you're doing good enough. Because renshuu strenght (and SRS strenght in general) is to developp your passive vocabulary.
Now, to develop your active vocabulary, well, first, just by studying more words, you active vocabulary will increase.
And second, study specific topics/situations one at a time. Your goal should be to able to handle any conversation about that topic or that specific situation. Like even just "Greetings". And Renshuu is not enought for that. And when I said btw, that doesn't mean make more effort than you're currently doing. It's more like reduce the grinding with renshuu and study one or few specific topic on the side. Not with renshuu. I mean, you can create a few sentences schedules if you want but you need to study it properly and have dedicated for those topic.
Narrating your daily life is a really good way to do that for example. But you could also watch/read a topic that you like or want to be better at for example.
One of the reason people are not good at outputing is not because they lack practice but also simply knowledge/example of how the language is used. And just by watching a lot of natives do it in various situation (inside a specific topic), it can help a lot. For example case, watch vlog of foreigner traveling in Japan (with EN and JP subtitles or just JP if you can). Add the words you don't know in a schedule, add at least sentences per words, try to recall a few sentences and try to practice some situation you saw in those vlog, repeat everything with more and more complex situation, etc. Then move on to vlog of japanese traveling in japan, repeat that, etc. The details are up to you but basically, focus on just one thing. Once you're past a certain threshold, you can continue to grind vocabulary passively by just watching vlog on youtube (without really studying except for a few words that catch your interest).
Basically, rather "outputing in general", focus on trying to be good on only one topic/situation first. Once you're past a certain threshold, not only will it be a great to your confidence, but you will learn a lot of things that will reusable for other topic/situation. And a good amount of them are not purely language related or things that you can learn easily on renshuu. Like, uncommon words that are necessary for some situations. Or simply cutural aspect of Japan.
Honnestly, most people are more able than they think. But because they never study properly at least one topic, they never develop the confidence to practice outputing. Which is also for good reasons btw. Second-guessing yourself every time you try to produce a sentence is a good thing. And to get rid of that, you need to study, or even simply watch, the same situation over and over until you've seen almost everything. To take the greetings example, it's not only about knowing こんにちは、こんばんは、おはようございます. It's also about knowing the fifty variation of those greetings:
- ヤホー
- お疲れ様です
- お疲れ～
- おすっ
- おはようー
- おはよっ
- どうも
- お邪魔します
- 失礼します
- お疲れさん
- etc
Ironically, studying the big and more complex picture, even while still not understanding everything, is easier than studying words in isolation. Because even if you don't understand all the detail, as long as you have some natives use it, you will know that you can also use it in some situations or with some people. Instead of forever second guessing yourself. When you're only studying words, you only accumulating words that you can recognize but you never learn how to use them.
That's how a lot of polyglot are able to have basic conversation at an almost native level in a short time (like 6 month or 1 years). They can't speak about everything but they are at least good at one thing (greetings, small talk, etc). And once you're able to do that, that's when the real game start. Because you can have basic conversation with natives or watch/read native contents and learn quite faster than before with them (+ great confidence boost).
Talk too much again but oh well x)
Okay, I'm done, hope it was useful and good luck/have fun!
頑張ってね～
