Japanese

Welcome to CLO's Japanese Page! Here we will outline resources and study guides for use in our tutoring sessions or for self-study. We take students of all levels of Japanese (even advanced to fluent, we'd love to have you for assistance to lower levels!), even those simply just interested in learning the language outside of classes.

The tutoring sessions will be split by language level or class level (if you are taking classes currently at Virginia Tech) and can be served as a tool for additional assistance in your Japanese class or for advancing your studies further.

For those in their first year of studying Japanese, objectives are as follows:

1. Becoming comfortable reading and writing hiragana and katakana

2. Understanding basic Japanese sentence structures (verb final)

3. Understanding particles like は, も, に, と, を, etc.

4. Using の for possession

5. Japanese Pronouns (この, これ, etc.)

6. Understanding the negative sentence structure

7. Conjugation of verbs (present and past tenses)

8. Understanding existing verbs (があります・ います)

9. Able to convey time and frequency through counting and adverbs

10. Understanding adjectives

11. To be comfortable with the Te-form (て）and its relative grammar structures

12. To understand the ている form in context

13. Understanding conjunctions like から

14. To be comfortable with short forms (past and present) and informal speech and utilizing it in grammar

15. Understanding how to compare multiple items to each other

16. To utilize various grammar structures in conversation

17. Become comfortable writing and reading 200+ Kanji

This year students typically learn from the Genki I Textbook and Workbook, which is a great textbook for beginners as it has various culture notes and does a decent job at explaining the grammar points. Each chapter has a dialogue, grammar lessons, and exercises (speaking and writing), with a list of vocabulary and Kanji.

Other students may utilize the Minna no Nihongo textbooks, which are typically used in Japanese Language Schools to teach Japanese as it can allow students of different native languages to learn from the same textbook. It presents a fully immersive workbook that may be difficult for first time learners.

For tutoring beginner language students, we will primarily be focusing on memorizing Hiragana, Katakana, and certain Kanji characters at the beginning of the semester (depending on how far you are in the text through class or self-study), then vocabulary to get you ready to practice grammar through speaking and writing exercises. Our main goal is to get you ready for conversation practice to practice what you've learned and to assist with immersion learning. Language learning is time-intensive and requires a lot of practice, which deserves a good foundation to build upon!

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!