It’s a self-paced online course for six months. It’s a pdf textbook and some videos.
It’s not very good to be honest – there are better resources and textbooks. If you are accepted, you might even be able to find cheap classes in your local community centre too.
Learning Japanese here is entirely up to your own motivations. Some people survive their entire tenure never getting past n4-n5.
Most people who I heard started it, did not finish it. As Ikebookuro said there are way better resources or free of low cost. Or just don’t.
I came to Japan as a beginner, like not even able to pass N5. I signed up for the course but can agree, it’s not good. Did I learn some things from it? Sure. However, there is A LOT that can be improved.
First of all, their lessons aren’t organized in a good manner. One lesson was explaining some complex terms and some grammar…the next lesson was about greetings, like こんにちは. Most books start with greetings before moving onto grammar.
Their explanations are also awful sometimes. When I got to the chapter on て verbs, the book didn’t explain at all what they were used for. It was like, “Te verbs are important. Here’s how to turn verbs into their -te form.” And that’s it. That was the explanation.
I somehow made it to the last unit in the beginner level, but for some reason, they haven’t really introduced any kanji, so the PDF textbook will have whole sentences written entirely in hiragana. At that point, it’s such a chore to read their sentences, it’s almost counterproductive. But in the unit tests, the occasional question uses kanji (with furigana). What’s the point of using kanji in the test without explanation while not using kanji at all in the textbook? It makes zero sense to me.
I didn’t find it helpful. I used Genki I as my starting point. There are some good free resources like Irodori
4 comments
It’s a self-paced online course for six months. It’s a pdf textbook and some videos.
It’s not very good to be honest – there are better resources and textbooks. If you are accepted, you might even be able to find cheap classes in your local community centre too.
Learning Japanese here is entirely up to your own motivations. Some people survive their entire tenure never getting past n4-n5.
Most people who I heard started it, did not finish it. As Ikebookuro said there are way better resources or free of low cost. Or just don’t.
I came to Japan as a beginner, like not even able to pass N5. I signed up for the course but can agree, it’s not good. Did I learn some things from it? Sure. However, there is A LOT that can be improved.
First of all, their lessons aren’t organized in a good manner. One lesson was explaining some complex terms and some grammar…the next lesson was about greetings, like こんにちは. Most books start with greetings before moving onto grammar.
Their explanations are also awful sometimes. When I got to the chapter on て verbs, the book didn’t explain at all what they were used for. It was like, “Te verbs are important. Here’s how to turn verbs into their -te form.” And that’s it. That was the explanation.
I somehow made it to the last unit in the beginner level, but for some reason, they haven’t really introduced any kanji, so the PDF textbook will have whole sentences written entirely in hiragana. At that point, it’s such a chore to read their sentences, it’s almost counterproductive. But in the unit tests, the occasional question uses kanji (with furigana). What’s the point of using kanji in the test without explanation while not using kanji at all in the textbook? It makes zero sense to me.
I didn’t find it helpful. I used Genki I as my starting point. There are some good free resources like Irodori