Language Education Center
Language Education Center
Foreign Language Education Division
Japanese Language Education Division
The Nagoya University Language Education Center was established on April 1, 2023 as an inter-departmental education and research center. The Language Education Center consists of two divisions: the Foreign Language Education Division and the Japanese Language Education Division. The Language Education Center provides language education, namely foreign language education (English and introductory foreign language courses) mainly for first-year undergraduate students and Japanese language education mainly for international students, in cooperation with the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the International Affairs, the Graduate School of Humanities, and other related departments within the university. In addition, the Center works to strengthen students' foreign language skills and promote co-curricular activities by promoting the advancement of foreign language and Japanese language education from a university-wide perspective, as well as planning language education programs that contribute to the advancement of language education, including collaboration in language education within and outside of the university.
Director, Language Education CenterSAKUMA Jun'ichi
Nagoya University is actively engaged in internationalization with the goal of becoming a university of international excellence. In order to promote internationalization, it is necessary to encourage Japanese students to study abroad and to accept international students from all over the world.
When students want to study abroad, the language barrier stands in their way. At the Center for Language Education, we make every effort to provide foreign language education so that students can take on the challenge of studying abroad without fear. In doing so, we teach more than just practical language knowledge. Foreign language skills, especially English, are essential for university study itself, and so we also aim to cultivate the foreign language skills needed in an academic context.
International students at Nagoya University come from a variety of countries and have diverse backgrounds in Japanese language study, and there are certainly fields of study and research that do not require much Japanese language proficiency. However, regardless of the field of study, there is no better way to live in Japan than to have Japanese language skills. At the Center for Language Education, we are committed to providing individualized support so that international students can acquire the Japanese language skills they need.
In this way, language education, whether foreign language education or Japanese language education, plays a very important role in fostering the abilities that are essential for students to study at university. However, language education at universities has been facing significant challenges in recent years, both in terms of personnel and in terms of budget. In order to improve language education despite these difficulties, it is essential to strengthen the language education system, and the establishment of the Center is just one of the steps we are taking to achieve this goal. However, there is a limit to what a single organization can do, and it is also important to work together with other universities facing similar difficulties and pool our knowledge and wisdom. To this end, we hope to work together with other relevant organizations, and we appreciate your cooperation and support. Thank you.
