| Hirosaki professor at UT Martin as part of long-standing exchange |
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The Messenger 10.17.07
Tokuji Noro, an associate professor at Hirosaki University in Japan, is at the University of Tennessee at Martin participating in an ongoing visiting professor exchange program.
UT Martin and Hirosaki University have maintained a sister-university relationship for more than 20 years.
Noro received a bachelor’s in education with a concentration in teaching English as a foreign language from Hirosaki University. While pursuing undergraduate studies, he received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education in Japan to spend nine months abroad.
In 1981 and 1982, he attended the Intensive English Program at UT Martin and also took undergraduate courses in education and linguistics. After receiving his degree in 1984, Noro taught English in high schools in Aomori Prefecture for 18 years. While teaching, he attended graduate school and completed a master’s in education in 2000.
In 2002, he became associate professor at the Center for Educational Research and Practice in the Faculty of Edu-cation at Hirosaki University, a position he still holds. At Hiro-saki, he teaches English teaching methodologies, applied linguistics and English phonetics at the undergraduate level and second language acquisition and language assessment at the graduate level. His other responsibilities include coordinating a classroom-based research program in which volunteer teacher participants learn to conduct research that aids them with material and curriculum development and teaching techniques and helps other teachers improve their teaching effectiveness.
Noro was at UT Martin in 2005 as part of a grant-in-aid conducting research on listening comprehension anxiety. He has written and compiled a series of articles on his research that has been published in academic journals in Japan. Last April, he received a four-year extension of the grant to continue his research and that, in part, is what brings him to UT Martin as the 23rd visiting professor from Hirosaki.
While at UT Martin, Noro will make presentations to classes in the English Department and be involved with several of the English Writing Center’s events and activities. In addition, he is serving as a conversation partner and cultural resource in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages’ Japanese courses.
He is also scheduled as one of the speakers in a series of fall presentations on Japanese culture offered by the Center for Global Studies and International Education. |
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