• How difficult is it to learn Japanese?
• What good will learning the Japanese language do to me?
• If no, then why should I learn it?
• Will it open the door to many career opportunities for me?
• If yes, then where should I learn Japanese from?

 The above questions accompanied by many more related questions arise in the minds of individuals who are planning to set on the journey of learning the Japanese language. Some of them wish to learn Japanese for following their passion for learning new languages, some wish to learn it as a constructive hobby, some others opt for it as a subject in their academics, there are some who are on the mission of cracking the JLPT (The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test), many people see a new job or career opportunities which they can apply for after learning the language; there are also people who dream of mastering the Japanese language for ease of conduction of their businesses or overseas operations. The purpose behind learning Japanese might be any of the above or even something different from the above, what is the most important is finding reliable and trustworthy sources to learn Japanese from.

There are many resources which one can utilize in order to learn Japanese. Some of these resources are:

• Newspaper
• Magazines and journals
• Podcasts or educative videos
• Blogs
• Books for learning Japanese
• Japanese shows with subtitles
• Japanese news channels
• Online language learning apps, etc.

 Most of the above resources are trustworthy, beyond doubt. What is, but, missing in the use of most of these resources is guidance from an expert. People who rely on self-studies with the help of these resources can learn Japanese, but they cannot be assured of perfection of fluency in their Japanese language skills. What assures them of perfection in their knowledge of the language is training from a professional Japanese language instructor of a proven Japanese language expert. People are reluctant to spend a portion of their hard-earned money on learning a new language. They are also unwilling to spend time from their busy schedule for learning a new skill, citing the fact that they hardly get any ‘me time, that is, time for their own recreation or time for paying attention to their close personal needs, too. It is true that attending physical classroom training by a language training institute in person consumes a lot of one’s time in commuting to and fro, and also wastes a monetary sum that is required to be spent on travel.

• An excellent solution to this problem is online Japanese learning lessons. 

Many language teaching classes or institutes have given up their conventional, old-school ways of teaching, and have adapted beautifully to the changing times by transforming themselves into edtech platforms that impart knowledge to their users or students online through the medium of audio-visual learning sessions. Students located in any part of the world can avail of these online language learning facilities. What all they need for this is a smartphone or a laptop, internet connectivity, and enthusiasm and sincerity to learn and master a new language.

Some of these platforms specialise in teaching languages belonging to a particular or specific class or family of languages, for example only European languages like English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Belgian, etc., or Arabic and Urdu, or Sino-Tibetan languages like the Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, etc., or Japanese, Korean, or Asiatic languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, etc.

There are also some online platforms that teach most of all the highly demanded languages in the world. They also help their students prepare for internationally or globally recognized tests of language proficiency meant for non-native speakers.

If we take an example of the Japanese language, in particular, these online courses for Japanese language learning offer lessons in the Japanese language right from the basics up to the advanced levels. The lessons might be in the form of one entire course, or might be divided into different modules which a student can take part – by – part or separately.

Online Japanese courses follow a certain pattern or follow a few steps to teach Japanese to a student starting from the beginning up to the advanced levels.

Those steps are as follows:

1) A beginner in Japanese language learning is first acquainted with the characters or the components in the  Japanese writing system. These components are hiragana, katakana (originally, Japanese ‘kanas’), and kanjis (characters borrowed or derived from the Chinese writing system, where they are known as or recognized as ‘Kanji’ characters).

2) A beginner is taught in a systematic manner, and slowly, how to write each character stroke – by – stroke, correctly. A learner comes to know that each Japanese character is not a single, stand-alone letter; that it is a combination of many strokes brought together to form a concept or an idea. All of the Japanese characters are contextual in nature. A student is also taught correct or perfect pronunciations of these characters by a trainer who demonstrates slow movements of his or her mouth so that a student learns how to move the facial muscles to make a particular sound.

3) Once a learner gets acquainted with the characters, lessons in easy Japanese words or the core Japanese vocabulary start.

4) After the core vocabulary, comes phrase and sentence formation.

5) When a trainee learns to form complete sentences, training in how to read and comprehend complex text such as a portion of a speech, a newspaper article, or an essay, follows.

6) Once a student is able to read the text correctly and clearly, he or she is given a lot of practice in writing the Japanese script.

This is how online Japanese learning classes are conducted for the overall development of students’ Japanese language skills. Learners are prepared on all the parameters of Japanese learning, namely, listening, speaking in Japanese, reading, comprehension, and writing Japanese.