Rate My Professor Makiko Asano

Makiko Asano is an Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State University, where she was appointed in 2001 and achieved emerita status in 2025. She held the position of Program Coordinator for the Japanese program and served as an undergraduate advisor. In these roles, Asano oversaw the Bachelor of Arts in Japanese major, the Minor in Japanese, and the Master of Arts in Japanese, which includes emphases in Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language and Professional Applications of the Language. The program develops proficiency in Japanese language within socio-cultural contexts through courses in language training, culture, and literature conducted in Japanese. Electives cover literature and culture, translation, interpretation, business Japanese, proverbs and idiomatic expressions, katakana words, and calligraphy. Key courses include JAPN 101 First Semester Japanese, JAPN 301 Japanese Conversation, JAPN 302 Japanese Reading and Grammar, JAPN 305 Advanced Conversation and Composition - Language and Culture, JAPN 309 Advanced Readings in Japanese I, JAPN 325 Practical Linguistics in Japanese, JAPN 390 Business Japanese, JAPN 401 Topics in Japanese Culture, and JAPN 510 Modern Japanese Literature.

Asano earned her M.Ed. from Columbia University in 1994, M.A. from Harvard University in 2001, and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2002 in Linguistics. Her dissertation, Studies in Japanese Prosody, highlights her research focus on Japanese linguistics. At SFSU, she chaired master's theses such as The Acquisition of Noun Modifying Clauses in Japanese (2021) and Semantic Adaptations of English-based Loanwords in the Japanese Language. Asano co-chaired the Fourth Biennial International Conference on Practical Linguistics of Japanese and co-edited Linguistics and Japanese Language Education III: New Directions in Applied Linguistics of Japanese with Masahiko Minami (Kurosio Publishers, Tokyo, 2004). Her work has supported advancements in Japanese language education and linguistics within the department.