TED Community » Mark Christianson

About Me

As a son of Christian missionaries, I grew up in the Saku area in Nagano, Japan, attending pre-school, elementary school and junior high school in local Japanese schools before moving to Tokyo to attend international high school at the Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ). For university, I was in Seattle at the University of Washington where I studied Asian Studies and also majored in Chinese Language and Literature.

After graduation, I worked for two years in the international business department of a Japanese auto systems manufacturer near Hamamatsu, Shizuoka doing interpreting and translation for industrial, commercial and legal transactions, but then decided to change careers to English language education.

My first teaching job was at a university in Jinan, Shandong Province, followed by a masters degree in TESL at the University of Washington, followed by a position with UCLA Extension developing a Business English Communication program in Tokyo. I moved to ICU for a position in its English Language Program in 2006 and am enjoying providing rigorous liberal arts English training to some of the brightest and most motivated students in Japan.

Many TED talks have been inspiring to me, and I often show TED to my students as well. I often notice a need for Japanese subtitles on good talks that have not been translated yet, and am hoping to help out with increasing the number available in Japanese.