Claire Kramsch's area of research is applied linguistics and second language acquisition, as well as language pedagogy. She is the director of the Berkeley Language Center. In 2000 she received both UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the Modern Language Association. In 1998 the Federal Republic of Germany bestowed on her the Goethe Medal in recognition of her work in fostering intercultural dialogue. Her writings deal with various aspects of the acquisition of language in discourse, language and culture, pragmatics, aesthetics, and hermeneutic approaches to language learning. In 1994 her book, Context and Culture in Language Teaching(1993), won the MLA’s Kenneth Mildenberger Prize for Outstanding Research Publication in the Field of Foreign Languages and Literatures. The book is a pioneering attempt to reconceptualize the teaching of foreign languages as the crossing of cultural boundaries. She edited Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives(2002) and Redefining the Boundaries of Language Study(1996), and co-edited Text and Context: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Language Study(1992), a first exploration into the various disciplinary strands that make up the study of a foreign language. Her other books include Language and Culture(1998); Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective(co-editor, 1991); Reden, Mitreden, Dazwischenreden: Managing Conversations in German(1990); Interaction et discours dans la classe de langue(1984); and Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching(1981).
Presenter(s)
Claire Kramsch
