Hideo Tomita joined the Kenyon faculty in 1988. At Kenyon, he has taught all levels of Japanese as well as courses on linguistics and language acquisition, including "Introductory Japanese Linguistics" and "Issues in Second Language Learning." He has also taught Japanese during summer at various institutions such as Middlebury College and International Christian University in Tokyo.
Tomita specializes in Japanese linguistics and he has been developing Japanese grammar that adequately responds to the questions of students who study Japanese as a foreign language. In 2007, he published a book, "Essentials of Japanese Grammar for Teachers," from Kurosio Publishers, Tokyo. Tomita's current research interest is in a cross-linguistic study of propositional modality (i.e., roughly speaker's attitude toward his utterance). He focuses his language teaching on practice that enables students to discern the proper use of the language according to the context.
Areas of Expertise
Japanese linguistics (syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, pragmatics), communicative language teaching.
Education
1995 — Doctor of Philosophy from The Ohio State University
1988 — Master of Arts from The Ohio State University
1986 — Master of Arts from The Ohio State University
1975 — Bachelor of Arts from Keio University