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 Spring 2024 term will be from January 27th to March 30th. Early bird registration, which ends on January 6th, 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 January 19th to January 25th.
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.
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.
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This is an awesome course series. I’ve only been able to take one due to other weekend obligations, but hopefully will be able to participate in another class after the spring session. Highly recommend it, and the professors will help get you placed into the right section.