Congratulations! If you’ve reached Japanese N4 Level, you certainly have the patience to learn Japanese. so here is the Japanese N4 level syllabus for you all. N5 being the first level, many people intend to learn it but drop out soon after it becomes a little challenging. This is a level, that gives you the confidence of going further and also opens up the doors of curiosity, as you start understanding the language. Watching cartoons, anime, movies and videos in Japanese with or without Japanese subtitles works no more as a sleeping pill but as a source of entertainment. Without any doubt it is going to get more complex than before as it is considered to be the upper basic level. 

Japanese N4 level syllabus

1. Various forms of verbs –

In the first level, we learnt the verbs as they are and their past, present and negative forms. Here at this level, we take a step ahead and learn the different types of verbs altogether. Transitive and intransitive verbs, volitional verbs, potential verbs, passive verbs and nominal verbs. This covers one of the major grammar portions of N4 level. 

2. Adverbs –

The adverbs learnt in N5 could be counted on fingers of a hand, but a big part of Japanese N4 Level syllabus. Adverbs help you add more information about the verb, adjective or another adverb. It helps you describe the whats, hows, wheres and whens. ばかり bakari (only), かどうか kadouka (whether or not), ころ／ごろ koro/goro (around) and 急に kyuu ni (quickly) are some of the examples. 

3. Passive voice –

Here we will learn about the passive voice. How to give the activity more importance than the doer. One must not just learn the passive form of the verbs but also know which places it is used. Places where the doer is obvious or not important, places where it targets all and not one and places where the action is the most important thing in a sentence. 

4. Habitual verbs –

Being able to use the habitual verbs to describe your profession and occupation, about a progressive action that is ongoing and habits that you do regularly. There are some fixed patterns to be followed to make sentences in this forms works like mai まい (every), ima いま(now) and itsumo いつも(always) are used. 

5. Nominalising the verbs –

It is a complex yet interesting part of grammar. It demands both your knowledge of verbs and nouns. Using the verbs directly in a sentence is basic but being able to write the same sentence using the verb, certainly enhances the level of your language. However one must learn the construction of the sentence as it involves fixed patterns. 

6. Direct and Indirect speech –

Conveying information given by other people, direct speech or indirect speech is used.

For eg. Tanakasan said he was going tomorrow 

明日行くと田中さんが言いました

And “I am going tomorrow”, said Tanakasan 

「明日行きます。」と田中さんがいいました。

7. The verbs giving and receiving in Japanese –

These look like pretty basic words but they’re not. In the first level we learnt the pattern and particles to use with these verbs. Here, we extend them. You will learn other ways to say giving , receiving, when giving and receiving don’t involve gratitude and politeness. The particles in a sentence change depending on which side of giving and receiving are you on. 

8. Honorific and humble form –

Yes you read it right!! It’s a separate verb form like the casual form, polite form and lastly the honorific and humble form. The Humble form is used to talk about your own Actions, honorific form to talk about superiors, seniors by Position or Age. However, the polite Form is used anywhere. In Japan one can make out the relationship one has with another person by listening to the way they talk to them. They believe, someone at a respectable place must be spoken to in a respectful manner. One thing to remember while using this form is the speaker always considers himself at a lower level that’s why uses the polite form for himself and honorific form for the person in front. 

Eg. A waiter will use polite form to address himself but honorific form to address the guest. 

These are roughly the grammar topics that you learn in the N4 level. Other than this, in Japanese N4 Syllabus you also learn the vocabulary and kanjis. The word limit for N4 extends to 1500 words and 300 – 400 kanjis. It’s 3 times more than N5. Isn’t that cool????? 

Imagine how well you’ll be able to express yourself using so many words and kanjis. 

Don’t stop!!! You’ve not come this far to give up. Also to keep up the motivation, you can read our blog about the career opportunities for a Japanese Language specialist
Career opportunities for a Japanese language specialist

Here a link to how the exam for Japanese N4 level is and a link to the courses LingoThoughts provide,

JLPT Exam Preparation for N4 level

https://www.lingothoughts.com/learn-japanese-language.html