What do you specialize in?

I have two research fields, Japanese language education and applied linguistics especially analyzing conversation. I am a Japanese language teacher for non-native speakers. From my teaching experience, many questions and some problems like how learners can acquire the skills they need more efficiently. Solving each question at the end became my strength as well as my specialty. Additionally, I have an interest in accepting foreigners to Japan and support for children of foreign nationalities.

What kind of research do you do about Japanese language education?

In Japanese language education, I specialize in teaching methods and developing teaching materials by specialty. The first textbook I developed is a textbook specializing in science and technology. Teaching Japanese to engineering field’s international students gave me a chance to develop the textbook. In making the textbook, I extracted science technical Japanese necessary for such students. Through the experience of doing a needs survey then analyzing what and where the required words and expressions are used developed an efficient textbook. It gave me the joy of realization that the result of basic research can contribute to practical textbook developing. After my first textbook, I’m still continuing to develop textbooks such as textbooks on computers for international students and introduction to academic presentation. Recently, I published a textbook on skills required for the 21st century for undergraduate international students(『21世紀のカレッジジャパニーズ』).

　　　

Textbooks I have developed

What kind of research do you do about conversation analysis?

My dissertation was about conversation between native speakers of Japanese and non- native speakers. I revealed that when speaking Japanese, interrupting the conversation has a positive effect on the conversation and that such interruption occurs for non-native speakers too. After this dissertation, my interest shifted from conversation to monologue and now I’m researching on Japanese public speaking. Currently, I reveal how persuasion succeeds in public speaking by using multimodal analysis on the context of the speech and also non-verbal elements. For this research, I have been funded by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research.

　　

I did workshop at University of London, The University of Edinburgh, and Sinshu University.

What do you expect from graduate students at Kanazawa university?

In my lab, there are young Japanese students who want to become Japanese language teachers, international students, and adult students who are working as Japanese language teachers. I want students to find a topic while teaching Japanese, and investigating the topic. After working a while and acquiring skills, it is possible for Japanese language teachers to do their jobs routinely. However, I believe that there are no such classrooms that are the same as before. There are always some kind of questions to arise. There, you can find the material for research or for exploitation. I expect students who can find such materials to research and can think deeply about the topic.

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