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My field of study is second language acquisition (SLA), with a particular interest in the role of attention, awareness and cognition in language acquisition. The most interesting area of my research is the cognitive foundations of task-based language learning, which examines how real-life language use in everyday life contributes to the mastery of language proficiency. A "task" is an action you take in your daily life, such as making a restaurant reservation or reporting your physical or mental condition to a doctor.

When implementing this in class, it is important to consider the order in which you give tasks to students. Research has shown that it is effective to gradually change the tasks from cognitively light to complex. This is called the "cognitive hypothesis." For example, if the task is something the student is very familiar with, such as a person's hobbies, the task will be light for the student, but it will be more complex when they are talking about something they are not familiar with.

In addition, the difficulty can be controlled by combining elements of different "cognitive dimensions." For example, communication over the phone is more difficult than talking face-to-face. If the topic of conversation is about the past rather than the present, the complexity will increase even more. This is because multiple cognitive elements occur simultaneously, as you cannot see the state of the person you are talking to and you also need to recall the past. We believe that by gradually changing the difficulty of the task from simple to complex in this way, effective learning will be possible.

Interestingly, as the tasks become more complex, the words used become more complex and require more accuracy. This is because we need to communicate accurately to accomplish complex tasks. This means we have to work harder, and our fluency in language is lost. I am researching how to evaluate the accuracy and fluency of speech. Impressions and intuition are important, but they are not enough. I am pursuing a method to objectively evaluate the accuracy and fluency of language.

I have devised an instructional design theory that can increase cognitive load and improve learning efficiency by assigning tasks in an appropriate order, and I named it the "SSARC (Stabilize, Simplify, Automatize, Restructure, Complexify) model." SSARC has three stages. The first stage is simplification and stabilization, which aims to enable students to stably use the limited knowledge they have acquired up to that point. The second stage focuses on using the second language knowledge they currently have to speak as fluently as possible, automatically and without consciousness (Automatize). The final stage focuses on reconstructing the knowledge they have and using the language at a more complex level (Restructure and Complexify). SSARC enables individualized and efficient learning according to each person's working memory capacity and attention allocation ability, so it is actually a model that can be applied not only to second language learning but to education in any field.

The idea of SSARC has become an important research field, spreading and developing among researchers in various countries. Academic ideas disappear quickly if they are wrong, but if they are right, they are passed on to other researchers. The SSARC model is still in the stage of stimulating the interest of other researchers, and it is impossible to predict how it will develop in the future, but personally I would like to add new aspects to the SSARC model. The good thing about the SSARC model is that it still leaves room for creative thinking.

When a researcher has a creative idea, it should not remain within the individual. By sharing ideas, ideas can grow into something bigger by connecting with others. In fact, the SSARC model has become the subject of many research projects and the topic of papers. The papers I have written have also attracted the attention of researchers around the world, and the number of citations is ranked in the top 1% worldwide in the fields of second language acquisition and applied linguistics. It is very gratifying to have my ideas picked up by people all over the world, and it is also a great pleasure to see researchers inspired by my research use the SSARC model to greatly advance research outside of linguistics. I believe that being creative is very important in life, so I am happy to be in a research environment where I can do so.

I am very interested in differences in human thought. Why do humans think differently? Do differences in thought relate to differences in how we use language? And how do cognitive differences affect language learning ability?

What is the difference between people who can master a language and those who don't improve even after a long time? It's not just a matter of motivation. So, what is the most important ability in language learning? Is it memory, attention, or reasoning ability? Research begins by testing and measuring each ability.

When people are told that they want to measure someone's intelligence, many people don't feel very comfortable with it. This is because they have the impression that they will be given a grade and compared to others. However, the intelligence test I envision is not a test for comparing people with others, but a test for examining aptitude. By recognizing the differences in each person's intelligence and understanding their aptitude, we can provide each person with the optimal learning environment. Each person has areas in which they have strengths, such as musical intelligence, intelligence suited to analysis, and intelligence suited to language, and if we have a clear understanding of these, we can provide the learning method that is optimal for the learner's intelligence.

In the future, I would like to develop a system that can match each learner with the learning program that is best suited to them. It would be very useful if it could be easily measured with a smartphone or PC. 20 years ago, there were scholars in the field of psychology who proposed the theory that "each person has an optimal learning method for their own intelligence," and my ideas are very close to theirs. With the advancement of technology, it will be easy to find the best learning program for you in the future. I don't know what the future holds, but I would be very happy if our research can help optimize individual learning. At first glance, linguistics is a research that does not seem to be related to solving social problems, but in fact it helps to make the world a better place. I consider myself a "researcher who solves problems." (Published in August 2021)