I remember when I was taking 2nd year Japanese language studies at the University.  We were required to do lab work where we had to listen to dialogues that included the various sentence patterns we were supposed to remember for that week.

Listening to dialogue can get old really quick. The motivation to keep on listening to these audio lessons week after week decreased really quick.   So one day, I asked my Sensei, “Why do we have to keep listening to these audio lessons?  We don’t remember them by the next week and they don’t really seem to help”.

Language is a living thing, and to get better you need to actually use it with someone.  However, like most people we don’t always have this opportunity.

Sensei told me to keep on listening to the lessons and that when I did engage in Japanese conversation and heard that sentence pattern again, I would recall the sentence pattern.   And… guess what? Sensei was right.

I went to Japan and sure enough our audio lessons did pay dividends.

Any practice that you can get will help. If you don’t have anyone to practice with, by all means get as much input of Japanese as you can. The important thing is not to get discouraged and to keep doing a little every day.