The Japan Foundation, Sydney: Online Basic Japanese Course for Teachers of Japanese Stages 1-4

Online Basic Japanese Course for Teachers of Japanese Stages 1-4

We would like to introduce the Online Course. We invite teachers who want to improve their Japanese language proficiency to take this course!

Feature of this course

This course

assumes a knowledge of the Japanese syllabary and ability to read hiragana and katakana.
is designed to be completed in 8 weeks, working at your own pace within the 8 week period.
* The eight units will be available online from each Monday. Previous weeks’ units will remain online for you to refer to during the course. Each unit will finish with a production task sheet. You will be required to complete each week’s production task sheet and fax it to the Japan Foundation by the following Monday.
is made up of 8 units in each stage (Stages1-4), the last being a revision unit.
includes written tasks to be completed at the end of each unit and sent to the instructor by email or fax.
offers optional speaking practice with the instructor by phone.

Course Contents

This course has been designed to cover the content of Level N5 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLTP). As you take successive stages, the dialogues become longer and the sentence patterns introduced in each unit become more complex. In this way, you can learn Japanese usage and grammar patterns step by step.

The chart below is a list of the topics for each week of this course. The main character appearing in this course is a young Australian student, David, who lives in Japan. You can learn Japanese through David’s experiences in Japanese society.

	Stage 1	Stage 2	Stage 3	Stage 4
Week 1	Introducing yourself	Talking about your health	Year end cleaning	David goes on a diet
Week 2	Talking about your family	Looking for an apartment	Shopping	Gossip
Week 3	Your favorite food	Talking about a trip	Mysterious old woman	A surprise party
Week 4	Daily routine	Fitness camp schedule	Asking the way	At a sushi restaurant
Week 5	Talking about your holiday	Planning a holiday	Tatsuya’s birthday	Which one is he?
Week 6	Inviting friends	Preparing for a wedding	Wedding anniversary	After the film
Week 7	Teacher talk	Searching for a lost item	Class reunion	Good-bye, David!
Week 8	Revision test	Revision test	Revision test	Revision test

If you would like to know about the course content in more detail, please click the PDF icons.

	Stage 1 (48kb)
	Stage 2 (51kb)
	Stage 3 (56kb)
	Stage 4 (97kb)

Activities

These are examples of activities done in this course.

Dialogue
In this section you listen to an introductory dialogue in Japanese accompanied by flash animation. A written version of the dialogue is given for you to read, followed by an English translation. A vocabulary list and grammar notes are provided, and you can also download the dialogue on an MP3 sound file.

Vocabulary exercises
In this section you can check and reinforce vocabulary.

Matching fractured dialogues
In this section you learn conversational phrases by matching utterances and responses.

Listening exercises
There are two types of listening exercises, Listening Grab and Listening Task.
In each activity, you listen to the Japanese sentences and choose the pictures which match the sentences.
You can also download MP3 sound files here.

Kanji exercises
From Stage 2 you start learning kanji.
This section shows the stroke order of the kanji and you can download the Kanji Practice Sheet for writing practice.

Grammar exercises
From Stage 3 you practice grammar by putting words in sentences in the right order.

Reading exercise
From Stage 3, you have the opportunity to read authentic Japanese text. You can also hear and download the sound.

Typing exercises
From Stage 3 there is a typing exercise section.