Practicing を and に
“If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.” - Buddha
The goal of this page is to bombard you with as many examples / questions as possible so that you can see as many different を and に examples as possible. The more you see these, the more comfortable and natural they’ll become for you, and the sooner you’ll be able to add on to them and make your Japanese better.
For these exercises, read the sentence in Japanese, and then fill in the blank to try and guess the correct particle.
にほん ＿ いきます
Go to Japan
a に (because you will go to Japan. You are moving)
ラーメン ＿ たべます
Eat Ramen
a を (because you are directly doing something to the ramen – in this case, you will eat it)
おんがく ＿ ききます
Listen to music
a を (because you will do the action of listening to the music)
いえ ＿ かえります
Return home
a に (because you are returning home. You are moving back to your home)
えいが ＿ みます
Watch a movie
a を (you will do the action of watching the movie)
ハリーポッター ＿ よみます
To read Harry Potter
a を (because you will do the action of reading Harry Potter)
７じ ＿ ねます
Sleep at 7 o’clock
a に (because time is considered as moving, and therefore uses に)
Make sure you understand why each of these uses whatever particle that they use. If you got something wrong, figure out why you got it wrong (and don’t just gloss over it). Getting things wrong is the best way to learn!
The next chapter includes very similar practice to this one, so there isn’t much more you have to do here. Just make sure you know the verb vocab words fairly well now, and that you understand how を and に work as well. We’ll be learning different tenses (past tense, negative tense, past negative tense…) so it will allow you to keep practicing, but at the same time learn something new.