Friday, October 06, 2006

Attempt #3

Yesterday, I signed up for Japanese again, this time at Bunka Language School in Delfi Orchard. It has a patented teaching formula, which is supposed to enable you to learn Japanese quicker and with less pain. I was impressed enough by the method to list some of its more important points here, even though it will not make much sense to most readers of this blog...

1. Verb Conjugation
Foreign students of the Japanese language often have this problem. They learn a lot of words in vocabulary lists, especially verbs, but they still cannot understand what Japanese people are saying. According to the Bunka founder, that's because beginners tend to only be taught the polite "mas" form of a verb, and learn verb conjugation (into other forms) over the years. So beginners often cannot pick out verbs in speech. At Bunka, whenever they introduce a new verb, they give you all the forms (and there are maybe 8-10). After a while, you instinctively know how any verb changes its sound.

2. Wa versus Ga
A lot of textbooks emphasise when to use the particles "wa" and "ga". But actually they are not strictly comparable. "Wa" is a special particle that makes whatever precedes it the topic of the sentence. Sometimes it appears, e.g. with "e" or "ni ("ewa", "niwa") but other times it is omitted, e.g. with "ga". So "ga" and "wa" serve two totally different functions in the language!

Ok enough already. Class starts on Nov 11. Must buy nice pencil box.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, I came via tomorrow's link.

I took classes at Bunka before, and my sensei was great! So was the teaching system. Good luck and have fun.

11:26 PM  
Blogger Jt said...

頑張って!なぜ日本語が興味ありますか。

-singaporean in tokyo;)

i did a 1 month intensive japanese course at bunkka 2 years back..it was not very effective to me as i was just learning everything in hiragna..and when u are here in japan..errr..sorry..the rojak of kanji plus hiragana plus katakana rulez! so good luck with your japanese!

4:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello happened to chance upon your blog! I'm learning Jap at bunka language school now too bu currently i'm still at elementary one! heh so good luck!

-Adeline =)

4:11 PM  

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