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.
M.Ed., Education Entrepreneurship, University of Pennsylvania, 2018
JPAN021/022: Intensive Beginning Japanese I and II (Equivalent of Beginning Japanese I, II, III, and IV)
JPAN011: Beginning Japanese I
JPAN112: Beginning Japanese IV
SAS Language Teaching Innovation Grant by Penn Language Center, University of Pennsylvania (2020)