Beginner Seasons Confusion

[acrasso_503348]

Hi all,

I hope this reaches some learners and the teachers of the Japanesepod 101 courses. I have been mailing the contact us email and the person who has been answering has not been clear so maybe you guys can help with my question!

I have recently Passed N5 for reference. Even though, I started back at absolute beginner. I did the first two seasons and then I moved to the beginner lessons. This is where I very confused. There are so many seasons and lessons and I am not sure what season to listen to. To complete the beginner lesson do you need to complete all seasons? This is a TON of lessons and seems overwhelming. Do some of the topics overlap between seasons? What is the best season to start at? I started out on season one. I am about 40% through it and to think I have another 5 seasons to go seems a bit overwhelming.

I guess what I am looking for is some sort of explaination of how the different seasons should be looked at, an explaination of why there are so many seasons, and a little guide for the order in which they should be taken.

Sorry if this has been asked before.

Thanks,
Anthony

[mmmason8967]

Yes, this has been asked before and I have a prepared, canned answer which i will paste in below。It's a little out of date and needs revising, but I hope will help to answer your question.

マイケル


The lessons on JapanesePod101 do not follow an obvious sequence such as Lesson #1, Lesson #2, and so on. New students often find it difficult to work out where they should start. Hopefully this short summary will remove some of the confusion.

Overview
JapanesePod101 is based around audio lessons that generally last around ten to fifteen minutes. Lessons are grouped into seasons (explained below) and are categorised by Level (also explained below).

Each lesson has a variety of supporting materials including Lesson Notes and Lesson Notes Lite. These PDF files contain exactly the same information: use Lesson Notes Lite if your PDF reader won't display Lesson Notes correctly.

Levels
Lessons are categorised using four levels: Absolute Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.

The Absolute Beginner level contains two sub-levels, Absolute Beginner and Newbie. The main difference is that the Absolute Beginner sub-level is aimed at those who want to learn to say things in Japanese but don't feel ready for detailed grammar explanations.

Seasons
There are several seasons (or series) at each level. You are not expected to work through each season in order! When you have completed between two and four seasons at one level, you will probably feel ready to move up to the next level.

For most seasons there is a summary of the curriculum for that season. You can find the curriculum from the season's home page by clicking on the Explore Curriculum button. The Explore Curriculum button is also available alongside the seasons listed for each level on that level's home page.

Curriculum
Many members like to follow a structured curriculum. For these members there is a sequence of series called Nihongo Doujou.

Newbie S2 --> Newbie S3 --> Beginner S4 --> Beginner S5 --> Beginner S6 --> Lower Intermediate S6

Alternatively, there is another earlier sequence:-

Beginner S1 --> Beginner S2 --> Beginner S3 --> Lower Intermediate S1 --> S2 --> S3 --> S4 --> S5

Writing
You can find out about Japanese writing on the Japanese Writing System page.

The first stage of learning to read and write Japanese is to learn the kana (hiragana and katakana). A very good resource is the Kantan Kana video course.