Revision of Welcome to Japanese with Tony Sensei! from Sat, 08/29/2009 - 18:56

*** This week in JPNS 1001 ***

This week we will finish learning the katakana, and also start on Lesson 1 of "Genki". You should start studying the vocabulary words (using the Lesson 1 vocabulary deck with Anki) for that lesson this weekend. You should also listen to the first online lecture for Lesson 1 this weekend—our class on Monday will assume that you have listened to it, so please take notes and come to class with questions, or ask questions in the Genkier Users group forum. You should listen to the second podcast on Monday night, and the third one on Tuesday. We will have a test over the ひらがな on Tuesday. The format of the test is simple—I will give you a blank かな chart that you will fill in with all of the ひらがな (so be sure you know the order that the かな are written in!). We are also scheduled for quizzes over the contents of the lectures, but we may adjust the schedule so that we'll have time to cover everything.

Remember that our class schedule is available online, in both html format and iCal format. I have started to blog summaries of each of our classes—if I fall behind, somebody please poke me. (^.^;

*** Not enrolled, but want to study along? ***

If you are interested in studying along with us, please register on this site, and when you do so be sure to join the "JPNS 1001 @ UGA" and "Genkier users" groups! 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.