my advice would be to skip kana altogether. It takes time to even explain it, in one hour you will barely even finish the vowel line and no one will learn anything. You can give them a basic(saaay, 5 minutes) explanation on how the writing system works but any more than that will get boring (maybe show them the kanjis for 1,2,3, mouth, etc. Just to show how easy some kanjis are, but don't go into detail). I'd try just talking about the language in general, teaching them how to introduce themselves and make AwaBda sentences. Simple, very basic, and the fact that they learned a bit will make them feel good.

You shouldn't use kana, but you should talk about them or they'll think japanese is all kanji and they'll be discouraged.
I'd tell them about kanji as something imported from China and about kanji as pictures of something, using example like 1,2,3 and mouth... and then yasumi, or something easy to understand and funny.
I like sawagi: bugs on the horse again! --> sawagashiku naru naa XD
But sushi is a good example too, if you explain 魚 fish and　旨い good and then write down　鮨 sushi, I think they'll like it.
Then I'd say it also exists hiragana, so it isn't a "learn millions of kanji or die" thing.

Self-introductions can be good, but I'd mix in/prefer some aizuchi, interjections, sounds or gestures that can get them to get a feeling of being able to interact with people (even if just a little) and to think japanese is funny to learn. For this, even something like this could be useful in its own way.

Last edited by kazeatari (2012 June 28, 12:15 pm)

I once did a 1 hour intro to Japanese at an anime convention.
I didn't really focus on teaching any actual Japanese though, so much as just giving an overview and helping to guide them in the right direction if they would choose to start learning. I covered kana and kanji, and I did explain how the heisig method works and how it had helped me. (when you first tell people they have to learn 2000 characters, that puts them off immediately, but then if you can make it sound not so bad, like "i learned how to write 2000 kanji from memory in 3 months", that draws them back ;p )
For katakana, I showed some screens of menus and stuff from video games, to show how katakana words are almost like english, I think people found that particularly cool, as it was something that they can learn and use with little effort.
I also explained about Anki and how it helps you remember stuff over the long term.
I also explained various ways to learn, such as taking classes, online sites, going to Japan (i discussed some options for getting there, like taking a trip, studying abroad, etc), and things like that.
I also prepared a handout with lists of books and websites, so that when people left they would have a full guide showing them what to do next.
People also had quite a few questions, and I hadn't built any Q/A time into my presentation, so that is something to consider (though at my presentation, there were probably 300 people, so that's a lot of potential for questions... a smaller group would probably have considerably fewer questions)

Last edited by Zarxrax (2012 June 28, 1:14 pm)

So I taught the class yesterday. I only had 3 people show up so it was a bit more personal than I thought it would be. we ended up covering 15 hirigana letters and all 3 of them were able to remember 100% of the letters at the end of the class so that was good I thought. We had a ton of fun learning them too. A lot more questions were asked than I expected which is why we weren't able to cover all 47ish hirigana.
after that we learned basic introductions and yes and no and how to ask if someone is japanese or american. "私はnameです""私はnationじんです"あなたはnationじんですか”
”はい"　”いいえ” I only spent about 8 minutes during this time but I had the students say these things to each other and I think they remember most of them. they were able to reproduce them but had a hard time understanding me when I said the same things at high speed.

one of the students said she couldn't wait for next week and that this would be the only good part about mondays for her. I had to explain to her that this was a one time deal I had set up with the library but maybe we could do lessons in the future if a good opportunity　presented itself.

one of the other students told me that my methods were crazy but that they worked.

(I used nukemarines videos as a base for the teaching method of the hirigana but I sped up the process and made some of the stories a little bit easier/better for my purposes)
る - the seven dwarves are now ninjas using boomerangs to kidnap Roo
in the case of stories involving the cape primitive I've removed little red riding hood from the picture because it takes longer to explain and doesn't make much sense
(if you've seen winnie the pooh you know who Roo is)

overall I thought it was a smashing success
thanks for your tips and advice.

Last edited by semperanimus (2012 July 17, 11:03 am)

Fleskmos wrote:

I've been teaching Japanese part-time at a school in the same city as my university for some time.

Which city is this and are people outside the school welcome to join?

Last edited by Shomp (2012 July 18, 3:54 am)