Ginger Marcus has created a language program that produces life-long learners of Japanese who can interact comfortably in Japanese society after four years of undergraduate study.
Ginger Marcus earned her MA in Japanese Literature at the University of Michigan and completed all of her PhD coursework there. She has been teaching Japanese for thirty years at such institutions as University of Michigan, Middlebury College, and Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University she has created a language program that produces life-long learners of Japanese who can interact comfortably in Japanese society after four years of undergraduate study. She has been the Coordinator of the University of Michigan’s Summer Language Institute in Chinese and Japanese and the Co-Director of Language: Japan, an intensive summer program in Gifu Prefecture. Since 1994 she has been involved in training future teachers of Japanese in the SPEAC Program at The Ohio State University, in Exchange: Japan’s Teacher Training Institute at Bryn Mawr College, and in the Alliance for Language Learning and Educational Exchange (ALLEX). In 2010, she was appointed Academic Director of the ALLEX Chinese and Japanese Teacher Training Institute. She was the Chair of the Governing Board of the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies for seven years and has been an elected member of the Executive Board of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. She has chaired the committee that develops the SAT II Subject Test in Japanese for the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and The College Board. At Washington University, she has served as the President of the Association of Women Faculty, chaired the Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Committee, and has been the Japan Study Abroad Faculty Liaison and Advisor for the Department. In addition, she began the university’s Foreign Language Learning Colloquium Series, served as its chair for two years, and also chaired the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Central Association of Teachers of Japanese. She has co-authored Japanese: The Written Language, Vol. 2 (Textbook and Workbook) with Eleanor Harz Jorden, Mari Noda, and Masayuki Itomitsu, and is currently co-authoring NihonGO NOW!, a set of materials for learning Japanese at the college- and professional level that takes a performed-culture approach to language learning.
