Profile Information
- Affiliation
- Professor, Center for Language Education and Research, Sophia University
- Degree
- B.A in Hispanic Studies(Mar, 1985, Sophia University)M.A in Linguistics(Mar, 1989, Sophia University)
- Researcher number
- 50249067
- J-GLOBAL ID
- 200901085935732534
- researchmap Member ID
- 1000122118
Educational Activities
Until April 2007, I taught Spanish as a second foreign language (beginner and intermediate levels), special seminars, and a foundational seminar in thesis writing in Japanese, primarily at Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Languages. Since April 2007, I have been teaching Spanish as a second foreign language (beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels) at Sophia University. I also serve as the coordinator for the university’s Spanish classes offered as a second foreign language, creating standardized syllabi and standard exams. Additionally, I teach a graduate-level course on Spanish teaching methodology. Concurrently, I teach Spanish (beginner, intermediate, and intensive courses) at Waseda University’s School of International Liberal Studies and other institutions.
Research Activities
I have authored Spanish textbooks for university courses as well as self-study materials for the general public. In 2003, 2005, and 2010, I was responsible for NHK’s Spanish radio program. I have also worked in editing and writing dictionaries. Until 2012, I participated in group research focused on the selection of basic Spanish vocabulary using computers. From 2014 to 2018, I led a group in curriculum development research on German, French, and Spanish education as second foreign languages at the university level. My current central research theme is the state of Spanish language education in Japan. I am developing a corpus of Spanish textbooks published since the 19th century to study teaching materials and the compilation of Spanish language education resources.
Research Areas
1Research History
2-
Apr, 2024 - Present
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Jul, 2021 - May, 2025
Papers
17-
Lengua y Sociedad, 23(2), Dec 30, 2024 Peer-reviewedThe rapid globalization and growing need for cross-language communication necessitate modern, real-time corpora to aid language learners. Traditional methods for creating such corpora, especially in Spanish, are inadequate due to their inability to process the vast and unstructured data available online. This study explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies for automatic Spanish document acquisition from the web, pre-processing and classifying them in order to build a vast and flexible corpus for Spanish learning. The research applies web crawling using the Scrapy framework to collect data, which is then cleaned and classified using advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) models. Specifically, the study employs BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and its enhanced variant RoBERTa to achieve document classification. Through a combination of data augmentation techniques and deep learning models, the study achieves high accuracy in classifying Spanish-language texts, demonstrating the potential for using AI to overcome the limitations of traditional corpus-building approaches.
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Revista Internacional de Lenguas Extranjeras / International Journal of Foreign Languages, (21) 1-24, Nov 15, 2024 Peer-reviewedSince the Japanese people’s first encounter with the Spanish language in the 16th century, the teaching and learning of Spanish has been evolving in response to the needs of each era. Despite numerous historical challenges, interest in the Spanish language and everything related to it has increased over the years. This article examines the situations of differing historical periods to better understand the objectives for which Spanish has been studied, as well as the numerous types of teachers, students, and commonly used methodologies. To do this, various academic articles and books offering testimonies from people who lived through those periods are examined. The corpus developed by this article’s author, which includes textbooks published since the early 20th century, will also be analyzed in this article.The initial contact with the Spanish language in the 16th century was through missionary work. After a stagnation in language studies due to a period of isolationism, the need to pursue Spanish as a language resumed in the 20th century for the purposes of foreign trade and migration. The idea of learning a foreign language to enrich general culture also became important in the 20th century. The change in the type of students greatly influenced learning objectives and methodologies.We are now in a transitional period with the emergence of new technologies. However, it is important to know our history in order to reflect on the direction which Spanish teaching and learning should take in the future.
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Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 11(2) 196-214, Jul 2, 2024 Peer-reviewedLead author
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Perfiles, factores y contextos en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de ELE/EL2: XXIX Congreso Internacional de ASELE, Santiago de Compostela, 5-8 de septiembre de 2018, 427-442, Nov 5, 2020 Peer-reviewed
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Lingua, 30 105-113, Dec 12, 2019
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El mercado ELE en Asia-Pacífico: el reto de la conciliación académica, institucional y laboral. Selección de artículos del III CELEAP (Manila, 2013), 140-156, 2013
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Nuevos enfoques en la ensenanza del espanol en Japon, 79-90, Feb 10, 2012
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Serie Cultura Hispanica 18 Encuentro de profesores de ELE: Experiencias en el mundo universitario de Asia, (18) 37-46, May 31, 2010 Invited
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Lingüística Hispánica, 30 43-65, Dec 1, 2007
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Bulletin of Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies, 21 115-130, Mar, 1999
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Bulletin of Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies, 18 91-114, Mar, 1996
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Sophia linguistica : working papers in linguistics, (27) 137-149, Sep, 1989
Misc.
1-
JALT Newsletter Other Language Educators, 100 17-19, Nov, 2022 Invited
Major Books and Other Publications
38Presentations
23-
71 Congreso de asociacion japonesa de hispanistas, Oct 4, 2025
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35.º Congreso Internacional de ASELE, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Jul 30, 2025
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SakurELE,V Encuentro de Experiencias Prácitica en la Enseñanza de ELE. Instituto Cervantes, Tokio, Mar 29, 2025 Invited
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XXXIII Congreso Internacional de ASELE. Universidad de Burgos, Aug 30, 2023 Invited
Major Professional Memberships
5Research Projects
5-
科学研究費助成事業, 日本学術振興会, Apr, 2023 - Mar, 2026
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Programa de ayudas HISPANEX para personas fisicas en el ambito universitario extranjero para la promocion exterior de la lengua y cultura espanolas, Ministerio de Cultura, Gobierno de Espana, Sep, 2024 - Dec, 2025
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Sophia University, Apr, 2020 - Mar, 2023
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Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Apr, 2014 - Mar, 2017
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Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Apr, 2009 - Mar, 2012
Academic Activities
9-
Planning, Management, etc.Yoshimi Hiroyasu, May 23, 2025 - May 25, 2025
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Planning, Management, etc.Yoshimi Hiroyasu, May 26, 2024 - May 27, 2024