MIT OpenCourseWare | Foreign Languages and Literatures | 21F.501 Beginning Japanese I, Fall 2004 | Home 
Kanji from study materials. (Illustrated by Carrene Winter Tracy.)
Course Highlights
Interactive
study materials, in addition to downloadable
readings, are available for this course.
Course Description
This course covers Lessons 1 through 6 from
Japanese: the Spoken Language, Part 1 (by Eleanor H. Jorden with Mari Noda, Yale University Press, 1987), providing opportunities to acquire basic skills for conversation, reading and writing. The program emphasizes ACTIVE command of Japanese, not passive knowledge. The goal is not simply to study the grammar and vocabulary, but to acquire the ability to use Japanese accurately and appropriately with increasing spontaneity. Students learn Hiragana and Katakana (the Japanese phonetic symbols), then approximately 50 Kanji (Sino-Japanese characters) in this course.
So cool, might help a lot for beginning importers!