I was looking for a course to do more practice with conversations in Japanese. My first teacher (non native) didn’t stress about pitch accent, so I didn’t learn to recognize it. In other courses I did after that, the teachers mentioned the pitch accent, but it was explained like “this words is one low and two highs”. I couldn’t hear it at all.
In the description and the video examples of the Beginners Speaking course (N5-N4), Chika Sensei indicated the pitch accent with a continuous line that was raising or lowering following the pitch accent, so I thought that it would be easier that way. I enrolled in the course and I struggled a bit at the beginning because I confused the intonation with the pitch accent. Chika Sensei pointed me to a few extra lessons I didn’t notice (they were at the end of the speaking course) where the pitch accent was very well explained, and there were other video lessons about the pronunciation of tricky Japanese alphabet sounds. Eventually that helped me to teach my brain to start recognizing the pitch accent!
The dialogues are based on slices of life, both formal and informal/plain, and they give me a daily dose of challenges. To be able to reproduce the pitch accent, the correct pronunciation and the rhythm of the sentence, I need to practice a lot. The daily feedback is very helpful and encouraging: even though Chika Sensei is pointing out my mistakes and give me the exact pronunciation to practice, she is always cheerful and positive. This is helping my motivation to continue to do my best and work on my mistakes without feeling bad about my results.
Thank you Chika Sensei!
At the end of the feedback usually there is a question regarding the topic of the dialogue so there is a chance to practice more.
I would recommend this course to students who want to perfect their pronunciation, master the pitch accent and have a few handy phrases to use in real life situations.