Description
JAPANESE 101: INTRODUCTORY JAPANESE
Currently offered: 2021 Term 1
Our Introductory Japanese 101 course begins with a focus on learning hiragana and katakana scripts, writing and reading practice, and includes basic introductory grammar, vocabulary and conversation. Basic everyday vocabulary and expressions will be taught, always with a view to empowering learners so that they feel encouraged to build their own sentences and be able to make some simple conversation during our first Term. This course is designed for a total beginner who would like to learn basic pronunciation, greetings, simple conversation, and introductory reading and writing. Yurika will guide you through a foundation of the Japanese language with many visual and audio materials.
Date & Time: This class meets on Mondays from 7:00-8:30pm during school terms, beginning on Monday 15 February 2021, with 8 weekly sessions. As Week 8 falls over the Easter Monday holiday, the final class of the Term is postponed a week and will be held on Monday 12 April 2021.
Note: Those who cannot make the class meeting day and time either in-person or via live Zoom sessions may consider accessing this course through the weekly recorded video sessions. Class videos are posted within 24 hours of each live class session and are available for your own personal learning session on a day and time of your choosing.
Distance Learning: This course has distance-learning options for those unable to attend the live class sessions in Hamilton. Students have three options for attending our courses once they have registered:
- attend in-person classes in our Hamilton classrooms at the regularly scheduled day and time,
- attend our live on-line classroom sessions via Zoom at the regular scheduled day and time,
- watch the live-recorded class sessions at your leisure, at a time, day and place more suited to your schedule.
These options can be mixed and matched throughout the course to suit your own availability and location.
Yurika Arai (M Phil English & M Professional Studies) comes from Japan and has been living in Hamilton for nearly 30 years. She taught Japanese at the University of Waikato for 15 years and currently works as an early childhood education teacher and a freelance translator.
DISTANCE-LEARNING OPTIONS:
In addition to our in-person classes in Hamilton, our Japanese language courses offer distance learning options for those unable to attend classes in-person. Live-streamed Hamilton classes are available via free Zoom software for those living outside the Waikato. Live-streaming allows you to participate fully in your own learning, ask questions of the instructor and participate fully in the same way as if you were in the physical classroom.
Those unable to attend the scheduled date and time of the actual class sessions, or those who need to miss a class or two due to previous engagements or unexpected illness, can watch any or all of the live-recorded video sessions on their computers, laptops, tablets or mobile devices and study at their own pace and in their own time.
Detailed instructions on how to access our distance learning components will be sent after completing your registration. There are no additional fees for this service. However, distance learners will need access to a desktop or laptop computer with a good quality web-camera (tablet devices and mobile phones can also access our live-streamed classes), a built-in microphone (most modern laptops have built-in microphones) or a headset with a microphone. You will also need to download and install the free Zoom software on your computer or device. Those accessing the video recordings will be able to do so with a simple web browser on any device.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Cost per person per Term (8 classes):
- Waged: $105
- Unwaged (unemployed, students, seniors): $85
Prices for Waged and Unwaged registrants remain the same regardless of your chosen method for accessing our courses. This means that you have the option to mix and match access between attending our regularly-scheduled live class sessions in our Hamilton classrooms, accessing our live class sessions on-line via Zoom at the regularly scheduled class meeting time (no matter where you are located), or watching the video-recorded sessions anywhere at a time and date of your choosing. This allows you to study at your own pace and in your own time.
Once registered, you have three choices for attending your course:
- attend our in-person class sessions in our Hamilton classrooms,
- Zoom in to our live classroom sessions and participate in discussions,
- access the live-recorded class sessions each week. This allows you to register for an entire course, even though the scheduled class session day/time may not be suitable to your schedule. You may also use this option to watch any recorded session for review, or in case you may miss a class session due to prior engagement, being away, or due to illness. This allows you to catch up with any “missed” sessions at a more suitable time.
Once registered, you will receive detailed instructions on how to access our courses via either of the distance-learning options, i.e. live access via Zoom, or watching the video-recorded sessions.
Introductory Japanese materials will be used throughout the course and are included in the course fees. These will be distributed as PDF files via email, which you can print at home and add to your own loose-leaf notebook. These may be supplemented by additional materials. You will require a pen or pencil, a notebook for taking notes, and perhaps a recording app on your phone to record yourself and your spoken progress. Any notes that your instructor writes on the class whiteboard will be emailed to you as a digital PDF file so that you can print these out at home and add them to your own notebook.
LOCATION: All in-person language classes are held at Artmakers Trust, Norris Ward Park Arts Centre, 2 Seddon Road, Hamilton, located on the corner of Ward Street and Seddon Road in downtown Hamilton. The carpark entrance is off Seddon Road at the back of Norris Ward Park. The classroom is immediately to the left of the Waikato Society of Potters studio. There is plenty of free parking available in the carpark just outside the classroom. Bikes are also welcomed!
DISTANCE-LEARNING: You get to chose your location when you Zoom in to our live classroom sessions, or access our classes at your leisure and at a time and day of your choosing by watching the video recorded sessions from each class. This allows you to study at your own pace.
