Atsuko Takahashi, M.S. Ed

M.S. Ed., University of Pennsylvania
B.A., Japan Womens' University

Research interests: Integration of cross-cultural education in language learning

Atsuko Takahashi (M.S. Ed), lecturer of Japanese is originally from Numazu, Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. She has been teaching Japanese as foreign language at Smith College since 2004. The path that she has taken to become teaching Japanese in the United States is very unique and original. She believes that life is full of surprises.

In her teaching, besides instructing Japanese as foreign language by emphasizing the direct, communicative method as well as student-centered class interactions, she particularly considers in a way in which language learners can develop a sense of intercultural sensitivity, awareness, understanding, and competence through their learning experience in foreign language studies. With this idea, she has been creating curriculum in linguistics, cultural, and educational terms by integrating different theories and pedagogies for Japanese classes. However, what makes her teaching significantly creative is her way of collaborating things around in our daily-life into curriculum. This makes her teaching more interactive and creative as well as helps enhance students' learning in distinctive and unique ways.

Her academic interest with on-going research and project are 1) integrating cultural education in foreign language education, 2) creating curriculum to develop effective language learners by emphasizing on meta cognitive, cognitive, and socio-cognitive learning strategies, 3) assessing Technology instructions in language learning. By combining methods and perspectives from anthropology, applied linguistics, socio linguistics, ethnography, cognitive psychology, and intercultural communication studies into her pedagogical ideas, she has striven to investigate how best students could learn foreign languages at different levels and enhance their cultural sensitivity and awareness as well as critical perspectives to the world.

She graduated from Japan Women’s University earning B.A. in textile, certificate of Textile Advisor and Museum Curator in 1996. When she was in college, she extensively studied, traveled, or stayed in foreign countries, such as England, France, Spain, Greece, Switzerland, South Korea, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt. The whole experience of travels, by seeing different countries and meeting various people there, strongly influenced on her ideas of her future direction. She decided to pursue her personal interests in intercultural communication, instead of going to a graduate program in Textile in England. She first came to the United States in 1996 to study English and attended the extended under graduate programs at University of California at Santa Barbara.

In the following year, she started her graduate studies in intercultural communication in Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her special interest in research focused on intercultural education in schools and communities. She took interdisciplinary courses such as linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education, and also learned Arabic. While she was studying at PENN, She also lived and worked as a resident assistant in International House of Philadelphia (Non-profit organization) for three years serving for over 300 of international students and scholars in each year as well as local community to help bring their intercultural awareness and sensitivity in the first place.

After receiving Master’s of Science in Education (M.S. Ed.) in Intercultural Communication in May 2000 at the University of Pennsylvania, she taught Japanese as lecturer for four years at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed the Japanese teacher training provided by the AJALT in 2001. While she was teaching at PENN, she also taught in the International M.B.A. program at Temple University in Philadelphia and the summer intensive Japanese program at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. She currently teaches in the Japanese program at Hokkaido International Foundation, Hakodate, Japan in summer.

Apart from her work, she loves to spend a time with her zebra finch family, listening to world music, cooking and creating new recipes, and exercising, such as aerobics, cardio kick-boxing, inline skating, and Hip Hop dance. She is a competitive ping-pong player and also a regular practitioner of yoga (Baron Baptist Vinyasa Yoga and Bikram Yoga.) She believes that we are all here to learn and can contribute for any goodness in the world, no matter what it is small or big. For that, we all have a great responsibility to pursue, improve, and maintain, our physical, mental, and spiritual health through our life. As a result, lots of smiles and surprises are coming into our life.

website: http://sophia.smith.edu/~atakahas

Office Hours: M 1:30-2:30, W 11-12
Phone: (413) 585-3448
Office: Dewey Hall 13
Email: atakahas@email.smith.edu