Ms. Akiko Takamura Barnes

Akiko has been in international education since 2005, teaching Japanese, her native language and culture.  She is passionate about cultivating globally competent leaders and connecting their educational interest and real-world experience.  Prior to teaching, Akiko practiced public relations and international marketing in Tokyo, Philadelphia and New York, serving as a bridge between the Japanese and the non-Japanese speakers in various industries.  Combining her experience in teaching, cross-cultural business practice and entrepreneurship, she is interested in applying innovative student-centered teaching methods to a Japanese language classroom, especially for the university-level novice learners.  Her research interests include pedagogy for language learning, technology integration in language education, and proficiency-oriented instruction and assessment.  Her current work focuses on development of language learning materials.