M.A., University of Oregon
M.S., Western Oregon University
Lecturer, Japanese Language
Office: Humanities and Social Sciences Building, 2238
Phone: (805) 893 3334
Email: kfurukawa@eastasian.ucsb.edu

Koji Furukawa is interested in Japanese Pedagogy and Sociolinguistics, especially Pragmatics. For his M.A. thesis he conducted research on American learners of Japanese who were working in Japan. The central question of his study was how American learners of Japanese state their opinions in Japanese in interactions with their coworkers. Utterances were analyzed through categorization and by comparison to Japanese interviewees.

Mr. Furukawa is developing teaching methods which promote pragmatic competence through Japanese language instruction. In his teaching, he puts particular emphasis not simply on linguistic competence but also on cultural and non-verbal communication skills. In the future he hopes to develop computer-aided language instruction methods.

Teaching

• Japanese 1-2-3 : Elementary Japanese
• Japanese 4-5-6 : Intermediate Japanese
• Japanese 120A/B/C: Third Year Japanese