## How should you read this guide?

In this ‘how-to-read’ chapter, you will understand how the guide is structured. This guide has three major theoretical chapters. They are based on the theoretical part of the Dutch 6th, 5th and 4th. These chapters are: 1) Etiquette, 2) Equipment, and 3) Exercises. Every chapter begins with a short, informal introduction of the content before going into the actual theoretical content. These contents are divided into minor chapters, each having a title with a ‘(6)’, ‘(5)’ and/or ‘(4)’, as you can see in the picture below.

This number corresponds to the study material in the 6th, 5th or 4th kyu exam. By marking the corresponding exam, you don’t have to study every minor chapter for the 6th or 5th kyu exam. (For the 4th kyu exam, you should actually know all the content in this module.) Keep in mind that some minor chapters may contain more learning content than you might have to learn. For example, in the minor chapter ‘partner exercises’, for your 5th kyu exam, you only need to know the term soutai and not all the details of the uchikeashi, shikake-oji, etcetera. (Though, it might not hurt to study these materials already.) If you want to be sure, you can check the most recent requirements here.

In every chapter, there are bold words. They refer to keywords you need to know for your exam and in general in Naginata. There are also cursive words that refer to other keywords that were explained or will be explained in an other (major or minor) chapter. They may also not be explained at all, because they are minor details for a Naginata beginner. There also exercises within every minor chapter, so you can practice with what you have studied.

Every chapter ends with a Summary, which recaps the entire chapter with more exercises and a list of keywords or informative pictures, depending on the learning goals of that chapter. When you are done studying and want to test your knowledge, you can go to ‘Test yourself’ and ‘do an exam’. You ‘pass’ if you can have more than 80% right.

Before you go studying…

Keep in mind that all exercises and questions in this manual for self-study are closed-ended questions (like multiple choice questions). In contrary, the actual exam only has open-ended questions, meaning you have to write down your own answer instead of selecting an answer. That is why I recommend, after studying what you wanted to study in this guide, to test yourself by writing down your own answers on paper and checking the answers by yourself. For the correct answers, you can use the ‘Summary’ at the end of every theoretical chapter.

Good luck with studying!