Learning Hiragana and Katakana Workbook provides beginning-level students of Japanese a thorough grounding in the basic hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols or syllabaries. A comprehensive introduction presents their basic function, origin, pronunciation, and usage. The main body of the book is devoted to presenting the 92 hira and kata characters along with their variations, giving step-by-step guidelines on how to write each character neatly in the correct stroke order, with plentiful practice spaces provided for handwriting practice.

Interspersed among the practice pages are regular review sections containing reading and writing exercises designed to help the reader consolidate the meaning and usage of newly introduced characters. This is essential to read Japanese as well as to write Japanese. Additional practice sections at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book provide fun exercises, quizzes, and extended reading and writing practice to help beginning Japanese language students take their first steps toward attaining fluency in reading and writing Japanese.

Written by Kenneth G. Henshall and Tetsuo Takagaki.