Asst. Prof. ESRA KIRA

Esra Kıra graduated from the Department of Japanese Language Education at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in 2011. In 2012, she moved to Japan as a recipient of the Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship and began her studies as a research student at Okayama University. She subsequently completed her master’s degree (2016) and PhD (2019) in linguistics at the same university. Since 2021, she has been working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Japanese Language Education at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University.

Her research focuses on Japanese language education, applied and contrastive linguistics, and second language acquisition. Her research interests include contrastive studies of Japanese and Turkish, tense and aspect, contemporary Japanese language use, linguistic and intercultural awareness among learners of Japanese, and Japanese as a foreign language in early childhood. More recently, she has been particularly engaged in research on preschool Japanese language education, the teaching experiences of pre-service teachers, and the development of Japanese teaching materials for young learners.