"I graduated from Brigham Young University in 2023 with a degree in Japanese, but my experience with Japanese started in 2017 when I went to Japan for 2 years; at the beginning, I only had a handful of Japanese words I had learned from pop culture and a rigorous but too-short 2 months training program under my belt, but emerged with a deep love of the language and culture—and much improved language skills. Upon returning to the US, I continued to take Japanese courses in college, which eventually resulted in me shifting course from my planned engineering degree and focusing completely on Japanese instead. During this time, I worked as a teaching assistant for BYU's Independent Study program, helping middle and high school students as they studied Japanese.

Since graduating, I have worked primarily with adult students interested in Japanese, generally either planning a trip to Japan or learning it out of interest. With my students, I focus on understanding grammar first and foremost–what makes a Japanese sentence work–starting with the most important building blocks of a sentence and building up from there. As time is limited (and expensive!), in my experience this has been the most effective approach with my students, over an approach focusing on vocabulary. I encourage my students to study in between lessons and have extensive resources and recommendations for the best methods to study vocabulary, reading, writing, and pronunciation." less...