675 Posts Found

An insightful take on how to study kanji. Particularly useful is the description of Jack Halpern’s skip system.

Subjects: Kanji, Language Learning Tips

Find various streaming video options on this site from the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun | Subjects: Multimedia, Video / Audio

David Hallgren offers various tools for studying Japanese, including:
– Hiragana and Katakana quizes
– various Kanji quizes and exercises
– vocabulary practice drills that cover the Genki textbooks as well as the JLPT levels 3 and 4
– a grammar database (currently in nascent stages it appears)
– a forum
– a kana editor (IE only supported)

Source: David Hallgren | Subject: Online Lessons

In 1997, the Council on Foreign Relations established the International Affairs Fellowship in Japan, sponsored by Hitachi, Ltd., to enable a number of outstanding young American leaders and thinkers to expand their intellectual and professional horizons through an extended period of research or related professional activity in Japan. Officially known as the International Affairs Fellowship in Japan, or informally as “the Hitachi Fellowship,” the program … [ Read more ]

Sources: Council on Foreign Relations, Hitachi | Subject: Employment / Career

Find various audio and text files with associated exercises covering beginners’, continuers’, extension and background speakers’ courses.

Source: Charles Sturt University | Subjects: Online Lessons, Video / Audio

Here is a large collection of novels in electronic form.

Editor’s Note: I am not sure if these are actually complete texts or just excerpts…

Source: Murayama Seiji | Subject: Reading Material

Access various course materials from York University’s Japanese Studies Program on this site. Materials include vocabulary lists, lesson notes and dialogues, reading materials, exercises, dictation practice sounds, and quicktime videos for the following:
– Elementary Modern Standard Japanese
– Intermediate Modern Standard Japanese
– Advanced Modern Standard Japanese
– Advanced Reading in Contemporary Japanese

Additional content includes:
– Brief History of Japan
– … [ Read more ]

Source: York University | Subject: Online Lessons

This site offers a series of short readings. In fact, the title ひとくち can be translated as mouthful, one word or bite. Douwa is fairy tale.

Source: tobira | Subject: Reading Material

This site, written entirely in Japanese, offers numerous pages of Japanese reading aimed at covering everyday and other topics. Others have recommend the daily life/culture reading materials (「日常生活に見る日本の文化」読み教材).

Source: Ken Ijikevich Ujie | Subject: Reading Material

This site contains flash files for a selection of children’s picture books.

Source: Marimo Saito | Subject: Reading Material

This site offers lots of digitized versions of e-hon (picture books) and in multiple languages. You can see the books covered by picture or title indexes.

Editor’s Note: the standard display is an image of the page so the text can’t be highlighted (and thus is not useful for tools like rikaichan). But, if you choose the big characters (大きな字) option then the text is … [ Read more ]

Source: COMM BANGKOK CO.,LTD. | Subject: Reading Material

Meguro Language Center offers some examples of their original teaching materials here, mostly in Flash or PDF format. Materials are separated into flash, beginner, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, intermediate and advanced, JETRO Test, and JLPT. The JLPT materials are especially useful, containing requirments, kanji lists, vocabulary lists and grammar points covered.

Source: Meguro Language Center (MLC) | Subjects: JLPT Exam, Online Lessons

Monthly magazine with most of the texts both in English and Japanese (hiragana, katakana and kanji with furigana). Topics are about life in Japan (relationships, work, Japan in general etc).

Source: YAC Planning Inc. | Subject: News / Magazine

Judging from bookstore displays and train ads, Chung Changyong’s Eigo wa zettai, benkyou suru na! was very popular with the Japanese public. Chung’s book, translated from the Korean, details his language learning method, which the author of this article says can be applied to JSL learners.

Source: Toyo Gakuen University / R. Welch | Subject: Language Learning Tips

A variety of recommendations (and articles) on pleasure reading for JSL students, covering the following topics:
– For Kids (& JSL Learners!)
– Fiction
– Non-fiction
– Movie & TV Reading
– Audio books
– Language Learning

Source: Toyo Gakuen University / R. Welch | Subject: Reading Material

1. Yomihoudai is an application to help read Japanese text.
2. Texts are culled from the Web, Sources are Acknowledged wherever possible.
3. Texts are rendered in 3 ways:
1. Hyperlinked Words: Japanese text scraped from original pages, morphanalysed and linked to Edict/Enamdict dictionaries.
2. Hardcopy: Japanese text presented as a static page, with a vocabulary at the end.
3. ChaSen … [ Read more ]

Source: Stephen Nightingale | Subject: Reading Material

This site from Reading Tutor has reading material in Japanese and you can choose the difficulty level from 1 star easy to 5 stars difficult. The writing is supplemented by a dictionary of the word that you click on and the word is also added to your list at the bottom. Just check it out to get the picture.

Sources: Kawamura, Kitamura & Hobara | Subject: Reading Material

Find online text and audio for various children’s stories in Japanese. Stories include:
– いっすんぼうし
– うらしまたろう
– かぐやひめ
– かさじぞう
– かちかちやま
– さるとかに
– たなばた
– つるのおんがえし
– ももたろう
– やまんばと牛方
– 舌切りすずめ

Source: Logos | Subject: Reading Material

Beginning dialogs done with Flash. All are related to being a student (classroom, teachers, schoolmates, etc.) While this seems simplistic, there is actually a lot of material presented and quite a bit of vocabulary. If you visit the main page, you will find that versions exist for English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Cambodian. To get those to work, use the ? marker on … [ Read more ]

Source: 日本語指導教材研究会 | Subject: Video / Audio

An Internet Broadcasting Site developed by Richard Harrison in the Education Center for International Students, Nagoya University, Japan. Includes multiple lessons geared toward intermediate, advanced and superior levels.

Source: Nagoya University / Richard Harrison & Yoshimi Iwasaki | Subjects: Online Lessons, Video / Audio