Claire Kramsch

After studying German Language and Literature in the 1950’s at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Professor Kramsch emigrated to the United States, where she taught German language and literature at M.I.T. and Applied Linguistics at Cornell University. At UC Berkeley since 1990, she is now retired from the German Department and holds an appointment as Professor of the Graduate School. Her area of research is applied linguistics, with emphasis on social, cultural and stylistic approaches to language study. She was, until 2006, founding Director of the Berkeley Language Center, a research and development unit for all foreign language teachers on campus. Her major publications include: Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching (CAL 1981); Interaction et discours dans la classe de langue (Didier 1984); Reden, Mitreden, Dazwischenreden: Managing Conversations in German (Heinle 1985); Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Benjamins 1991); Text and Context: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Language Study (D.C.Heath 1992); Context and Culture in Language Teaching (OUP 1993); Language and Culture (OUP 1998); Language acquisition and language socialization – Ecological perspectives (Continuum 2002); The Multilingual Subject (OUP 2002); the Multilingual Challenge (de Gruyter 2015). Her many articles have appeared in Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, The Modern Language Journal, Die Unterrichtspraxis, The Canadian Modern Language Review, Profession, The ADFL Bulletin, PMLA, The Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language Culture and Curriculum. Majors awards: 1988 ACTFL Nelson Brooks Award for the teaching of culture; 1994 and 2009 MLA Kenneth Mildenberger Prizes for Outstanding Research in the study of foreign languages and literatures; 1998 Goethe Medal. MLA Distinguished Service Award 2000; UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award 2000; as well as the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from the American Association for Applied Linguistics. She holds honorary doctorates from the Middlebury School of Languages 1998, St. Michael’s College 2001, and the University of Waterloo 2010, as well as the Berkeley Citation or honorary doctorate from UC Berkeley 2015. She was the 1994/95 President of the American Association of Applied Linguistics and was co-editor of the journal Applied Linguistics from 1998-2003. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the UC electronic L2 Journal. She is currently the President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics.