JapanLanguage

Naofumi Tatsumi

Naofumi Tatsumi

Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 518 Kent Hall
Office Hours: by appointment only
Phone: (212) 854-8345
Email: nt2358@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Japanese Linguistics, Purdue University
MA: TESOL, University of Southern Mississippi
BA: Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University

Classes Taught

JPNS UN1001 Introductory Japanese A
JPNS UN1101 First Year Japanese I
JPNS UN1102 First Year Japanese II
JPNS UN2202 Second Year Japanese II
JPNS UN3005 Third Year Japanese I

Research Interests

Japanese Pragmatics
Compliment Responses

Naofumi Tatsumi specializes in Japanese pragmatics and earned his PhD from Purdue University in 2012. His dissertation is entitled, “Compliment responses: Comparing American learners of Japanese, native Japanese speakers, and American native English speakers.”

Publications

Compliment responses: L2 learners’ rationales behind their responses (Proceedings of the Canadian Association for Japanese Language Education (CAJLE), 2015)
Teaching Japanese popular culture via otaku (Proceedings of the SecondTeaching Japan Conference: Between ‘Cool’ and 3-11: Implications for Teaching Japan Today, in press)
American learners’ compliment responses in Japanese (Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Central Association of Teachers of Japanese (CATJ 22), 2010)
Japanese loanwords in English (Proceedings of the First Annual Graduate Research Conference, 2007)

Keiko Okamoto

Keiko Okamoto

Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 520 Kent Hall
Office Hours: MW 3:10-4:10
Phone: (212) 854-5502
Email: ko47@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Japanese Pedagogy, Columbia University
BA: Linguistics, International Christian University

Classes Taught

JPNS UN1101 First Year Japanese I
JPNS UN1102 First Year Japanese II
JPNS UN3005 Third Year Japanese I
JPNS UN3006 Third Year Japanese II

Research Interests

Japanese Reading
Japanese Phonetics

Keiko Okamoto has many years of experience teaching Japanese. She has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, NYU, Spence School, and has been a Senior Instructor at the Japan Society, among other locations. She received her BA in Linguistics at International Christian University (Tokyo), where she minored in Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language. At Columbia University, Ms. Okamoto has taught a wide range of Japanese levels, ranging from beginner to early-advanced.

Publications

“Systematic Long-Term Approach to Improving Reading-Aloud Skills” (Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the JLTANE, 2014; co-author)
“Listen to the Voice! Express the Voice!” (The 20th Princeton Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2013; co-author)
“Reading HIYAKU: Using Courseworks/Wikispaces” (Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the JLTANE, 2012; co-author)
“Exploration through “Hiyaku”: Considering Authenticity of Context”(The 18th Princeton Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2011; co-author)
Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course (Routledge, 2011; co-authors: Shigeru Eguchi, Miharu Nittono, Fumiko Nazikian, Jisuk Park)

Miharu Nittono

Miharu Nittono

Senior Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 520 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TR 4:00-5:00
Teaching Hours: MW 11:40-12:55, MTWR 1:10-2:15
Phone: (212)854-5500
Email: mn70@columbia.edu

Educational Background

EdD: Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: TESOL at Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: Waseda University

Classes Taught

JPNS UN2201 Second Year Japanese I
JPNS UN2202 Second Year Japanese II
JPNS GU4516 Fifth Year Japanese I
JPNS GU4517 Fifth Year Japanese II

Research Interests

Japanese Linguistics
Japanese “Hedging”

Miharu Nittono is a senior instructor of Japanese at Columbia University, where she has taught all levels of Japanese. She also has experience teaching intensive summer courses in Japanese, including “Japanese Language and Culture” at Sophia University in Tokyo as an invited professor. She has also served as the Administrative Director of the MA Program in Japanese Pedagogy at Columbia University.

Publications

Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course (Routledge, 2011; co-authors: Shigeru Eguchi, Fumiko Nazikian, Keiko Okamoto, Jisuk Park)
“Follow the Old Ways: A New Approach to Kanji Learning” (The Seventeenth Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2010)
“We’re doing traditional rakugo!: Striving towards acquiring the ‘five’ skills through performing rakugo” (The Sixteenth Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2009)
“Show & Short: A Journey through 10 Years of Student-Written Short Stories” (The 20th Annual Conference of the Central Association of Teachers of Japanese (CATJ20), 2008)
“Contrasting Group Size and Hedge Use” (The Fifteenth Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2008)
“Avoidance and Appeal: A Two-Fold Motivation for Japanese Hedging Use” (Sophia International Review, 2007)
“Hedging at Work: How Occupations Affect the Use of Hedging in Japanese Interactions during Non-Work Conversations” (The Fourteenth Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2007)
“Two-Fold Conversation Management Function of Japanese Hedging: Speaker-Centered and Listener-Centered” (Humanities Conference 2004 Proceedings, 2006)
“The Golden Mean: Japanese Speakers’ Use of ‘Downtoners’” (Hawaii International Conference on Arts and HumanitiesProceedings, 2005)
“Japanese Hedging in Friend-Friend Discourse” (Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003)