Difference between Beginner & absolute Beginner?

[hbuchmann4067]

I've just started to look at Japanese, but know some words from travelling, and know most of the Kanji characters from Chinese. After starting with the Newbie Season 1 I noticed that the Beginner Season 1 covers the same topics again.
So here's my question:
Is Beginner just faster than Newbie, or is there anything from the Newbie seasons that I'd need in order to understand the Beginner classes? I couldn't find any place on the website which really explains the differences between the levels "absolute beginner", "newbie", and "beginner". Any ideas?

Thanks
Harald

[mmmason8967]

Back in the early days there were just three levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Later the Absolute Beginner level was added as a clear starting point for new students. The Absolute Beginner level has two sub-levels, Absolute Beginner (again) and Newbie. The main difference is that the Absolute Beginner level focuses more on phrases and less on grammar than the Newbie series--so, for example, if you've never done any Japanese and you're going to visit Japan in two months, the Absolute Beginner sub-level is almost certainly going to be the level you should choose.

There's now a huge number of lessons on JapanesePod101. You are not expected to start at the lowest level and work through every lesson in every series before moving to the next level! Instead you'd do, say, one Absolute Beginner series, a couple of Newbie series, two or three Beginner series, and so on.

You can check the curriculum for any series. If a series follows on from an earlier series, the main problem you're likely to face is that you might be assumed to know the vocabulary from the earlier series. But it's easy to go to the earlier series and check out the vocabulary, so it's not a serious problem.

The earlier series are often longer than recent series and so cover a wider range of levels. The original Beginner Season 1 has around 170 lessons and so is really equivalent to several series running from Newbie up to Lower Intermediate. The newer way of labelling series makes it easier to track your progress--or at least to feel that you are making progress. Going from Absolute Beginner to Newbie and then to Beginner feels like more of an accomplishment than getting half-way through the first Beginner series (at least, it does for me).

Hope that helps.

マイケル

[community.japanese]

Harald-san, マイケルsan,
kon'nichiwa!

Thank you very much, マイケルsan, for the detailed helpful explanations!
Harald-san, have you already learnt Japanese (grammar, not characters)?
Like Michael-san explained, you don't necessarily have to start from the lowest level if
you already know some stuff. It also means that you don't have to cover every single lesson
in a series if you know certain grammar.

We now have also "lower beginner", so the order would be
Absolute Beginner OR Newbie (those are almost same) => Lower Beginner => Beginner => Upper Beginner
As a method to cover grammar points regardless of starting level, we offer lessons in what's called "spiral"
where lessons cover the similar grammar points in all the levels.

Hope you can find the best for yourself to start from

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[hbuchmann4067]

マイケルsan,奈津子さん、ありがとうございます.

I understand and agree. Though I haven't learnt Japanese before, I have been to Japan and worked with Japanese there, so a lot of what I learn now, sounds already familiar (such as the basic sentence structure etc.). I figured the Beginner is just right for me. I might go back to Newbie, should I find later that I was too ambitious

[community.japanese]

Harald さん、
どういたしまして！
That sounds about right! Hope you can enjoy those lessons in Beginner.
If/when you have questions, please feel free to ask us on comment board of each lesson

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com