I’ve been slowly by slowly adding in some of the Japanese phrases into my repatiore.  Lately it’s been a little difficult, unless I memorize the phraze it doesn’t roll off the tongue as it should.  I always go back to my comfort zone of broken Japanese with no particals.  Maybe this is what’s hindering my learning efforts.  See when I listen to a sentence I break it down to a couple of groups like who, what, where, when, why and sometimes the how.  From that point I try to work on vocabulary for nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  While I think this helps me to understand some questions that are asked of me I don’t truly understand the makeup of the sentence.  Most times I will be given a phrase to answer but don’t truly understand what makes that phrase what it is.  Slowly I will be listening to the particals to see if there is anything that I can pick up on.  I think that the more I try to interpet the better it will come to me.  I think that if I surround myself constantly with native speakers that it will soon come out without thought more like a reflex response.