Beginner Japanese - Level 1 (Twice-A-Week)

This class is for absolute beginners to the Japanese language! We follow the same program that most University’s use! (Albeit at a less intense pace). Many of our students are able to skip ahead in their University Japanese Courses! 

At PonPon school we believe that learning by DOING is very important for transferring classroom skills to real life. We put a strong emphasis on using the language in structured interactions and spend a lot of class time using the target language ourselves.

What will be taught? 
Week One:
- Overview of the Japanese Writing System/Classroom Japanese
- The Hiragana Alphabet (The first 10 letters)
Week 2:
- Finish Hiragana
Week 3:
- Greetings
- Self Introductions
- Counting to 100
Week 4
- Vocabulary for forming sentences
- How to make basic sentences.
- How to make question sentences.

Week 5
- Telling the time in Japanese
- Asking and giving phone numbers in Japanese (not our real phone numbers)
- using particle の

Week 6
- Talking about our ages, grades, and hobbies.
- Self introduction project

Week 7
- New Vocabulary
- counting to 90,000 and asking prices in Japanese

Week 8
- This, That, that over there
- This thing, That thing, and that thing over there

Week 9
- Here, there, over there, who's
- Particle も
- negating nouns

Week 10
- Particles よ and ね
- Translation project

Week 11
- Create your own store dialogue project

Week 12
- Ordering Food in Japanese, weird numbers for food.

How is your class structured?
- The first portion of class will be a general check-in with everyone/answer burning questions (Less than 5 minutes)
- The next portion of the class will be a short lecture about the topic of the day. I try to keep my explanations short and simple.
- Then students will be given an opportunity to practice speaking what they have learned in partners/groups. Speaking is one of the most important skills in a language so I aim for around 20-30 minutes of structured speaking exercises per session. 
- It is strongly recommended that students participate in speak-aloud practice, but I understand that not everyone is comfortable with that. For those individuals, they can do writing practice which I will provide, and I will be available to support them should they have any questions.

Students will be expected to complete and hand in written homework between classes. I will provide feedback on this homework outside of class time in a timely manner.

Students will be expected to spend time memorizing things outside of class time, such as assigned vocabulary words, and recognition of Japanese letters. I will provide memorization resources to help with this.

Will students be able to continue learning Japanese after this course?
-Yes! I will be running a continuation to this class right after. If you follow my courses, you will be able to pass the official Japanese Language Proficiency Exams!