Chapter 6 this weeks introduces a conjugation of verbs, the "te-form". There are many uses of verbs in te-form, but they don't appear alone but are usually followed by other verbs.

This might be confusing in the beginning but I give some examples from chapter 6 in Genki.

At the beginning I noticed that there are many levels of formality in Japanese. The language used toward your teacher and your friend for example is very different. Often when speaking to someone you don't know very well or someone of higher position you should use -masu form on verbs. In an earlier post I mentioned verbs in Japanese, the form I talked about there is -masu form, a polite form of verbs.

The form found in the dictionary is the informal form. It's used for people you know well. The dictionary form of the two verbs above are for example, 食べる and いく.

Talking about formality again... A word that can always be used to greet someone is こんにちは, which means "Hello". It might be a bit boring in the long run to just say こんにちは to everybody you meet. There are of course other more direct ways to greet your friends. A friend told me about some ways to do it:

Having a language partner is a great way to speed up your Japanese learning. The best would be if your language partner is a Japanese and knows the language fluently, but also someone who's at the same level as you can be a good help. That way you have someone to give you feedback on your progress. Another good things is that you can push each other in case anyone slack off. It's enough to meet once/twice a week just to do some exercises together, as long as you keep it regularly. If you can't find something to talk about, decide about a subject in advance so you can prepare, it'll give you more than just talk randomly.

The te-form of verbs can be used in many ways. One is to describe two activities in the same sentence. It follows the following pattern:

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