Unit 2: 日常生活と地域社会 - Daily Life, School, Work and Community Interaction
What this unit asks of you
Unit 2 moves from the self to the routines and institutions around it: school timetables, part-time work, shopping, transport, invitations and community events. The concepts you must command are time and sequence marking (〜てから、〜前に、〜たあとで、〜ながら), giving and receiving verbs (あげる・くれる・もらう and their humble/honorific counterparts さしあげる・くださる・いただく), request and permission forms (〜てください、〜てもいいですか、〜てはいけません), invitation and refusal strategies (〜ませんか、〜ましょう、断り方 with ちょっと…), and counter words (〜人、〜枚、〜台、〜回).
Traps that cost marks
The classic trap is direction of giving. あげる moves away from the speaker, くれる moves toward the speaker, もらう centres the receiver. A question that asks who benefited will punish a careless choice. A second trap is tense inside subordinate clauses: Japanese does not shift to past in a 〜前に clause even when the main verb is past. Third, counter mismatch - 一台 for machines, 一枚 for flat things, 一本 for long thin objects. Fourth, invitation versus offer: 〜ませんか invites, 〜ましょうか offers to do something for the listener. Fifth, refusals that are too direct; a bare いいえ、行きません reads as brusque, whereas ちょっと都合が悪いのですが is natural.
Rule of thumb
For any giving/receiving sentence, draw an arrow: who receives? If the arrow points at the speaker or the speaker's group, you need くれる or もらう, not あげる.
Worked example
Translate: "My teacher gave me a dictionary." Wrong: 「先生は私に辞書をあげました。」 Right: 「先生は私に辞書をくださいました。」 The teacher is out-group and the receiver is the speaker, so the honorific くださる is required; あげる would imply the teacher did the speaker a favour in a way that disrespects the teacher's position.
Practice direction
Write a short weekly schedule, then rewrite it as a polite email to a teacher, and note every form that changes.