Japanese: Beginner Level 1 *In-Person*

Japanese is spoken by more than 125 million people around the world—primarily by the inhabitants of Japan, but also by populations of Japanese origin in Hawaii, as well as in North and South America. Nearly 4 million people around the world study Japanese. Japanese is an agglutinative language whose origins are not clearly established. The writing system consists of two syllabaries—Hiragana and Katakana—and the Chinese Kanji characters. This level is for students who have not studied Japanese before. Students will learn to identify common words, read basic vocabulary, ask and answer simple questions, and use simple phrases and sentences to describe familiar people and places. In this class, students will have many simple and basic conversation exercises so that they can communicate in Japanese in practical settings. Instructor: Tomoko Takagi

Sections

Instructor

Tomoko Takagi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She has a degree in Linguistics from Tokyo Woman’s Christian University focused on second language acquisition. She has worked in Intellectual Property field more than 15 years in US and Japanese law firms with considerable international business experiences. She teaches Japanese classes for business settings in companies and organizations, as well as for high school/college/graduate students, and also provides translation services for various business needs. Her other interests include traveling, reading, listening to music and watching competitive figure skating.