Courses and Classes Overview

Japanese courses for students looking to learn to read, write, or speak Japanese are offered through distance learning or professional development programs at numerous colleges and universities.
These courses may lead to an undergraduate certificate in Japanese or may be available to undergraduate students enrolled in non-Japanese degree programs with foreign language requirements.

Essential Information

This course examines Japan in a historical and cultural context. By the end of the course, students should be able to take away a basic knowledge of daily life in Japan.
Japanese coursework and fluency could lead to a job as a tutor or interpreter, especially for bachelor’s degree holders. Interpreters may work with manufacturing, automotive and computer technology companies.

Japanese Language Programs

Introductory Japanese

Intermediate Japanese

Students with no experience reading, writing or speaking Japanese typically begin with an elementary learning course. Beginning Japanese courses introduce students to Japanese letters, characters and basic sentence structures. Students learn how to properly form sentences using various tenses, verbs, nouns and adjectives. This course also teaches the basic cultural aspects of Japanese conversation and communication.

Designed for students with existing knowledge of Japanese, this course typically introduces students to additional Japanese characters and complex sentence structures. Students learn how to comprehend abstract expressions and converse face-to-face with other Japanese-speaking individuals.

Advanced Japanese

Japanese Translation

Advanced Japanese courses typically teach students how to read and write advanced characters, expressions and sentences. Advanced courses focus on the conversational and practical aspects of Japanese, allowing students to use their skills in real-life settings.

Managerial accounting and controls for the hospitality industry are examined in this class, in addition to accounting software applications. Students learn about pricing strategies in hospitality, marketing skills, trends in hospitality, travel packaging and analytical processes in pricing. Students may participate in lectures as part of this course, and group projects involving pricing or bookkeeping for the hospitality industry are sometimes required.

Japanese Literature

Linguistic Theory and Japanese

This advanced course generally allows students to analyze Japanese literature, cinema and other media in order to learn more about the language’s common use and intricacies. The course also focuses on advanced social expressions in Japanese culture.

Students explore the grammar of Japanese from a linguistic perspective in this course. Comparative linguistics is used to understand Japanese and how it fits into universal linguistic theories.