Revision of Welcome to Japanese with Tony Sensei! from Wed, 08/19/2009 - 10:01

*** This week in JPNS 1001 ***

On the first day of the course (Mon, Aug 17), we will go over the course syllabus and discuss some meta-information about Japanese and its study. On Tuesday, we will talk more about the course and some of the projects that we will do, and go over the basics of the pronunciation of Japanese. On Thursday, we will begin learning the Hiragana, using the Heisig book. We will do Lesson 1 in class on Thursday, and Lesson 2 in class on Friday. For those studying along with us online, please feel free to post your questions and comments in the  JPNS 1001 forum.

If you are interested in studying along with us, please register on this site, and join the "JPNS 1001 @ UGA" and "Genkier users" groups! Please also join our Google Group! Doing so will ensure that you get important updates about the course. You should also read this forum post, and download the course syllabus. You may also want to follow @tonysensei on Twitter. If you have any questions, please email Tony, or (even better) ask a question in the JPNS 1001 forum.

What is this site?

This is a Japanese learning community, created for Japanese learners of all levels. I originally created this site to support the Introduction to Japanese course that I teach, but I hope that this will develop into a community where Japanese language learners from around the world support each other in our studies by asking and answering questions, sharing learning resources and tools, and by just providing a helpful environment. Please join us!

What can I do here?

First off, one of my goals is to make it possible for anyone to study along with my Intro to Japanese course. If you join the JPNS 1001 @ UGA group, you will have access to our syllabus, digital resources for learning, discussion forums, class handouts, etc. You will also be joining a large group of students who are studying Japanese at approximately your level, which if used correctly can be the most valuable resource of all!

I am gradually adding more Japanese learning content as our course progresses. Most of the content will be related to the course that I teach, but I will be adding other things as time permits (hah!). To start, to the right are feeds to my podcast, "Genkier", which is a series of lectures related to the content of a popular college-level Japanese language textbook. I am also creating files that you can use with the Anki flash card software for vocabulary learning and review. I will also be making copies of tests, quizzes, and various classroom handouts available on this site, so you will be able to use those to measure your progress in learning Japanese.

Please either register on the site, or log in using your Facebook account. After doing so, you can join any of the current groups. If you like, you can even create your own group! The Create Content menu above will let you create lots of other stuff on the site as well. Please take a look!

Future plans

As the site evolves, I hope that we will be able to gather more study materials submitted by our members. My goal for creating this site is the development of a community of Japanese learners who can help each other with study tips, encouragement, and information exchange. I also hope that we will attract native Japanese speakers and other educators who are interested in helping Japanese language learners.

I hope that this will become a community-directed site, evolving according to the needs and wants of its users. If you have ideas or suggestions, please consider posting in the JwTS users forum.