Areas of Expertise

Language education (Japanese and English), Japanese literary discourse analysis (Banana Yoshimoto), cognitive linguistics

Teaching Interests

After immersing herself in Taiwanese culture for five years, Assistant Professor Koyama joined TUJ in 2006. While in Taiwan, Assistant Professor Koyama taught Japanese, sociolinguistics, and contrastive linguistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, she actively applied her sociocultural approach to Japanese pedagogy. In classrooms, she introduced practicum sessions such as mock job interviews, Japanese TV script reading, creating interactive Japanese textbooks and Japanese blogs, and so forth. At TUJ, Assistant Professor Koyama wishes to develop a new approach to Japanese pedagogy to meet the needs of multicultural students.

Research

Assistant Professor Koyama's research interests range from Japanese language learners' narrative production to discourse analysis of Banana Yoshimoto's literary works. Most recently, she has been exploring the linguistic manifestations of iyashi"(healing) in Yoshimoto's writings.

Representative Publications

• Koyama, Nobuko. 2005. Aspects of "healing": A macro-structure of Banana Yoshimoto's "healing" narrative. Applied Japanese Journal of Southern Taiwan University of Technology, No. 5, 39-56.
• Koyama, Nobuko. 2004. Grounding and deixis: A comprehensive approach to the grounding in Japanese narrative. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, vol. 2.1, 1-44.
• Koyama, Nobuko. 2003. Pilot study on interlanguage variation of Japanese demonstratives by advanced JSL learners of Mandarin native speakers. Applied Japanese Journal of Southern Taiwan University of Technology, No. 3, 228-46.
• Koyama, Nobuko. 2002. The two-way distinction for the time and space: The narrative analysis of Banana Yoshimoto's Kanashii yokan (lit. 'Sad Premonition'). Selected papers from The Third College-wide Conference for Students in Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. Honolulu: College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
• Koyama, Nobuko. 2001. Grounding and deixis: A study of Japanese first-person narrative. Ph.D. dissertation in linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Education

Ph.D. in linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2001
M.A. in linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 1996
B.A. in linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Hilo, 1993

Professional Associations

Association of Teachers of Japanese
National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (USA)
Society of Text and Discourse

E-mail

koyama@tuj.ac.jp

Office Hours

Available here.