Goh Kawai

When and where I was trained.

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Page last updated: 01/27/12

Language background

I have moved back and forth between Japan and North America, both as a child and as an adult. Consequently I became a mixture of both societies. The mix is not 50-50 however, because some of my experiences happened in the US, while others occurred in Japan. For instance, much of my work experience is in Silicon Valley. As my adolescence was all in Japan, I know little of American high schools.

I remember almost nothing of our first 2 houses in Tokyo and New York. I clearly recall Toronto and Thorncliffe Park elementary school, which reportedly is now the largest primary school in North America.

I went to middle school, high school, college, and graduate school all in Tokyo. After obtaining my master's degree, I moved to Palo Alto. I worked in California for 11 years, and in Oregon for 2 years.

I acquired English and Japanese in infancy. As an adult I studied classic Chinese, French, Latin, modern Chinese, and Dutch, in that order. I put in an honest effort but never became fluent in any of them due to my poor concentration and memory. As a trained phonetician, I can pronounce almost any language, but I understand practicallly nothing. I feel miserable.

Shifting times

My PhD oral defense was conducted the old-fashioned way. I printed copies of my dissertation and attached the titles with scissors and glue. Nowadays my students are allowed to email their material. This picture shows me working against the deadline, as usual.
defense

Army reserve

I serve in the JGSDF (Japanese army) reserve as a reserve sergeant first class, language specialist. I am trained to facilitate communication between US and Japanese officers in command and control. I also teach English language to service personnel.

This picture was taken when I participated in a joint US-Japan exercise in 2011. I hope to assist in the relief effort for the Northeast Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster.
ys2011_trimmed

updated 2011-04-25 04:00 utc

What they pay me to do, and what I pay them to do.

Professional background

My experiences, memberships, and possessions relevant to my profession.

vocational background

I participated in exciting projects. I have friendly, outstanding colleagues in many places.

when	institution	department	title	job description
2008 - 2010 (2 6-month visits)	University of Antwerp	Institute of Education and Information Sciences (IOIW)	Visiting Researcher	Research funded by the Canon Foundation in Europe.
2003 - present	Hokkaido University	Research Faculty of Media and Communication (formerly Institute of Language and Culture Studies)	Associate Professor	Teach English language to freshmen. Advise master's and doctoral students.
2000 - 2003	Oregon Health & Science University (formerly Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology)	Center for Spoken Language Understanding	Senior Research Associate	Model intonation for synthesizing and teaching spoken language.
1999 - 2000	University of California Santa Cruz	Perceptual Science Laboratory	Postgraduate Researcher	Develop systems for hearing-impaired children to acquire spoken language.
1999	University of Tokyo	Keikichi Hirose Laboratory	Spoken Language Scientist	Teach undergraduate students. Develop systems for learning pronunciations of non-native languages.
1988 - 1996	SRI International	Speech Technology and Research Laboratory	Research Linguist	Develop systems for learning pronunciations of non-native languages. Administer computer network.
1986 - 1988	Palo Alto Research Center (formerly Xerox Palo Alto Research Center)	Information Systems Laboratory	Research Assistant	Evaluate software for document processing.

educational background

I started as a language teacher, and became an educational engineer.

when	institution	department	degree
1999	University of Tokyo	Department of Information and Communication Engineering	Ph.D. in Engineering
1986	Stanford University	Department of Linguistics	Coursework. Funded by Rotary International
1986	International Christian University	Educational Technology	M.A. in education
1984	University of Tokyo	Department of Linguistics	B.A. in linguistics. Teaching certificate for middle school and high school (English language).

professional affiliations

I urge academic societies to reduce environmental waste, bulk, and expense by publishing electronic journals instead of paper editions. E-journals allow text to be searched, and computer files (such as data and programs) to be attached.

memberships
ACL (Association of Computational Linguistics)
ASA (Acoustical Society of America)
ASJ (Acoustical Society of Japan)
BNK (Belgian Association of Japanese Language Teachers)
CALICO (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium)
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers)
INEELL (International Network for Educational Engineering in Language Learning)
IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan)
ISCA (International Speech Communication Association)
PSJ (Phonetic Society of Japan)
TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages)

intellectual property

My collaborator Akio Ohnishi owns the registered trademark glexa ®.
My former graduate student Takafumi Utashiro and I own the registered trademark Discourseware ®.