Japanese Guidelines

If you are interested in taking JPNS-106 or above, you must review the Japanese placement guidelines below and contact the department (see below) to schedule a placement test.

Course Placement

1. If you cannot do all of the items below, you should register for JPNS-105 to develop the fundamental skills that are required of all students in Whitman’s Japanese language program. Typically, two years of high school Japanese is not sufficient to qualify for JPNS-106.

    a. can give a basic self-introduction
    b. can write hiragana and katakana correctly
    c. know approximately 75 basic kanji characters and 250 vocabulary words

2. If you can do all of the items listed above, you should take the placement test.

3. You should take the placement test if you can:

    a. write hiragana and katakana correctly
    c. read and recognize and write 150 kanji characters
    d. had at least three strong years of high school Japanese

4. If you can do all of the items listed below, you should take an oral and written placement test in order to determine if JPNS-305 or JPNS-405 better suits you:

    a. have had at least four years of high school Japanese,
    b. can recognize and reproduce about 300 kanji characters
    c. recognize about 1,100 vocabulary words

Contact Us

To schedule your placement test, get answers to your questions or address any concerns, please contact Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Wakako Suzuki at suzukiw@whitman.edu.