Strategies for Growing and Enhancing University-Level Japanese Programs

Strategies for Growing and Enhancing University-Level Japanese Programs offers foreign language program managers and directors, as well as teachers of less commonly taught languages, the insights and proven practical actions they can take to enhance and grow their language programs.

Using the Japanese program at UNC Charlotte as the primary case study, author Fumie Kato provides step-by-step instructions on how she grew the Japanese program there from 133 students per semester in 2002 to 515 students per semester in 2017; from a program with just one full-time professor and one part-time faculty member, to a faculty of seven full-time and three part-time members.

While Japanese is the example used in the book, the principles can be applied by anyone managing foreign language/less commonly taught language programs who wishes to expand their program and raise their students’ success rates. The book is therefore of interest to instructors, coordinators and directors of foreign language education programs throughout the world.

Fumie Kato is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. Her expertise lies in applied linguistics, specifically foreign language acquisition, learning strategies, student motivation and PBLL (Project-Based Language Learning). She earned a PhD in applied linguistics at the University of Sydney in 2001. She moved to Charlotte as an assistant professor in 2004. She has received five prestigious awards: International Education Faculty Award; finalist, Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence; Bonnie Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching award; AATJ’s (American Association of Teachers of Japanese) 2016 Teacher Award; Foreign Minister's Commendations in Honor of the 70th Anniversary of the End of the War with the United States of America, as well as many competitive grants. Dr. Kato's publications include Improving Student Motivation toward Japanese Learning (2010), written in English and Japanese from Gakujutsu Shuppansha in Japan, and more than 15 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Language Teaching Research and Foreign Language Annals. She has developed approximately ten courses and redesigned seven others for the Japanese Program at UNC Charlotte, which offers a translation certificate, graduate translation certificate, business certificate and a Japanese BA Honors degree.

Ryan Spring is Associate Professor at the Institute for Excellence in Higher Education at Tohoku University, Japan. He received a PhD in language communication from the Graduate School of International Culture Studies at the same university in 2014. He has published a number of papers in journals such as Cognitive Linguistics and Foreign Language Annals and is an active member of conferences such as the English Linguistic Society of Japan and the Association for Teaching English through Multimedia, where he serves as vice president of the East Japan branch. He has also received several awards for both education and research, including winning the Tohoku University President’s Award, once for each area, and the 2017 Contribution to Education Award, as well as a number of competitive grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Dr. Spring is currently working on curriculum reform at Tohoku University, and helps with graduate courses and the development of language and culture programs such as faculty-led study abroad trips.