Erika JohnsonLecturer, Spanish

Erika Johnson

 

Born and raised by my Peruvian father and Japanese mother in Lima, Perú, I grew up speaking Spanish as well as Japanese, and I have always been fascinated with the study of language. I moved to Japan as a young adult and spent the majority of my adult life living and working in Japan. I relocated to Honolulu in 2016, and eventually graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi with degrees in Japanese (with honors) and Spanish. I continued graduate study at the University of Hawaiʻi and earned a master’s degree in Spanish. I am passionate about sharing my native language and culture with others, and I am excited to continue as lecturer in the Spanish Division of the Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas. My topics of interest are pragmatics, language use, and second language teaching and learning. I am also very interested in how people of different languages and culture approach learning a third or fourth language and how their multilingualism affects the way they learn. I believe that language learning should be student-centered and focused on building communicative competence while providing enough grammar to help students to have a firm grasp of the language. In addition to my teaching goals, I am also interested in conducting research on the role that language plays in Nikkei Peruvian migrant communities’ adaptation to other cultures throughout the world.