Stage 2: Expanding the System (N4)

What This Stage Covers

Stage 2 completes the verb conjugation paradigm and introduces the complex sentence structures that make Japanese expressive and nuanced. You will learn:

• The remaining verb forms — Potential, volitional, passive, causative, causative-passive, imperative, and conditional forms
• Complex sentences — Relative clauses, quotation and reported speech, appearance/conjecture expressions
• Conditional logic — The four conditional forms (と, ば, たら, なら) and when each is used
• て-form extensions — Giving and receiving actions (てあげる/てもらう/てくれる), experience (ことがある), purpose (ために/ように), aspect (ていく/てくる/てしまう/ておく/てある)
• The keigo system — 尊敬語 (respectful), 謙譲語 (humble), and how to recognize formal Japanese in business, customer service, and public announcements
• Situational vocabulary — Travel, health, seasons, bureaucracy, and the workplace
• Colloquial recognition — Contractions, casual speech patterns, and sentence-final particles as they actually appear in spoken Japanese

What Changes from Stage 1

• No romaji. All Japanese text appears in Japanese script only, as it did from Chapter 3 of Stage 1 onward.
• Longer reading passages. Passages grow from the short paragraphs of Stage 1 to extended multi-paragraph texts.
• Plain form as default. Subordinate clauses use plain form; you are expected to recognize this pattern fluently.
• Pitch accent continues to be marked for all new vocabulary.

Prerequisites Checklist

Before beginning Stage 2, you should be able to:

• Read hiragana and katakana fluently (all base, voiced, semi-voiced, and combination characters)
• Recognize approximately 100 kanji in context
• Identify verb class (五段/一段/する/くる) from dictionary form
• Conjugate verbs into ます-form, て-form, ない-form, and た-form (recognition)
• Conjugate い-adjectives and な-adjectives (all basic forms)
• Parse topic-comment structure with は and が
• Identify the grammatical function of particles を, に, で, へ, の, と, から, まで, も, や
• Understand basic giving and receiving (あげる/もらう/くれる)
• Recognize ～ている for ongoing states and habitual actions
• Parse ～たい, ～たがる, and ほしい constructions
• Understand から/ので (reason) and ～たり～たりする (listing actions)

If any of these feel uncertain, review the relevant Stage 1 chapters before proceeding.

Targets