GUIDED PATH · PHASE 5
Guided Japanese Course
A mastery path for complete beginners and technology professionals.
HOW THIS COURSE WORKS
Follow the path. Advance by mastery.
The primary path tells you what to do next. You can still open any available lesson, but completion is based on checkpoints rather than calendar days.
FULL TARGET CURRICULUM
Tracks 0–10
TRACK 1 · 1-1
Vocabulary 1: People, Work & Core Nouns
Recognize and retrieve the people, workplace, and core nouns needed to build your first identity sentences.
- Track 0 complete or sufficiently comfortable hiragana/katakana recognition.
Track 1 begins sentence construction. A small vocabulary base lets you focus on structure rather than stopping at every noun.
1. Learn words as usable components
Vocabulary is useful only when you can recognize it inside a sentence and retrieve it when you need to speak or write. Read each word aloud, notice its script, then study the example sentence instead of memorizing an isolated English pair.
Natural: person
Structure: person
General noun; later you will see 人 in words such as 日本人.
Natural: engineer
Structure: engineer
A common katakana profession word.
Natural: programmer
Structure: programmer
Useful for self-introductions.
Natural: company
Structure: company
A high-value workplace noun.
Natural: company employee
Structure: employee
Often used with a company name + の.
Natural: student
Structure: student
Useful for contrasting roles.
Natural: Japanese language
Structure: Japan-language
You will use this when talking about what you study.
Natural: computer
Structure: computer
Familiar technical katakana anchor.
2. Put the vocabulary into a workplace scene
Imagine meeting a new teammate. Before you can explain what you do, you need nouns for people, roles, organizations, and the language you are studying.
person
engineer
programmer
3. Pen-and-paper production
Close the word list. Recreate at least six target words from memory, then write three short Japanese phrases or sentences using the vocabulary. If a word does not come back, leave a blank first—do not immediately peek.
INTERACTIVE WORKSHEET
3. Pen-and-paper production
From memory, write six target words and three short phrases/sentences that use them. Reopen the lesson only after your first attempt; correct mistakes in a different mark.
Tip: on a foldable or tablet, use your pen directly on the page. Your strokes are saved in this browser as you work.
3. Pen-and-paper production
From memory, write six target words and three short phrases/sentences that use them. Reopen the lesson only after your first attempt; correct mistakes in a different mark.
4. Reinforce only the words worth keeping
Use Manabi Kōbō tools with a specific purpose: retrieval for durable memory and word recognition for faster reading.
Japanese Adaptive Recall
Why here: These core nouns recur across many later tracks.
How to use it for this lesson: Add only the words you cannot retrieve quickly. Practice Japanese → meaning first, then meaning → Japanese.
Practice core vocabulary →Kotoba Fishing
Why here: Word-level recognition helps move you beyond slow character-by-character decoding.
How to use it for this lesson: Use this after your first recall pass. Focus on recognizing the whole word, especially katakana profession/technology terms.
Open Kotoba Fishing →5. Retrieval pass
Cover the English and look only at the Japanese. Say the meaning. Then reverse it: look at the English concept and produce the Japanese aloud or in writing. Mark any item that takes more than a few seconds; that hesitation—not the easy words—is your review signal.
Mastery checkpoint
Answer from memory. Use the explanations after checking to debug any miss before moving on.
