For this week’s Challenge Panel introduction, we are proud to feature Professor Yukio Tono, who joins us from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Read his brief autobiography below.

I am a professor in corpus linguistics at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. I finished my PhD at Lancaster University under the supervision of Tony McEnery in 2002. Before that, I was teaching at a national university in Tokyo for 8 years. After coming back from Lancaster in 2001, I taught at a private university for six years, and then moved to TUFS. I have been teaching English for more than 25 years.

My research interest is in the intersection of corpus linguistics and foreign language learning and second language acquisition. Especially I am interested in the acquisition of L2 vocabulary knowledge. Methodologically I use corpus-based designs involving multiple variables a lot. I am very keen to learn and employ new statistical techniques to examine cause-effect relationship between multiple variables as well as summarization (clustering, classification, etc.) of large quantity of data using machine learning.

My background is language teaching and not NLP, but I have been working with people with NLP or computational linguistics backgrounds intensively. I believe that collaboration between NLP and language learning/teaching would be a very fruitful area of applications for both parties.

I wrote several books, including Corpus-Based Language Studies, co-authored with Tony McEnery and Richard Xiao (Routledge, 2006), Frequency Dictionary of Japanese, co-authored with Makoto Yamazaki and Kikuo Maekawa (Routledge, 2012), Developmental and Crosslinguistic Perspectives in Learner Corpus Research, co-edited by Yuji Kawaguchi and Makoto Minegishi (John Benjamins, 2012) and Research into Dictionary Use in the Context of Foreign Language Learning (Max Niemeyer, 2001). I also edited a few bilingual learner’s dictionaries, such as the ACE-CROWN English-Japanese Dictionary (Sanseido, 2010), the Shogakukan’s PROGRESSIVE English-Japanese Dictionary (Shogakukan, 2012).

I have served as President of Asian Association for Lexicography (ASIALEX) for two years (2011-2013) and now the editor-in-chief of a new journal LEXICOGRAPHY – Journal of ASIALEX (Springer). I also serve as editorial board members for several journals such as Corpora (Edinburgh University Press), International Journal of Learner Corpus Research (John Benjamins), International Journal of Lexicography (OUP). I have been a leader of a large government-funded projects called the CEFR-J, in which we have adapted the CEFR for English language teaching in Japan, and prepare the reference level description using learner corpora and textbook corpora.

I do hope that I can make a contribution to this CASS Challenge Panel, which seems to be a great opportunity to find some hidden treasure on this crossroad of different disciplines in social sciences.

Did you miss our previous introductions? Click through to the Challenge Panel page to see profiles, and check back soon for updates.