Will I learn quickly?
 

I'm a 15 year old Canadian guy and I hosted an exchange student from Tokyo two summers ago for 4 weeks. Now I'm going to stay at his house in Tokyo for 4 weeks while taking an extensive Japanese language program offered by the exchange. After those 4 weeks I will be going to another host family in Tokyo for 4 more weeks. The problem is I know barely any Japanese which will be fine for the first 4 weeks because the dude knows English, but I would like to be able to understand and participate in basic conversation during the second 4 weeks.

I think I will be able to pick up the language fairly quickly, because I have already learned a foreign language and am fluent in it (French), and I will be attending the extensive language program which does field trips and stuff so we can use the stuff that we learned in real situations. The program is meant for English speakers with no knowledge of Japanese.

Do you think I will be able to speak and understand decently after the first 4 weeks? :confused:

4 weeks is not a lot of time. Japanese is nothing like English or French (which are closely related), so you won't really be able to use anything that you have learned.

If you haven't done so already, you should memorize the kanas (which doesn't take long), and know at least the 100 or so kanji on the JLPT 4 test, as well as the vocabulary. You can find these online by going here:

JLPT Level 4 Study Page

Knowing the kanas, kanji, and vocabulary won't help much at first, but after you spend some time here, you'll get to hear them in actual use, and get a chance to use them yourself. 4 weeks is not really time to learn anything new, but should be enough time to learn to use what you are studying now.

You have 8 weeks and I am sure you will study hard. Japanese is hard and there are many strange things but if you keep your mind open it will help. The advice that Sangetsu gave is also good. Learn Kana and the first 100 kanji.

after 4 weeks you'll be able to know enough to go on in the other place...of course as long as your host family doesn't ask you something very very hard I think you'll also learn how to ask somebody to repeat so this will also help you^^of course at first it'll be hard but I hope you'll handle it:D

you can forget about having decent converstaion skills after 4 weeks right away. No matter how hard you try... The best you could do ( which is what i did) is learn key phrase and stuff like that. Of course you can learn a lot of kanji and meanings or words but actually having a conversation and understanding answers ... forget it. Dont get me wrong tho. After 8 weeks of living with the japanesse you will be able to understand some basic stuff. I mean the "sounds" are easy to reproduce and if you learn around 1000 word you can actualy put them together real good....but having a conversation and understanding answers without any help...no way.

Just do the best you can and it will be already enuff to impress them A LOT.

Study back home as well...start RIGHT NOW. Ive been involved in learning japanese since my 1 month trip last summer. it really is an interesting language. have fun

LOL 4 weeks funny i had my french leveled in 4 weeks.
But i knew already german italian and english.
The dude, is right,
Try to learn words at the begining, do not speak do not write
Just listen and try to catch so much u can coz u cant do very much there budy
Learn Japanese in 4 weeks!, Hell yeah, I`ll try it myself one day LOL

You'll pick up a few words but nowhere communication level, even less so considering you will most probably be mainly hangin with English speakers.

Just learn basics like Left and right, where, no, yes, how much, and maybe even numbers.

Their are plenty of books out their to read and learn healthy basics.

As everyone has said, don't expect to go away speaking fluent Japanese. Just simply put impossible to learn something in a month which takes the natives years to learn.