GUIDED PATH · PHASE 5
Guided Japanese Course
A mastery path for complete beginners and technology professionals.
HOW THIS COURSE WORKS
Follow the path. Advance by mastery.
The primary path tells you what to do next. You can still open any available lesson, but completion is based on checkpoints rather than calendar days.
FULL TARGET CURRICULUM
Tracks 0–10
TRACK 3 · 3-2
い-Adjectives vs な-Adjectives
Distinguish the two main adjective classes and use each correctly before a noun and at the end of a polite sentence.
- Track 3 vocabulary 1.
The adjective class determines conjugation. Misclassifying it creates downstream errors in tense, negation, adverbs, and sentence linking.
1. Two adjective APIs, two transformation rules
い-adjectives normally end in grammatical い and directly modify nouns. な-adjectives use な before a noun, but not before です at the end of a basic sentence.
い-adjective
速い速いサーバーサーバーは速いです
難しい難しい問題問題は難しいです
な-adjective
便利便利なツールツールは便利です
安全安全な環境環境は安全です
2. Not every word ending in い is an い-adjective
Words such as きれい and 嫌い end in the sound/character い but behave as な-adjectives. Learn adjective class as lexical information, not just visual pattern matching.
Natural: clean code
Structure: clean — na — code
きれい is な-adjective.
Natural: The code is clean.
Structure: code topic — clean — polite
No な before です.
3. な appears only in the attributive noun-modifying slot
便利なツール but ツールは便利です. The な is a linker used when the な-adjective directly modifies a noun.
4. Adjective type debugger
Classify 20 adjectives into い/な. For each, write both a noun phrase and a polite sentence. Include きれい and 嫌い as trap cases.
INTERACTIVE WORKSHEET
4. Adjective type debugger
Make columns: adjective | type | before noun | sentence-final. Complete 20 items and mark trap cases.
Tip: on a foldable or tablet, use your pen directly on the page. Your strokes are saved in this browser as you work.
4. Adjective type debugger
Make columns: adjective | type | before noun | sentence-final. Complete 20 items and mark trap cases.
5. Debug adjective slots in Language IDE
Use the IDE to isolate adjective class and syntactic position.
Language IDE
Why here: It makes the presence/absence of な a structural rule rather than a memorized phrase.
How to use it for this lesson: Compare 便利なツール and ツールは便利です, then 速いサーバー and サーバーは速いです.
Debug adjective classes →Mastery checkpoint
Answer without looking back. Use any miss to identify the exact rule or vocabulary gap that needs another pass.
