Author: Mark Kaiser

Results in BLC Posts

In Memoriam: Susan Ervin-Tripp

With great sadness, we report that Susan Ervin-Tripp, the celebrated Berkeley sociolinguist and psycholinguist, has died at age 91. Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology, Susan Ervin-Tripp was an innovative and interdisciplinary scholar, having also taught in Rhetoric and Women’s Studies during her Berkeley career. She was devoted to the study of language broadly,…

BLC Staff Receive Achievement Award

The BLC Team (Victoria Williams, John Wuorenmaa, Orlando Garcia, Keith Hernandez, Elle Suzuki) were recognized by the College of Letters and Science with a Staff Achievement Award for making the 2017 CALL Conference a resounding success. The BLC provided technical support in 6 conference rooms and hosted coffee breaks, two lunches, and 1 dinner for…

In Memoriam: Olga Kagan

We are sad to report that Olga Kagan, UCLA Professor of Russian and Director of the Center for World Languages and the Russian Flagship Program at UCLA, has died of leukemia at age 70. An applied linguist, Professor Kagan authored a dozen influential Russian textbooks, won awards for her contributions to Russian pedagogy, and was…

Congratulations to Claire and Lihua

On February 23 about 18 lecturers gathered to celebrate the publication of Claire Kramsch's and Lihua Zhang's new book from Oxford U Press, The Multilingual Instructor. After a delicious potluck meal, glasses were raised to salute their accomplishment, several years in the making and with the participation of many Berkeley lecturers as well as lecturers…

Congratulations to Ellen Langer

Ellen Langer, Lecturer in Czech in the Department of Slavic Languages and former BLC Fellow, has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Distinguished Teaching Award. The award ceremony will take place on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, in Durant Hall Atrium, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., remarks at 4:45. Please join us in congratulating Ellen!

DVDs Have Moved to the MRC

The BLC used to maintain a DVD collection that had grown to approximately 1800 items and which served as the initial source material for the LFLFC. On occasion, instructors would borrow these DVDs for classroom instruction or would take DVDs home to preview before use in class. When this practice began, circulation policies at the…

Medieval French in the Modern French Classroom

The French language sequence at Berkeley stresses the importance of exposing students to a wide range of authentic texts and emphasizes cross-cultural understanding. Despite the rich cultural and literary heritage of the medieval and early modern periods in France, this exposure is limited to modern French. What are some of the objections to and difficulties…

Developing Cultural Literacy Through Social Media in the Russian Language Classroom

In this paper I identify strategies to help students explore authentic Russian language materials on social media platforms: Facebook and Vkontakte.  I present an overview of three modules that introduce the Russian language social media landscape and guide students through identifying and tracing political and cultural debates occurring in this space. This approach encourages lifelong learning…

Harnessing the Power of Electronic Media: Incorporating Film in the Introductory Czech Classroom

This paper discusses activities designed for students in an Introductory Czech class.  The film-generated assignments presented here, based on selections from the Czech film Kolja made available to students as clips from the BLC Library of Foreign Language Film Clips via bCourses, address not only a range of specific language skills (listening, speaking, writing, and even…

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