Hitomi Masuhara
Hitomi Masuhara is a Japanese applied linguist based in the UK at the University of Liverpool, where she directs the MA in Applied Linguistics and the MA in TESOL. A founding member and Secretary of MATSDA, she is the long-running collaborator with Brian Tomlinson at the centre of the materials-development research programme. She has worked in Japan, Oman, Singapore, and the UK, and has contributed to coursebooks written for Bulgaria, China, Ethiopia, Japan, and Singapore.
Masuhara's own line is SLA-informed evaluation of coursebooks, with particular attention to affect and engagement: which materials actually move learners, and which only look as if they should. The argument is empirical rather than ideological, and it sits at the heart of the Complete Guide she co-authored with Tomlinson, the most comprehensive single-volume reference on materials development now in print.
Career
- Director of the MA in Applied Linguistics and the MA in TESOL, University of Liverpool
- Founding member and Secretary, MATSDA
- Recipient of a Chancellor's Award from Leeds Metropolitan University, 2003
- Coursebook writer for ministries and publishers across Asia, Africa, and Europe
Published Work
- Developing Language Course Materials (with B. Tomlinson, RELC, 2004)
- Research for Materials Development in Language Learning (ed. with B. Tomlinson, Continuum, 2010)
- Materials and Methods in ELT (with J. McDonough and C. Shaw, Wiley, 2013)
- The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning (with B. Tomlinson, Wiley, 2018)
Influence
- Co-architect of the modern MATSDA agenda alongside Tomlinson
- Pushed affective engagement onto the central checklist for coursebook evaluation
- Bridges academic research and commercial coursebook writing in a way few materials specialists manage