AIU Faculty Member Offered a Course at a Partner University: Introduction to Japanese Language Teaching Grammar Research: Corpus-based Analysis of the Japanese Language – Dr. Hitoshi Horiuchi

In March 2025, Dr. Hitoshi Horiuchi, Associate Professor in AIU’s Japanese Language Teaching Practices Program (Graduate School of Global Communication and Language), taught a short intensive course on “Introduction to Japanese Language Teaching Grammar Research: Corpus-based Analysis of the Japanese Language” as a visiting professor at Kainan University, one of AIU’s partner universities in Taiwan. We are pleased to share his account of the experience.

From Monday, March 17 to Friday, March 21, 2025, I gave an intensive lecture (“Introduction to Japanese Language Teaching Grammar Research: Corpus-based Analysis of the Japanese Language”) at Kainan University’s Graduate School of Applied Japanese Studies. Kainan University and AIU have had a student exchange partnership since 2009 and throughout that time, Kainan has also graciously served as an overseas institute for teaching practices by JLT’s graduate students and a place of employment (exchange researcher and full-time lecturer) for post-graduate students.

For two hours in the morning, I lectured on the basics of Japanese grammar and key points in Japanese language teaching. For another two hours in the afternoon, the students learned how to use Excel and morphological analysis tools for corpus search and data analysis, and worked on tasks related to grammar items learned in the morning. Six graduate students of applied Japanese language courses, a Japanese undergraduate student on an exchange program at Kainan University, an undergraduate student of the University who was interested in Japanese language, and a teacher who teaches Japanese at the University participated in the seminar. Participants listened attentively to the lectures, asked questions to confirm their understanding, and actively exchanged opinions with other students. In particular, the afternoon classes on corpus analysis provided a hands-on learning experience, and the participants were very pleased with the accomplishment they gained when they learned how to use the tools and analyze the data.

As a part of this intensive lecture, I was asked to give a special class in Japanese that undergraduate students could understand. Under the title, “Akita & Taiwan, AIU & KNU”, my talk covered the exchange between Akita and Taiwan, or between Akita International University (especially JLT) and Kainan University, introducing Akita and Akita International University, as well as introducing Taiwanese tourism to Akita, local activities of a Taiwanese exchange student at AIU, the relationship between the first AIU President Mineo Nakajima and the former President Lee Teng-hui, and the relationship between JLT and Kainan University.

　The chief professor, Dr. Hung Chao-feng, other applied Japanese language professors, and all the graduate students treated me really well every day, not only in class but also by holding welcome parties, giving me food and drinks as a token of appreciation, and taking me to a café with good food and a night market.