The Berkeley Language Center - Taking stock: Remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future
Claire Kramsch (BLC Director Emerita)
David Szanton (IAS Executive Director Emeritus)
Alan Timberlake (Professor of Slavic, Emeritus)
Richard Kern (Former BLC Director)
Mark Kaiser (Former BLC Associate Director)
Kimberly Vinall (BLC Executive Director)
Emily Hellmich (BLC Associate Director)
Founded in 1994, the Berkeley Language Center is celebrating its 28th anniversary. Over the years, the BLC has provided a strong sense of community among the instructors of some 70 languages taught on the Berkeley campus. It has brought to bear on language teaching at Berkeley the professional and intellectual resources of the vibrant interdisciplinary fields of Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics. However, momentous technological, social and cultural changes have affected the way world languages are taught and learned in higher education. The spread of English as a global language around the world, the advances in digital technology and global access to the internet and social media have changed the goals and the nature of world languages education, as well as the nature of communicative competence as the ultimate goal of language learning. So many things have changed since the early nineties that it is worth taking stock of the original mission of the Center, its achievements to-date, and its vision for the future. We have invited several of the past and present shapers of the BLC to reflect on these changes and to discuss how the BLC could best respond to the challenges of teaching world languages at UC Berkeley today and in the coming years.
Thursday, November 3, 2022
B-4 Dwinelle & via Zoom, 12-2pm
This lecture is sponsored by the College of Letters and Science.