[NTREEG]

When I was in the United States, I took private lessons with a native teacher for 1 and a half hours, once a week for 5 months. It was very helpful and gave me a decent basis in grammar, hiragana, and building my vocabulary. But then I came to Japan and started studying full time at a Japanese language school 20 hours a week. We covered just about everything I learned from my private lessons within the first 2 weeks of language school. I've only been at the language school for 5 months so far, but I can hold very simple conversations in Japanese. I've gone out with some of the students at my school who are in the Intermediate and Advanced classes who've been studying full time for 1 - 2 years and they have no problems conversing with native Japanese speakers in daily situations. I'd really like to get to that level.