Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon successful completion students should be able to:

1. Apply a clear understanding of the nature of Japanese tone and pitch to manage limited interactions in a selected variety of settings.
2. Further apply circumlocution and inference skills when navigating limited real world situations in Japanese.
3. Reflect on linguistic and cultural diversity within the Japanese speaking world and how it differs and/or relates to one’s own culture.
4. Apply a broader understanding of important historical and cultural movements in the target culture through exposure to literature, art and
performing arts in the target language.
5. Apply an understanding of slightly complex Japanese syntactic system to read and compose simple Japanese texts in Japanese
Kana syllabaries and additional Kanji characters.

Students will be assessed by any combination of the following:

1. Active participation in class
2. Individual presentations
3. Contextual written tasks (in or outside of class) to assess reading, writing, cultural, and
aural competencies, including reading and and writing of syllabaries
4. Oral interviews with partner or instructor
5. In class, interactive student role-plays

Includes all or most of the following:

 1. Interrogatives
 2. Physical and personality descriptions
 3. Numbers of native Japanese system, Sino-Japanese system and counters
 4. Verbs in non-past, informal speech, affirmative and negative
 5. Positional words
 6. Verbs in past, mid-level formal speech
 7. Verbs in non-past, mid-level formal speech
 8. Single particles
 9. Predicate using the Copula, i-adjectives and na-adjectives
10. Verbs in gerund
11. Daily and weekend activities
12. Invitations in a culturally appropriate manner
13. Telephone conversations
14. Conjunctions and disjunctive conjunctions
15. Describes weather, climate, physical descriptions and makes comparisons.
16. Location and prefectures in major islands of Japan
17. Verbs in past, informal speech, affirmative and negative
18. Adjectives in past, affirmative and negative
19. Letter writing
20. Family, polite and humble polite form of nouns.
21. Hobbies and pastimes
22. Potential form of verbs
23. Personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns
24. Academic subjects and majors 

Competencies and Skills 

1. Makes invitations and telephone conversations in a culturally appropriate manner.

2. Recognizes basic linguistic and cultural differences between non-Indo-European and Indo-European worlds.

3. Describes weather, climate and makes comparisons.

4. Asks questions about the language in Japanese.

5. Makes and responds to compliments in a culturally appropriate manner.

6. Recognizes the concept of in and out group and introduces family members.

7. Discusses about hobbies and pastimes using family member names in a culturally appropriate manner.

8. Writes a letter in a culturally appropriate manner.

9. Reads for general meanings in texts using combination of syllabaries and Kanji.

10. Recognizes tones and pitches that is specific to Japanese.

11. Writes sentences expressing causal actions and events using syllabaries and 50-80 Kanji.

12. Describes self and others: personality and physical attributes.

13. States dates of the month.

14. Reads for general meanings in texts using some inconspicuous cognates.

15. Writes sentences expressing sequential actions or events.