Instructors of English as a Foreign Language

The Living Language Laboratory at the School of Science and Technology maintains a dedicated, knowledgeable staff of seven full-time Instructors of English as a Foreign Language. The instructors each possess impressive academic histories and many years of second and foreign language teaching experience in a variety of contexts. While helping the students to achieve their greatest potential as English language learners is the priority of the School of Science and Technology English program, the instructors are also actively involved in language learning research and are proud to be representing Kwansei Gakuin University through academic publications and presentations worldwide.

	Aeric Wong IEFL Coordinator	Web site
	Aeric Wong received his M.Ed. in TESOL from Temple University, and his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Kent. Aeric has over 10 years of teaching experience in Japan and has taught students of all ages in many different learning environments. His research interests lie mainly in CALL and how its role is changing the way students learn. Additionally his doctorate proposal involves how technology is changing the culture of communication and if educators are now required to have sufficient technical knowledge to be effective in the classroom. He has publications in Temple University Japan Studies Journal and the Kwansei Gakuin Humanities Review, and has presented at conferences in Hawaii, New Orleans, Osaka, and Dubai and has been awarded several Best Paper awards for his contributions to the field.
	Ariel Sorensen Educational Technology Coordinator	Web Site
	Ariel Sorensen received his BA in Applied Linguistics from San Diego State University with a minor in Japanese. He recieved his first MS in TESOL from Hawthorne University, and a few years later repeated the process to gain a second MA in TESOL from Anaheim University. He has been teaching in Japanese colleges and universities for nearly a decade and a half. He has taught a wide variety of English classes in these universities. Ariel Sorensen went to teach TESOL in Pusan, South Korea for one year, teaching courses in Linguistics, Methodlogies and Teaching English Grammar. He has done numerous presentations on collaborative language technology and has publications in that field. His research interests are in CALL, methodologies and collaborative language learning. He is currently studying teaching styles and methods used in supplementary language classes, as well as continuing to hone his knowledge of the Korean language. His goal is to gain understanding of what Japanese teachers of English can learn from Korean teachers of English, and vice-versa, as well as to implement greater collaboration between these two countries in his own classes for language learning purposes.
	Amy Johnson Intensive English Coordinator
	Amy received her M.A. in TESOL from Portland State University and her B.Sc. in Physiology from McGill University. She has been teaching English for the last seven years in the United States, Germany, and most recently at Shantou University in China. Her main interests include pragmatics and developing science-based and pop culture-inspired English curriculum.
	Thomas Boutorwick Writing Curriculum Coordinator	Web Site
	Thomas Boutorwick received his Master of Science in Education from Temple University Japan and his Bachelor of Arts in Japanese Language and Culture from Eastern Michigan University. He has been teaching in Japan for over five years. His research interests are course/curriculum/syllabus design, methodology (e.g., Task-based teaching,) and group dynamics. He is preparing his proposal to begin his doctorate. Thomas has been active in the field and has presented at a number of conferences locally in Japan, and throughout Asia.
	Brian Strong
	Brian Strong received his MA TESOL/TEFL from The University of Birmingham and his BA from The University of Toronto. Before teaching at KGU, Brian spent 10 years teaching at various public schools, from elementary to high school. Brian’s research centers on the effects of extensive reading on vocabulary growth, reading speed and comprehension. His interests revolve around the significant benefit of reading for building and maintaining EFL learners who have little access to communicative EFL settings.
	Paul Leeming Communication Curriculum Coordinator
	Although originally from a science background with a Masters degree in Chemistry, since coming to Japan Paul received his M.A in TESOL from Manchester University and is currently a doctoral candidate at Temple University Japan. He has taught in Japan for more than ten years at various different levels. Paul’s research to date has been involved with the use of tasks in the second language classroom and also how students use their first language when working together. He presented at JALT 2009 concerning the influence of text and pictures on communicative language tasks. Current interests include classroom dynamics and investigating the impact that classroom atmosphere has on the learning potential of individuals within the group.
	Stuart Cunningham
	Stuart Cunningham received his M.A. in TESOL from Birmingham University. He taught in Europe for two years before coming to Japan. In Japan he has taught at a number of institutions including, Mitsubishi and Astra Zenneca. Before coming to KGU he taught at Himeji Dokkyo University. His main areas of interest include teaching conversation as ESP, and the use of discourse structures as scaffolding.

Professors

The School of Science and Technology's English Research Section and Living Language Laboratory is overseen by four tenured staff.

	Yasuko Obana Professor, Head of the English Department
	Yasuko Obana received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of Edinburgh, UK. She started her career at University of Queensland, Australia, teaching linguistics and Japanese. While she continued research on theoretical linguistics (e.g. publications on politeness, anaphora and others on pragmatics), teaching Japanese to English speakers led her to pursuing research in language transfer and pedagogical grammar, which resulted in publishing a book (Understanding Japanese - A Handbook for Learners and Teachers) and other journal articles (e.g. on motivation: "Speakers viewpoints in learning sentence structure"). Her 22 years experience in the UK and Australia is now conferring advantages on teaching English in Japan. At Shinshu University, she developed a textbook and compiled a handbook for paragraph writing. A good example of a hybrid between East and West perhaps.
	Michael Lynn Associate Professor
	Michael Lynn has been working in the field of English language instruction, teacher training, and language center program development for over 20 years. Michael received his M.A. in TESOL from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. His work experience has primarily been at the university level at such institutions as the Ningxia Teacher’s College, China, the University of Illinois, UCLA, the Toronto Institute of Linguistics, California State University, L.A., Glendale Community College, the University of California at Irvine-Extension, and the Kwansei Gakuin University Language Center. He has held his faculty post at the School of Science and Technology since 1996, and has served as the Director of English at the Living Language Laboratory since its inception in 2001. Michael also teaches a methodology course and a language and culture course at the Graduate School of Language, Communication and Culture based at the Uegahara Campus. His most recent publication is a collaborative effort with Frank Tuzi of Tokyo Christian University titled “Investigating collaborative learning and e-Learning that may impact the second language writing process in the March 2007 issue of Kwansei Gakuin Humanities Review. Michael recently presented at the March 2007 Toyota Technological Institute Forum for Engineering Education through English.
	Osato Shiki Associate Professor
	Shiki received his M.A. in TESL from the University of Kansas. He worked as an EFL lecturer at Kansai Gaidai Junior College for 10 years and became an associate professor at the institution in 2006. From April 2009, he became an associate professor at the School of Science and Technology in Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interest focuses on how a second language (English) is learned and acquired by university students in Japan, especially though reading instruction. He has currently been exploring the following aspects of L2 reading acquisition: fluency development and automaticity of L2 reading skills, effects of shadowing training on reading fluency, and incidental vocabulary learning through extensive reading.
	Kazumi Yamada Lecturer
	Kazumi Yamada received her Ph.D in Linguistics from University of Essex, UK. Her research interest focuses on how a second language (English, Japanese) is acquired. She is considering matters such as why children can acquire their first language while adults cannot acquire second language in many cases, and what sort of knowledge and skills are needed in the learning process. In her research, she regards Universal Grammar (UG), which is thought of as a language acquisition devise and babies are born with, as important. She is currently studying the acquisition of word order and articles by Japanese child/adult EFL learners, the acquisition of Japanese pronouns by English/Korean learners, and the acquisition of English pronouns by Japanese adult learners. She would like to make it clear from a linguistic viewpoint that a mechanism for language acquisition, which is not taught by a teacher, is operating in a process of second language acquisition. She aims to consider how the findings of generative second language acquisition research might apply to language teaching.