クーンバ・マシュー教授
Matthew Coomber
- 研究分野
- My research looks mainly at features of Japanese students’ academic writing in English, and investigates ways to help them improve the quality of their writing.
- 主な担当科目
- 英語S1&S2, Business English B1&B2, 英語SW1&SW2, プロジェクト英語
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Q1現在の研究テーマ（または専門分野）について教えてください。
- My research is in the field of English language education and focuses on how peer review and self-directed revision can be implemented in order to help students improve the quality of their academic writing in English in the short term and become autonomous second language writers in the long term. Recently, I have also been using corpus linguistics to investigate specific features of students’ written English, such as their use of hedging devices in academic writing.
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Q2どんな学生時代を送っていましたか。
- In short, my years at university were the best time of my life! I started university in 1989 – the year that the Cold War ended in Europe and the Heisei era began in Japan. The world was changing, and so was my life. Every day brought new knowledge, new adventures, new experiences and new friends. In fact, even today my closest friends are people I met during my first few weeks at university!
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Q3現在の専門分野を志した理由・研究者になったきっかけを教えてください。
- After working in several different fields after graduating from university, at 30 years old I moved to Japan and became an English language teacher. Soon afterwards, for the first time in my life I found myself enjoying my job, and I realized that I had finally found the career for me. I consider myself to be a teacher first and a researcher second, which is why most of my research has focused on practical ways to improve students’ language learning experiences.
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Q4高校生へメッセージをお願いします。
- Four years probably sounds like a long time to you now, but it will go very quickly. At Ritsumeikan you will get the opportunity to take a wide variety of fascinating courses in both Japanese and English, to join different circles and try new activities, and to meet people from all over Japan and the rest of the world. Please make the most of your university life from day one!
■おすすめの書籍や映画
The World until Yesterday (Jared Diamond)
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear (Dan Gardner)
The Girl with Seven Names (Hyeonseo Lee)
Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
All these books have Japanese translations, but hopefully you will be able to read them in English by the time you graduate from Ritsumeikan!
■関連リンク
