Rate My Professor Haruko Stuart

Haruko Stuart is the Senior Teaching Fellow in the Japanese Programme within the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago. She holds a BA in English Literature from Seisen University, Tokyo, Japan, a Postgraduate Diploma in English Language Teaching from the University of Auckland, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Waikato. Specializing in language teaching for more than three decades, she taught English at Waseda University in Tokyo prior to joining the Japanese Programme at the University of Otago as permanent teaching staff in 2010. Over the past two decades, she has dedicated herself to helping students understand Japanese language, culture, and customs, creating a relaxed, lively, and fun yet challenging learning atmosphere that enables mastery of Japanese for academic and social careers in Japan.

Haruko Stuart teaches JAPA 131 Introductory Japanese 1, JAPA 132 Introductory Japanese 2, JAPA 231 Intermediate Japanese, and JAPA 233 Business and Professional Japanese. Her research interests include second language teaching and learning, second language curriculum evaluation, teaching Japanese as a foreign language, and corpus-based language studies. A member of the Ako Aotearoa Academy of Tertiary Teaching Excellence, she has received the 2017 National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award for Sustained Excellence, the 2017 University of Otago Teaching Excellence Award, the 2018 Certificate of Ambassador's Commendation from the Embassy of Japan in New Zealand, the 2016 OUSA Summer School Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2015 OUSA Summer School Funniest Teacher Award, and multiple OUSA Teaching Awards including top 10 teacher recognitions from 2010 to 2018 and the 2013 overall Lecturer of the Year. Numerous students have successfully worked, studied, and lived in Japan following her courses, underscoring her substantial influence in Japanese language education at the tertiary level.