Japanese Ii and Mediation

This course aims to increase and strengthen the knowledge of basic written and spoken Japanese. It is reserved for students who have already studied Japanese for no less than 120-140 hours and know hiragana/katakana syllabaries and at least 150 ideographic characters (kanji). Notably, the course aims to introduce:
- approximately 200 new ideographic characters (kanji), for a comprehensive knowledge of 350 characters (in terms of reading and writing);
- part of the fundamental vocabulary; particularly, students should be able to read all the words included in the first 35 Units of the textbook Minna no Nihongo I-II Honsatsu (2nd edition);
- grammar rules, expressions and constructions included in Units 20-35 of the textbook Minna no Nihongo I-II Honsatsu (2nd edition).
Communication skills for everyday life will result in the ability to read simple, non-specialised texts and to correctly write by hand the words studied.
Students will learn to analyse and translate non-specialised texts at an intermediate level with regard to grammar, and understand the overall communicative content. In terms of communication skills for everyday life, with regard to written and oral production, students will be able to: automatically and correctly use the newly acquired verb forms; choose and form the best morphosyntactic structures according to the different communicative situations; express complex thoughts in terms of verb tense and aspect. With regard to listening skills, students will be able to understand oral speech regardless of the speaker's speed and within the limits of the grammar learnt at a theoretical level.

Students will become familiar with the lexical and morphological elements of the main Japanese expressions at an intermediate level, as well as the general principles of their construction. They will also learn to use the most appropriate sentence structures in written and oral contexts, according to the different communicative situations. The proficiency level to be reached is between N5 and N4 of JLPT scale (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) and corresponds approximately to A2 level under the CEFR.