Career highlights

• Reader/Associate Professor, ANU, since 2013. 
• Senior tutor/Lecturer/Senior lecturer, ANU, 1991-2012.
• Visiting Researcher, Gakushuin University (Dec 1999 - June 2000) on Japan Foundation Fellowship.
• Visiting Researcher, Yokohama National University (Sep 2009 - Jan 2010) on Heiwa Nakajima Foundation Research Fellowship.
  

Current positions

• Convenor of Japanese program
• Executive board member, ANU Japan Institute
• Convenor of Japanese linguistics major
  

Services for academic community

• Section editor, Open Linguistics (De Gruyter, since 2014)
• Editorial board member, Journal of Japanese Language (Seoul, since 2007)
• Editorial board member, e-Journal of Asian Linguistics & Language Teaching (2001-2008)
• Co-convenor, ANU Language Teaching Forum (since 2014)
• Executive board member of the Korean Association of Japanese Linguistics (2005-present).
• Convenor, Communication, Education and Language Stream, Biennial Conference of Japanese Studies Association of Australia (2013).
• Convenor, Communication, Language and Linguistics Stream, Biennial Conference of Japanese Studies Association of Australia (2007).
• Convenor, Japanese Program, Asia-Pacific Week, ANU (2005, 2006, 2007).
• ACT Japanese Accreditation Panel member (1999-2007).
• Founder and Councilor of ACT Korean community school (2001-present)
• Chair of the judge panel for ACT Korean speech contest (2006, 2011)

Teaching awards

• College Award for Excellence in Teaching Language College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU (2008)
• College Award for Excellence in Teaching, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU (2012)
• ANU Commendation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2009 and 2013)

[As a chair]

• "A study of discourse structure: In the case of wa and ga in Japanese". Haruka Woods, PhD program, 2016-present.
• "A study of quotation markers in conversation: Korean -nikka/-nunday and Japanese -tte". Hyunsu Kim, PhD program, 2015-present.
• "A study of reference terms in Japanese: with special focus on Anata". Yoko Yonezawa, PhD program, 2012-present.
• "The overt use of 1st and 2nd person references in Korean". Narah Lee, PhD program, 2012-present.

[As a second supervisor]

• "A study of evidentiality in Korean". Yunseok Lee, PhD program (CASS), 2014-present.

[As an advisor]

• "Textbook review: English textbooks taught in China". Xiaofei Tang, PhD program, 2012-present.

• Japanese-Korean linguistics
• Spoken discourse
• Unique features of Japanese spoken conversation
• Japanese education

I have supervised as a chair more than 20 PhD, MA and Honours students. Below are some topics my previous research students undertook:

• Acquisition of Japanese request and refusal by Australian students
• Interactional functions of the -te form in Japanese
• A study of teachers' awareness of teaching culture: In the case of Japanese beginners' class in Australia
• Involvment and attitudes in spoken discourse: So-called sentence-final particles in Japanese
• A study of back channel in Japanese
• Discourse modality indicators in Japanese and Korean
• Conversational organisation in spoken Japanese
• Evidentiality in Japanese
• A contrastive study of aspect in Japanese and English
• Overt expression of 1st and 2nd person subjects
• Phonological aspects of Japanese loan words
• A study of transitive verbs in Japanese
• An analysis of causative in Korean
• A contrastive study of Japanese-English demonstratives
• The function of kedo in spoken Japanese
• A study of Japanese particles kara and node
• The Japanese focus particles sae, made and mo
• The nature of the back-channel behaviour in Japanese
• Lexical structure of Japanese visual verbs
• Syntactic description of Japanese verbal phrases
• The function of -ne in Japanese and its equivalents in Korean

I was awarded my BA from Korea (Koog-Jey), MA from Japan (Tsukuba) and PhD from Australia (ANU). My publications have also been written in Korean, Japanese and English, and published in Korea, Japan as well as by international publishers, depending on the aim of the work and expected main readers.

My previous projects include:

• Government phonology
• Particle omission and subject omission in Japanese.
• Pragmatic effects of quotation markers in Korean
• Interactive modality
• Contrastive studies between Japanese and Korean: tense and aspects,
• Syllabus development for Japanese elementary courses: Enhancing spoken-ness
• Japanese studies in Korea

I am currently working on two long-term projects. 

• Interface between language and culture: Japanese and Korean: Based on a large corpus of TV dramas (Japanese original dramas and their Korean remade versions), this project explores the use of Japanese and Korean in the social context, through which it ultimately aims to characterise the Japanese and Korean culture in light of the influence of the various socio-cultural factors. I am currently focusing on two book projects "Directive strategies in Japanese and Korean" (commands, requests, suggestions, etc) (with Dr Naomi Ogi) and "Person reference terms in Japanese and Korean" (person pronouns, kinship terms, names, etc).

• Syllabus/material development for Japanese elementary courses: It aims at developing a holistic approach which allows beginning learners of the Japanese language to master functional/situational expressions as well as grammar. As part of this project, I developed a syllabus that enhanced the students' learning of the communication skills and the spoken-ness at the beginners level. Based on the syllabus, I further wrote and published a textbook that is currently being used in my first-year Japanese language courses. I am now developing an e-textbook on the ANU eText Grant Scheme, in order to offer new flexible courses that target elective students inside and outside the ANU (public sector in particular).