Information About Mary - Harrogate teacher

Personal Description:

My name is Mary. I lived in Japan for over 15 years - I returned from my most recent period in Japan in October 2025. I have been teaching Japanese language for 20 years in adult education and university. I was also a freelance translator of Japanese to English for 10 years. I have been passionate about Japanese language and culture all my life - I studied tea ceremony and ikebana whilst I lived in Japan, and now in the UK my passion is Japanese cuisine. I am also an enthusiastic taiko drummer. I established the York Japan Society - a group that ran for about 15 years with the purpose of language and culture exchange until 2020.

Teaching Experience:

2004 - 2006: York City Council Adult Education, Japanese beginners, 2004 -2006
2006 - 2024: York St John University, Japanese degree courses - all levels from beginner to advanced and translation level
2012-2013 : Leeds University Applied Translation MA course Japanese to English translation.

Teaching Approach:

My early teaching experience was in TEFL - teaching English as a foreign language and worked for many years in a language school in Japan. I apply the communicative teaching methods from TEFL to my Japanese language teaching approach. I love speaking the language and my lessons are primarily communication focussed, but I am also a grammar and kanji nerd so happy to help students with those skills. As a high-level second-language user of Japanese I can understand the difficulties and frustrations of Japanese learners as I have walked that path before them. I can also understand the joy and sense of achievement in mastering this challenging language.
I use Google Classroom to share materials with students and, for online classes, I use Google Meet.