The University of Hawaiʻi Outreach College offers non-credit low-cost Conversational Japanese Classes via Zoom. The best part about the classes is that it has one hour of conversation practice time with Japanese speakers during the last hour of the class. When the classes were in person, Japanese people in Hawaii were volunteering, but with the move to Zoom we now have mostly volunteers from Japan.
Each term is 10-weeks with three terms a year (fall, spring, summer) and classes are on Saturdays from 9am-11:45am HST. The Summer 2024 term will be from June 1st to August 10th (no class the 4th of July weekend, 7/6). Early bird registration, which ends on May 11th, is $25 off the regular tuition price, and even at the regular price tuition comes out to less than $8 an hour. There is a late fee of $25 that will be applied from May 24th to May 30th.
There are 8 classes/levels to choose from and students can change levels if the one they chose was too easy/advanced for them, up until the 3rd week of class. The Elementary classes focus more on speaking instead of reading hiragana/katakana/kanji, but they are introduced. Hiragana/katakana knowledge is highly recommended for the Intermediate levels since the textbook that the course (loosely) follows does not have romaji at that level. There is no textbook for the Advanced level, and it’s mostly focused on topics and grammar that comes up in JLPT N1/N2. In terms of JLPT level, while we do not teach to the test, the Elementary 1\~Intermediate 1 levels cover N5 content, Intermediate 2 covers N5/N4 content, Intermediate 3 covers N4/N3 content, High Intermediate is aimed at those who have N3 level knowledge, and Advanced covers N1/N2 content.
Link to the classes with additional details are [here](https://www.outreach.hawaii.edu/areas-of-study/language-arts-humanities/). Feel free to message me or comment if you have any questions.
We also have a 6-week “[Intro to Kanji](https://explore.outreach.hawaii.edu/search/publicCourseSearchDetails.do?method=load&courseId=4471420&selectedProgramAreaId=18355&selectedProgramStreamId=18366)” class starting this month, aimed at those who do not have any kanji knowledge or who are intimidated by kanji. This class starts at 6:30PM HST on Wednesdays, so it might not be suitable depending on your timezone.
by Cyglml