Hello. I am Yumiko Furuichi from UTokyo. I look forward to everyone having a good time studying Japanese together. Let me introduce this course. The texts read in this course have to do with Science and Technology being researched at UTokyo. This course not only focus on reading, sentence structures and expressions, but also listening and writing skills through videos. Furthermore, it deepens understanding of specific terminology and knowledge. Intermediate level students are eligible. Students are able to study basic scientific and technological Japanese before advancing to their studies and research. This is the course structure. There are five components. They are the 1 text videos, 2 discussion forums, 3 sentence structure and expression videos, 4 texts, and 5 interview videos. I will explain how to study each of these. First of all, please watch the text videos. You can see the texts and illustrations in the text videos. Refer to the text video illustrations, find the key words for each topic, and grasp the general meanings. When doing this, even if you do not know some of the words, just keep on going. Japanese ruby characters are written above all the kanji characters in the text. And, the section that is being read is shown in red. After watching the text videos, take the quizzes to see whether you have understood. Next are the discussion forums. After watching the text videos, confirm what you know about the topics and post your opinions in the discussion forums. And be sure to share information and your opinions with people from various countries around the world. Then, please watch the sentence structure and expression videos. The sentence structure and expression videos explain three sentence structures for understanding the text. Please learn the meanings of the structures, how to use them, and their conjunctive forms, and do the exercises together. Please refer to the notes on conjunctive forms. These are primarily N3-level sentence structures and expressions, which are used in Science and Technology written texts. There are also other sentence structures and conjunctions that are often used in N4-level and N2-level expository writing. After watching the sentence structure and expression videos, take the sentence structure and expression quizzes to see whether you have understood. Next read the texts. You grasped the general meanings in the text videos and the sentence structure and expression videos, right? At this point, you should check the vocabulary lists for new words. Vocabulary at and above the N3 level have been listed. Then, read the texts carefully, one sentence at a time, checking the sentence structures, expressions, and how the sentences relate to one another. When you understand the texts, take the vocabulary quizzes and the reading comprehension quizzes. Finally, please watch the interview videos. The interview videos cover interviews with various UTokyo professors about their research. You will learn about how the research is conducted and its results. The aim of these videos is to deepen your understanding of research. Therefore, you may also read these in English. Selecting only the information you need will be fine. After watching the interview videos, take the interview quizzes to see whether you have understood. The topics for Part 1 are: 7. Reducing Aviation Incidents: Safe Aircraft Research and Development,
8. Automobile Weight Reduction and Multi-materialization, 9. Superconductivity and Linear Motor Cars: The Development and Use of Superconducting Materials
10. Lithium-ion Battery-powered Electric Vehicles , 11. How the Geographical Origin of Food Products Is Determined, and 12. 3D Glasses. These texts have been created from articles in Ttime!, the UTokyo Faculty of Engineering PR Brochure. These new engineering topics that feature a variety of engineering specialties will be easy to understand even for people not specializing in science and engineering. And these are the sentence structures and expressions studied in each of the lessons. Finally, there are quizzes and a test. First off, each lesson has five quizzes. They are the: 1) text video quizzes, 2) vocabulary quizzes, 3) sentence structure and expression quizzes, 4) reading comprehension quizzes, and 5) interview video quizzes. Take the quizzes to see whether you have understood. The test. When you have finished Lesson 12, take the test. See whether you have understood. Well then, let’s get started studying Japanese!