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 holds a degree in Linguistics from Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, specializing in second language acquisition. She has over 15 years of experience working in the field of Intellectual Property at both U.S. and Japanese law firms, with considerable international business expertise. Tomoko teaches Japanese at a university and also provides Japanese language instruction for business settings to companies and various other organizations, offering lessons from absolute beginner to native-like levels. Additionally, she offers language instruction to high school, college, and graduate students, as well as translation services for a variety of business needs. Her interests include traveling, reading, listening to music, and playing with her mini-schnauzer mix dog, who was adopted from a rescue.