This thread is for first year level Japanese (JPN 101). English is allowed, but Japanese is encouraged where appropriate.
Please first review the vocab until you are familiar with it, then attempt to read the example sentences. Then review the grammar and syntax until you feel comfortable. Then come back to the vocab, memorizing it this time (even the kanji for more advanced students,), going over the example sentences with your new vocab and grammar understanding. You should be completely comfortable with both sentences before moving on, if you are not, please ask questions! ^___^
I'm going to post the hiragana for the first year students but then exclusively use the kanji without it after the first reference because being hard on your students is both a Japanese tradition and a good study habit. Don't let furigana let you be lazy.
単語 【たんご】Vocab
これ - this
は - particle, subject marker
犬 - いぬ dog
です - is
が - particle, subject marker
好き - すき like
例文 【れいぶん】 Example sentence
これは犬です。犬が好きですか。
This is a dog. Do you like dogs?
文法 【ぶんぽう】 grammar; syntax
Japanese is quite a different language than English is. Probably one of the more troublesome concepts for first year students (for myself and for all the students I've studied with over the years) are particles. We don't really use anything like them in English, we use sentence position to indicate subject, direct object, etc. I don't know about you, but I never even learned that much about my mother tongue growing up! I just knew that "This is a dog" sounded right and "A dog, this is" sounded wrong. In Japanese, however, you could do either. How? Because each thing in the sentence has an associated particle with it, telling you what its function in the sentence is.
これは犬です。
これ means "this". は lets you know that "this" is the topic of the sentenPost too long. Click here to view the full text.