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Graduate Program in East Asian Linguistics and Pedagogy

The East Asian Languages and Literatures Department offers a Master of Arts (MA) program in Chinese, Japanese and Korean Linguistics and Pedagogy. This program is one of a very few in the nation that offers a complete East Asian linguistics program, covering Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Students may elect to specialize in Chinese, Japanese or Korean linguistics, in Chinese, Japanese or Korean language pedagogy, or alternatively, they may undertake cross-linguistic studies. The forerunner of the current program was launched in 1995, when the late Professor Noriko Fujii developed a highly regarded MA and PhD program with a focus on Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy. The current program builds upon this strong tradition, while expanding to include all three major East Asian languages.

EALL faculty’s expertise covers major sub-fields of linguistics and applied linguistics. In our research and teaching, we emphasize functional and empirical approaches to the study of language structure, use, learning and teaching. UO is also home to a very strong Linguistics Department, and students may augment their programs by drawing upon its course offerings.

  • Kaori Idemaru: Japanese linguistics, acoustic phonetics, second language acquisition, language pedagogy
  • Zhuo Jing-Schmidt: Cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, emotion and pragmatics,historical linguistics and grammaticalization
  • Nayoung Kwon: (Korean) linguistics, psycho-/neuro-linguistics, language processing and acquisition.

Master of Arts Degree Requirements

The Master of Arts (MA) program in East Asian Languages and Literatures with specialization in East Asian Linguistics and Pedagogy requires 12 graduate-level courses in three categories: (A) Core East Asian Linguistics courses, (B) East Asian Linguistics Electives and (C) Open Electives, as described below. Students are also required to either pass an MA Comprehensive Exam or successfully complete an MA Project or MA Thesis. Summary of MA requirements.

  • Prerequisite: Students with no linguistics background are required to take one of the following courses: LING 301: Introduction to Linguistic Analysis, JPN 315: Introduction to Japanese Linguistics, or KRN 315: Introduction to Korean Linguistics.
  • Course work:

A. Required Core East Asian Linguistics Courses: Choose 4 from student’s focus area

Chinese Focus
CHN 580 Chinese Linguistics
CHN 581 Chinese Pedagogical Grammar
EALL 542 SLA/Bilingualism
EALL 543 CHN, JPN, and KRN Pedagogy
EALL 540 East Asian Phonetics
EALL 680 Research Methods and Bibliography

Japanese Focus
EALL 540 East Asian Phonetics
EALL 541 Japanese and Korean Syntax
EALL 542 SLA of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
EALL 543 CHN, JPN, and KRN Pedagogy
JPN 554 Japanese Pedagogical Grammar
EALL 680 Research Methods and Bibliography

Korean Focus
EALL 540 East Asian Phonetics
EALL 541 Japanese and Korean Syntax
EALL 542 SLA of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
EALL 543 CHN, JPN, and KRN Pedagogy
KRN 510 Korean Pedagogical Grammar
EALL 680 Research Methods and Bibliography

B. East Asian Linguistics Electives (at least 4 courses)

CHN 582 History of Chinese Language
EALL 586 East Asian Sociopragmatics
EALL 507 CHN, JPN, and KRN Sociophonetics
EALL 507 CHN, JPN, and KRN L2 Phonetics

C. Open electives (4 courses)
Four advisor-approved courses in EALL Linguistics, Literature, and Languages.
(See PDF for a list of sample courses)

  • Language Requirement:
    Non-native speakers are required to complete or test out of a course in fourth year language class in the language they specialize in. For Japanese this would be a Global Scholars class.
  • Other Requirement:
    • EALL 611 (2 credits) must be taken by all graduate students during first term
    • UO graduate school requires all MA students to take a total of 9 credit hours of 600-level courses.
  • MA Comprehensive Exam, MA Project or MA Thesis (4-9 credit hours):
    Students are required to either pass an MA Comprehensive Exam or successfully complete an MA Project or MA Thesis.


    Departmental Certificate of East Asian Language Learning and Teaching

Students who complete the following three graduate level courses may receive a letter from the Department certifying that they have received basic training in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean Language Learning and Teaching.
EALL 542 SLA of Chinese, Japanese and Korean,
EALL 543 Chinese, Japanese and Korean Pedagogy, and
One of:
CHN 581 Chinese Pedagogical Grammar
JPN 554 Japanese Pedagogical Grammar
KRN 510 Korean Pedagogical Grammar