Travel Reports Archive

In August 2012, I attended The Japan Association for Language Education & Technology (J-LET) annual conference in Kobe. I am grateful to the BLC for the generous financial travel support. At the conference I co-presented with Mark Kaiser a paper on “Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence Through Film Clips.” He introduced the BLC’s ongoing film clips…

Thanks to the generosity of the BLC and the Center for African Studies, I attended this year’s African Language Teachers Association (ALTA)/National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The stated goal of the joint conference was “Promoting Advanced Language and Intercultural Proficiency in African Languages and other LCTLs.” The main…

This year, I attended the 2012 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in Seattle, WA. My presence at the convention was motivated by my interest in both literary studies and pedagogy. As a panelist on a special session on nineteenth-century flânerie in Paris, I presented a paper titled “Elevated Flâneries: Bourgeois Women, Spectatorship, and the Façades…

I attended the 86th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in Portland, Oregon, in January 2012. I presented my research about multilingualism. While teaching Korean at Berkeley, I found an interesting pattern among native English-speaking students who were learning Korean after learning Japanese. They demonstrated a distinctive pattern; when speaking Korean in…

I have been participating in the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s annual conference for several years now. As a Senior Lecturer with limited university funding options for attending conferences, I choose them very carefully. I attend the ones where I would learn and benefit the most from presenting papers, attending sessions, and engaging in productive…

I attended three ten-day Chinese teaching workshops held by National Cheng Kung University in Tainan city, Taiwan, on June 27, June 28, July 10, and July 24. The workshops were offered for teachers currently teaching Chinese in America. I gave a four-hour presentation at each of my three workshops on Teaching Advanced Chinese. In the…

Perhaps I might be considered something just short of insane to undertake a one-week journey halfway around the world to attend a three-day conference. But in the third week of February this is exactly what I did. I have to admit I had a few doubts about the undertaking; the trip itself takes at least…

I attended the 2011 Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages in Pasadena, January 6-9 on funds provided by the Berkeley Language Center. I presented a poster at AATSEEL’s first-ever poster session, Teaching Less Commonly Taught Slavic Languages and Central/East European Languages II. The poster session was experimental…

On Thanksgiving weekend, I gave a presentation on diaspora research and Hungarian language maintenance efforts at the annual Hungarian Congress in Cleveland, Ohio. On Thanksgiving weekend?–you may ask with surprise. The event was launched in 1961 by Hungarian immigrant and refugee intellectuals for whom Thanksgiving had not yet become an established family holiday, and at…

I have been participating in the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s annual conference for several years now. As a Senior Lecturer, I do not have the same privileges as Senate Faculty in terms of available departmental funding for travel. I must look for funding elsewhere and/or pay for it myself. Consequently, I choose my conferences…