Haruko was born and raised in Queens, New York, USA. She began her career in English language teaching straight after university, working as an Assistant Language Teacher in Toyama, Japan for two years. After a brief period in housing support in the southeast of England, she returned to teaching and hasn’t looked back. She spent three years delivering a range of English language curricula to learners of all ages (primary school-aged to retirees) in language schools across Sussex, England. Following that, in Suzhou, China, she worked as an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) lecturer at an international high school, preparing students for their upcoming university studies in the UK. More recently, she has taught a range of General English and Business English curricula to corporate clients here in Budapest.

Haruko holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from the University of Leicester, for which she investigated the importance of vowel pronunciation in English as a Lingua Franca. She is truly fascinated by the workings of Second Language Acquisition and is excited to expand her understanding of SLA here at Britannica.

In her spare time, Haruko enjoys studying languages. She has studied Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin, and she is currently embarking on the very fulfilling endeavour of studying Hungarian while living here in Budapest. After languages, her next passion is food, and she enjoys trying (nearly) everything that any country or region’s cuisine has to offer.