Dr Sato van Aacken
Senior Lecturer, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Qualifications
BA (Keio), MA (Hawaii), Dip Ed (Keio), PhD (Woll)
Contact
| Email: | svanaac@une.edu.au |
| Room: | E11 208 |
Sato (Satoko) Van Aacken, a native speaker of Japanese, taught Japanese to native Japanese in Tokyo. She completed her MA from the University of Hawaii and PhD from University of Wollongong. She taught Japanese as a foreign language at an organisation affiliated with Foreign Ministry of Japan, the University of Maryland, and Nebraska State Education Department. After working at the universities of Newcastle, Flinders, and Adelaide, Sato joined UNE in 1995, and coordinated all levels of Japanese language from beginning through advanced units.
With the huge assistance of JEC grants from the Japanese Government for establishing a computer laboratory, and upgrading the computers, Sato has co-developed various kinds of audio-visual and multimedia computer programs for learning Japanese in both internal and external distance education modes, e.g., Tokidoki Japanese, Japanese grammar and culture. In addition, she has been involved in exchange programs with Japan, and promoted a Teaching Assistant (TA) scheme from Japan to enhance genuine communication in Japanese.
Research interests
Sato's research interests are in Second Language Acquisition, Japanese pedagogy, Japanese orthography and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Her PhD thesis is about learners' interactions and strategies for learning kanji characters using one of her CALL programs KanjiSensee. In addition, her interest has expanded to the area of language and gender in Japanese society. She has also cooperated in a joint development for language teaching with its culture, with staff from one of our exchange universities in Japan.