Hideo Tomita joined the Kenyon faculty in 1988. At Kenyon, he has taught all levels of Japanese, as well as courses on linguistics and language acquisition, including "Introductory Japanese Linguistics" and "Issues in Second Language Learning.." He has also taught Japanese during summer at various institutions such as Middlebury College and International Christian University in Tokyo. Tomita specializes in Japanese linguistics and he has been developing Japanese grammar that adequately responds to the questions of students who study Japanese as a foreign language. In 2007, he published a book, Essentials of Japanese Grammar for Teachers, from Kurosio Publishers, Tokyo. Tomita's current research interest is in a cross-linguistic study of propositional modality (i.e., roughly speaker's attitude toward his utterance). He focuses his language teaching on practice that enables students to discern the proper use of the language according to the context.

Areas of Expertise

Japanese linguistics (syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, pragmatics), communicative language teaching

Education

M.A., Ph.D. The Ohio State University
B.A. Keio University, Tokyo

Selected Publications

Tomita (2007). Essentials of Japanese Grammar for Teachers. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers.

Tomita (2005). "JFL: Accommodating College Students' Intellectual Interests and Focusing the Use of Technology." In Kamada et al. (eds.) Recent Developments in Language Education: In Honor of Professor Seiichi Makino's 70th birthday, 223-241. Tokyo: Hitsuji Publishing.

Tomita (2003) "An Integrated Approach to Advanced Level Japanese with Video Clips." Paper for CATJ (Central Association of Te achers of Japanese) 15th Annual Conference.

Tomita (1998). "SPOT Test Result: The Case of Middlebury Summer Program." Tomita, H (ed.) Working Papers of the Japanese School vol.1,108-22. Middlebury Summer Japanese School.

Tomita (1997) "An Analysis on Acquisition of the Japanese Particles WA and GA by L2 Japanese Learners--Difficulty Caused by Contrasting Cues." Japanese Language Education Around the Globe 7, 157-174. Japan Foundation.

Courses Taught

JAPN111-112 Intensive Introductory Modern Japanese
JAPN213-214 Intermediate Modern Japanese
JAPN321 Advanced Japanese
JAPN322 Japanese Language and Culture
JAPN328 Introduction to Japanese Culture
JAPN325 Introductory Japanese Linguistics
MLL351 Language Learning and Technology
MLL392 Issues in Second-Language Learning