Seth GossDirector of the East Asian Studies Program and Associate Professor of Japanese

As a member of the REALC faculty, I teach courses on Japanese language and linguistics. My interest in language teaching stems from my own experience as a Japanese learner, which has made me keenly aware of the challenges and rewards inherent in learning to function competently—both linguistically and culturally—in Japan. I have received training in Japanese language pedagogy both in the US (SPEAC Program at Ohio State) and Japan (Research Institute for Japanese Language Education).

My research is centered on understanding how nonnative learners acquire Japanese, but my areas of linguistic investigation are broad. I have explored topics including the production of speech prosody; individual differences in the ability to perceive word accent; and most recently, the effects of native language phonology on second language word recognition. I am currently interested in the acquisition of second language idioms and collocations and the effects of form- versus meaning-focused instruction of kanji in the Japanese classroom. Prior to arriving at Emory in 2015, I received my MA/PhD in Japanese Linguistics from the Ohio State University (2015) and my BA in Asian Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill (2001). I was also a Japan Foundation dissertation fellow at Nagoya University from 2012 to 2013.