Publications & Grants

Selected scholarship, funded projects, presentations, professional credentials, and related work.

Last updated August 6, 2026

Papers/Articles

• Nagano, T. (2023). World Language Enrollment at Community Colleges in the U.S. between 1960 and 2010. In E. H. Uebel, F. Kronenberg, & S. Sterling (Eds.), Language Program Vitality in the United States: From Surviving to Thriving in Higher Education. (pp. 44-55). New York, NY: Springer. [link | Data/Scripts on GitHub ]
• Ketcham, E., Nagano, T., & Funk, A. (2020). Students of Languages at Community Colleges: Who Studies Which Languages and Why?. ADFL Bulletin, 46(1), 56-70 [link | Data/Scripts on GitHub ]
• Nagano, T., Ketcham, E., & Funk, A. (2019). Why do Heritage Language Speakers Opt out of Their Own Heritage Language?: A Survey-based Study of Heritage Language Learners at Community Colleges. Heritage Language Journal, 16(3):318-339. [link | data set | survey instrument (instructor) | survey instrument (student) | Data/Scripts on GitHub ]
• Nagano, T. (2017). Modern Language Instruction at Community College: A Survey-based Study of Modern Language Instructors Foreign Language Annals, 50(3):621-631. (with Alex Funk and Eric Ketcham) [link | Data/Scripts on GitHub ]
• Nagano, T. (2016). Luce Pathways Project: A Pilot Project for Heritage Language Speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 40(10):854-870. (with Hector Fernandez; published by Taylor & Francis) [link ]
• Nagano, T. (2015). Demographics of Adult Heritage Language Speakers in the United States: Differences by Region and Language and their Implications. The Modern Language Journal, 99(4):771-792. [link | Data/Scripts on GitHub ]
• Nagano, T. (2015). Acquisition of English Verb Transitivity by Native Speakers of Japanese. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5(3):322-356. [link ]
• Nagano, T. (2015). The Luce Pathways Scholar Program for Heritage Speakers of Japanese at LaGuardia Community College. AATJ Newsletter, 4(1), 5-6.
• Nagano, T. (2013). "Can-do" style self-assessment for a beginning-level college Japanese coursen-do" style self-assessment for a beginning-level college Japanese course. In K. Kondo-Brown, J. D. Brown, & W. Tominaga (Eds.), Practical assessment tools for college Japanese. (pp. 140-145). Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Languages Resource Center.
• Nagano, T. and Kitao, K. (2008). The necessity of negative feedback for learning L2 collocations. Journal of Culture and Information Science, 3(1):1–13.[download ]
• Nagano, T. and Kitao, K. (2007). Using simple computational linguistic techniques for teaching collocations. Journal of Culture and Information Science, 2(1):1–16.[download ]
• Nagano, T. (2003). Book review: Arthur hughes, testing for language teachers. Idiom, 33(1):22–23. [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2002). Website review: ETS criterion online writing assessment and scoreitnow. APACALL (Asia-Pacific Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning) Newsletter, 2:7–9. [download ]

Grants

• 2024: PSC-CUNY Grant Traditional B (Knowledge of Japanese compound words by second/heritage learners of Japanese; $5,982.00)
• 2023-2025: US Dept of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) Program (The Community College Internationalization Initiative: Outreach, Pedagogy and Professional Development in International Studies; with Maria Savva (PI), Arthur Lau, Olga Aksakalova, and Anita Baksh; $176,135)
• 2023-2025: NEH Humanities Initiatives at Community Colleges (Oral History in Interdisciplinary Community College Pedagogy: Centering the Community in the Classroom with Thomas Cleary (PI) and Molly Rosner; $148,391) [link ]
• 2022: PSC-CUNY Grant Traditional B (A Survey of Modern Language Enrollments at Community Colleges between 1960 and 2020; $5,999)
• 2021: PSC-CUNY Grant Enhanced (The COVID­19 Oral History Project; with Thomas Cleary; $11,998.10) [link ]
• 2020: US Dept of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) Program (Internationalization at Home: Redesigning Foreign Language Instruction and Forging Overseas Institutional Partnerships at LaGuardia Community College; with Arthur Lau (PI), Olga Aksakalova, and Maria Savva; $170,906)
• 2020: Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Education Project Grant: CUNY-wide Collaboration and Innovation for the New Digital Era of Japanese Language Education (CCI-2020) ($10,000; with Asako Tochika (PI), Kazuko Saito, Maayan Barkan, and CJ Suzuki) [link ]
• 2020: Japan Foundation IPS Small Grant: "Be Better, Together" Japanese Studies Curriculum Development and Building Bridges across CUNY ($20,017.07; with Robin Kietlinski (co-PI)) [link ]
• 2020: William P. Kelly Research Fellowship (research time buyout in 2020-2021)
• 2019: Japan Foundation Japanese Language Teaching Material Purchase Grant ($1,000) [List of acquired resources ]
• 2019: PSC-CUNY Grant Traditional A (Phonological Advantages of Herigage Learners of Japanese; $3,493.00)
• 2019: Distinguished CUNY Fellow of the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) (research leave in Spring 2020)
• 2019: CUNY Academy's Stefan Bernard Baumrin Travel Awards 2018-2019 ($200)
• 2018: PSC-CUNY Grant Traditional B (Why heritage language students opt out from their own heritage language classes?: Follow-up focus group study; $5,967.50)
• 2018: CUNY Academy's Travel Awards for Associate Professor 2017-2018 ($300)
• 2016: Innovations in Language Education (ILE) Grants by Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context (CUNY Graduate Center): (with Mieko Sperbeck, Ai Mizoguchi, and Yong Jun Choi; $5,000)
• 2016: US Dept of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) Program (Learning for a Connected World: Strengthening International Studies at LaGuardia Community College; PI (replacing Howard Wach who was the original PI); $177,524)
• 2016: CUNY Community College Research Grant (CCRG) Track 2: Mentored Undergraduate Research (Phonological Advantages of Heritage Language Learners of Japanese and their Pedagogical Implications; $7,500)
• 2016: Japan Foundation Arts and Culture (Rokyoku performance by Ms. Keiko Haruno; $1,000)
• 2015: Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Education Project Grant (Matsusho-Laguardia Video Project; $1,372.50) [Final Report ]
• 2014: PSC-CUNY Grant Traditional A (Acquisition of English Transitivity by Japanese Speakers; $3,466.50)
• 2014: William Stewart Travel Awards, CUNY Academy of the Humanities and Sciences ($500)
• 2014: Japan Foundation Arts and Culture (Ikebana Workshop by Hiroki Ohara, Headmaster of the Ikebana Ohara School; $3,166)
• 2013: CUNY Community College Collaborative Incentive Research Grants (C3RG) (Knowledge of Collocations among ESL and its relation to progress in remedial English writing; with Martin Chodorow; $15,000)
• 2013: Kakehashi Japan Study Abroad Project (10-day fully funded trip to Japan for 50 CUNY students) [Link ]
• 2013: Japan Foundation Japanese Language Teaching Material Purchase Grant ($1,000) [List of acquired resources ]
• 2013: Japan Foundation Grant for Japanese Studies (Emerging Pedagogies, Policies, and Linguistic Inquiries; $1,800)
• 2011: Japan Foundation Salary Assistance Program for Japanese-Language Courses ($38,441)
• 2010: Japan Foundation Japanese Language Teaching Material Purchase Grant ($1,000) [List of acquired resources ]

Poster/Virtual Presentations

• Nagano, T. (2026). AI-powered analysis of language diversity using U.S. Census/ACS data. Poster presentation at the International Association of Linguistics 2026. John Jay college, NY. [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2021). Demographics of Heritage Language Speakers in the U.S. and Implications for Community Colleges. Poster presentation at the 5th CUNY Language, Society, and Culture Conference. (online) [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2020). Why do Heritage Language Speakers Study L3 at Community Colleges?: A Multi-method Study. Poster presentation at Twelfth Heritage Language Research Institute. Penn State University, PA. (online) [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2018). Phonological Advantages of Heritage Learners of Japanese. Poster presentation at the 24th Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2017). Language Typology at LaGuardia Community College. Presentation at the Languages Across Curriculum Symposium. LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City. [download handout ]
• Nagano, T. (2016). Demographics of Adult Heritage Language Speakers in the United States: Different Social Environments by Region and Language. Poster presentation at the WILA7. [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2013). Frequency effects on the prenominal adjectival participle in L2 English. Poster presentation at the the NYS TESOL Winter Applied Linguistics Conference, Teachers College. [download ]
• Nagano, T. (2011). Is fully-automated corpus-based language acquisition research feasible? Poster presentation at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP). [download ]

Just for fun

• Nagano, T. (2023). The current state of linguistic diversity at LaGuardia Community College. [report | data ]
• Nagano, T. (2021). How bilingual is Queens?. Ad Astra, 2. [link | download ]
• Nagano, T. (2020). How many languages are spoken at LaGuardia? There is no simple answer.. Ad Astra, 3. [link | download ]

Licenses

• I was a certified ACTFL OPI tester in Japanese (2013-2023).
• I am a certified ACTFL AAPPL tester in Japanese (2018-).

Misc

• I served on the MLA's Committee on Community Colleges between 2022 and 2025.
• I am serving on the ACTFL's Community College SIG from 2023-2026 (as Chair in 2025-2026).
• I am/was a reviewer for the following journals:
  • Foreign Language Annals (Wiley-Blackwell)
  • Languages (MDPI)
  • NYS TESOL Journal
• I served on the MLA's ADFL Executive Committee between 2019 and 2023.
• See my ResearchGate entry at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomonori_Nagano