Author: Mark Kaiser

Results in BLC Posts

BLC to seek new Executive Director

After 25 years at the BLC, I will be retiring on June 29th. The search for my successor will be underway shortly (the job should be posted on the Berkeley site within the next week or two) , but in the meantime interested individuals can review a document that Rick and I created for what…

« Si la personne peut me comprendre, pourquoi c’est un débat ? » : Teaching sociolinguistic variation through French phonetics

According to Milroy (2006: 134), language standardization typically fosters a "consciousness among speakers of a ‘correct’, or canonical, form of language" (134). This goes hand in hand with ideologically-motivated judgments of divergent speech and its implications for cultural belonging or morality (Woolard & Shieffelin 1994: 60, Trotter 2006: 2-5). In contemporaryFrancophonie, ideologies that privilege standardized…

Claire Kramsch in the News

The Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research just published an interview with Claire that highlights her professional trajectory, but also touches on her ideas about language and the profession. Highly recommended! The pdf may be found here.

Thank you, Berkeley!

I came to Berkeley from China as a Ph.D. student specializing in Educational Technology. I am interested in instructional design, especially design-learning activities supported by technologies based on design thinking. I feel so lucky to have been a visiting student researcher at the BLC. I learned a lot about language teaching in different meetings and…

UCB Kabarett

Zoomeist heiter bis wolkig UC Berkeley's students of German once again present a mixture of poetry, skits, and music in their annual cabaret program - a humorous, poetic, and playful celebration of the German language featuring the suspenseful story of an exquisite overcoat, a poem lamenting the abuse of flowers and blossoms, a Berkeley take…

Lumière now active!

Lumière, the successor to the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips (LFLFC), is now available for instructor use! Sporting an improved interface with more browsing and searching options, the ability to create your own 'private' clips, a glossary of film terms with short video examples, and the ability of students to comment on clips/films, Lumière…

Online Exhibition on Languages

UC Berkeley Library is currently running "The Languages of Berkeley: An Online Exhibition", featuring the languages taught at Berkeley. Each week a new essay on a foreign language text found in the library is added to the exhibit, which features an introductory essay "Universitas Linguarum" by Rick Kern, who succinctly identifies why the study of…

BLC Visiting Scholar on Moffitt Library

Ana Elisa Ferreira, a BLC Visiting Scholar during the 2018-19 academic year, has just published an article she wrote about the UC Berkeley Moffitt Library, framing the Moffitt renovation within a discussion of Regis Debray's mediology, Michel Pêcheux's notion of subjectification, and Shoshana Zuboff's theorization of surveillance capitalism. The article is written in Portuguese and…

The Untold Story of the BLC

As the BLC completes its 25th academic year I can’t help looking back at what we have accomplished since I founded the Center in 1994. Our mission has always been to enhance the effectiveness of our teaching and the quality of our learning environments; to support research by language instructors and our ability to produce…

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