Educational background
The path to my current position as Professor of German Studies and Linguistics at Emory University has certainly not been a direct one. After double majoring in German and Economics at Washington and Lee University, I taught high school German in rural Virginia before receiving my M.A. in German from Middlebury College, which included two semesters of study at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany. Following the year in Germany were three more teaching positions (high school English in Atlanta, Georgia; high school German and EFL in Istanbul, Turkey; and college-level German and ESL at Rutgers University) before I continued my studies at the University of Texas at Austin where I received my Ph.D. in German with a specialization in foreign language pedagogy. During the penultimate year of my doctoral studies I conducted research on a DAAD grant at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Faculty positions
My first post-doctoral position was as Assistant Professor and Supervisor of Graduate Teaching Assistants in the German Section of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. From there I spent six years in the German Department of Georgetown University as Assistant and then Associate Professor before joining the Department of German Studies and the Program in Linguistics at Emory University in 2007.
Research
My research focuses on instructed adult second language acquisition (SLA) with specific interest in pedagogical approaches and curricular models that support students' longitudinal sociolinguistic development. At the outset of my career I focused on the feasibility and efficacy of extensive and extended reading in beginning classrooms as way to integrate increased textuality into lower-level instruction. Then, while at Georgetown University I expanded the scope of my research by examining multi-year, text-based curricular frameworks for facilitating language development. Serving as the research context for this work was the groundbreaking literacy-oriented and genre-based curriculum in the German Department at Georgetown. To investigate language development in this curricular setting, my colleagues and I found Systemic Functional Linguistics to be an especially helpful theoretical framework, and I have since conducted functionally oriented analyses of longitudinal writing data to ascertain the trajectory toward and the characteristics of advanced second language writing. Because the writing in such a context draws so heavily from textual sources, I also am interested in the phenomenon among second language learners of textual borrowing and its role in language development. The insights into the language learning process gained from this research have figured heavily in the reform efforts of the undergraduate curriculum in the German Studies Department at Emory. Most recently, and in conjunction with Emory’s summer study abroad program in Vienna, Austria, I have begun researching the language learning opportunities in the linguistic landscape. More information about my current research can be found on my “projects” page.
Teaching
My research and curricular work have had a significant impact on my teaching. I happily teach all levels in the curriculum and look to implement a text-based, theme-oriented pedagogical approach regardless of the curricular level. Whether I am teaching German 101 or a senior seminar, I see texts – defined broadly to include any purposeful language use – as the carriers of content and the vehicles of instruction; they provide models for language use as well as meaningful content for conducting cultural inquiry. Such an approach calls for conscious attention to the textual language and content, and benefits greatly from an integrated and coherent curriculum that has a clear sequence of courses that logically build upon each other, both in terms of content and language. Ultimately, it is hoped that exposing students to this method for approaching texts can be transferred to their own surroundings and culture for the purpose of better understanding which behaviors and ideas a particular culture values or marginalizes. A list of recent courses taught can be found on the “teaching” page.
The path to my current position as Professor of German Studies and Linguistics at Emory University has certainly not been a direct one. After double majoring in German and Economics at Washington and Lee University, I taught high school German in rural Virginia before receiving my M.A. in German from Middlebury College, which included two semesters of study at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany. Following the year in Germany were three more teaching positions (high school English in Atlanta, Georgia; high school German and EFL in Istanbul, Turkey; and college-level German and ESL at Rutgers University) before I continued my studies at the University of Texas at Austin where I received my Ph.D. in German with a specialization in foreign language pedagogy. During the penultimate year of my doctoral studies I conducted research on a DAAD grant at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Faculty positions
My first post-doctoral position was as Assistant Professor and Supervisor of Graduate Teaching Assistants in the German Section of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. From there I spent six years in the German Department of Georgetown University as Assistant and then Associate Professor before joining the Department of German Studies and the Program in Linguistics at Emory University in 2007.
Research
My research focuses on instructed adult second language acquisition (SLA) with specific interest in pedagogical approaches and curricular models that support students' longitudinal sociolinguistic development. At the outset of my career I focused on the feasibility and efficacy of extensive and extended reading in beginning classrooms as way to integrate increased textuality into lower-level instruction. Then, while at Georgetown University I expanded the scope of my research by examining multi-year, text-based curricular frameworks for facilitating language development. Serving as the research context for this work was the groundbreaking literacy-oriented and genre-based curriculum in the German Department at Georgetown. To investigate language development in this curricular setting, my colleagues and I found Systemic Functional Linguistics to be an especially helpful theoretical framework, and I have since conducted functionally oriented analyses of longitudinal writing data to ascertain the trajectory toward and the characteristics of advanced second language writing. Because the writing in such a context draws so heavily from textual sources, I also am interested in the phenomenon among second language learners of textual borrowing and its role in language development. The insights into the language learning process gained from this research have figured heavily in the reform efforts of the undergraduate curriculum in the German Studies Department at Emory. Most recently, and in conjunction with Emory’s summer study abroad program in Vienna, Austria, I have begun researching the language learning opportunities in the linguistic landscape. More information about my current research can be found on my “projects” page.
Teaching
My research and curricular work have had a significant impact on my teaching. I happily teach all levels in the curriculum and look to implement a text-based, theme-oriented pedagogical approach regardless of the curricular level. Whether I am teaching German 101 or a senior seminar, I see texts – defined broadly to include any purposeful language use – as the carriers of content and the vehicles of instruction; they provide models for language use as well as meaningful content for conducting cultural inquiry. Such an approach calls for conscious attention to the textual language and content, and benefits greatly from an integrated and coherent curriculum that has a clear sequence of courses that logically build upon each other, both in terms of content and language. Ultimately, it is hoped that exposing students to this method for approaching texts can be transferred to their own surroundings and culture for the purpose of better understanding which behaviors and ideas a particular culture values or marginalizes. A list of recent courses taught can be found on the “teaching” page.
