This class is for intermediate students. If you are not sure if your level is appropriate for this lesson, please e-mail me before registering.

All materials for this course will be in hiragana, katakana, or kanji.

In this course we’ll take a close look at key Japanese verbs whose understanding will noticeably improve your Japanese comprehension.

The verbs we will look at are unique in that each of them has at least one very basic meaning, which all intermediate students know – and various other usages that you usually don’t learn till much later.

Until now!

In this class, we will go deeper and look at the various meanings and ways to use these essential verbs.

A perfect example is the verb “dekiru,” which intermediate students know means “to be able to,” or “to be possible.” We will look at these two usages in detail, and then go further to look at the rest of dekiru’s meanings: to be finished or ready; to appear or come into existence; to be made or created.

The reason I decided to teach this course was that when I was learning Japanese, I always got tripped up by words that I felt like I kind of knew, but didn’t really fully understand. Words like dekiru, tsukeru, agaru and kuru, which all have too many meanings to get an easy handle on, and even words like kau and miru, which I thought I knew, but then found out had multiple idiomatic meanings, too!

I look forward to making progress in Japanese with you!