Kumiko Akikawa

Kumiko Akikawa received her MA from American University. Prior to her appointment at UMD, she taught both English and Japanese at the college level in Japan and the Washington DC area. With her strong interest in pragmatics, emphasizing the socio-culturally appropriate use of language is an essential part of her instruction. She has presented on this topic at local and national conferences, such as AAAL, ATJ, and TESOL, and Pragmatics: Teaching speech acts (TESOL International Association, 2010) featured a pragmatics-focused lesson plan that she co-authored.When she was a CITL Faculty Fellow (2014-2015), she started exploring a “flipped” mode of instruction in her Japanese language course utilizing various technology tools such as Canvas, Camtasia, Responseware and Clickers. During Spring 2018, she developed an online portal for her second-year students with help of UTAP. She continues to seek a better way to enhance student learning, and upon a nation-wide school closure in 2020, Panopto, Piazza and Zoom became regular features of her courses taught remotely.She participated in Advancing Professional Track Faculty Program (2017-2018).  Since 2019 she serves as the Placement Test Coordinator for the Japanese program.