Teaching Experiences - Cori Crane

 
Languages connect us to others, they broaden our horizons, and they teach us about ourselves. Since my first formal classroom teaching position in 1994 as an English and German high school teacher at the Szent István Közgazdasági Szakközépiskola (St. Stephen's Economics High School) in Budapest, Hungary, I have loved sharing my passion for languages with others. This early teaching experience not only introduced me to one of the coolest languages around (magyar!), but also set me on my career path within world language education. I was eager to learn more about how languages are acquired and how teachers can help in the process.
 
Graduate training in German and applied linguistics (University of Pennsylvania, MA; Georgetown University, PhD) soon followed. My graduate work in the German Department at Georgetown was especially important in helping me to understand the importance of taking an articulated, curricular view of language teaching, one that recognizes the process of learning a language as long-term and connected to the development of deep content knowledge. During my graduate studies, I also worked for three summers as a camp counselor (and research assistant) at Concordia Language Villages’ German language immersion camp “Waldsee,” where I saw first-hand how essential fun and play are for younger language learners and the “young at heart.” 
 
Over the past 20 years, I have taught beginning to advanced levels of German and graduate seminars in world language teaching and applied/educational linguistics at four different universities: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas at Austin, Duke University, and the University of Alabama. In fall 2021, I joined the Department of Modern Languages and Classics at the University of Alabama ("Roll Tide!"), where I teach and direct the German language program. In all of these contexts, I have learned (and continue to learn) a tremendous amount from my students and from the teachers with whom I work and those I mentor. As I grow as a teacher, I am increasingly aware of all the special ways in which my students grow in their knowledge and understanding of the world and themselves through engaging with language and cultures. It is deeply gratifying to be a part of their learning experiences. 
 
Undergraduate Courses
  • Beginning German (University of Alabama, Duke, UT-Austin, UIUC)
  • Intermediate German (University of Alabama, Duke, UT-Austin, UIUC), including content-based course "German Pop Music"
  • Low-Advanced German, e.g., Advanced German Grammar (content-based course on German youth culture, UT-Austin), Composition and Conversation (UIUC)
  • Advanced German, e.g., Sociolinguistic Landscapes: German Language, Society, and Identity (Duke), Language and Society in the German-Speaking Countries (UT-Austin), Linguistic Structures of German (UIUC), Introduction to German Literature (UIUC), and German Economics (UIUC)
 
Graduate Courses
  • Language Pedagogy Seminar (University of Alabama, Duke, UT-Austin, UIUC)
  • Second Language Writing: Theory, Research and Pedagogy (University of Alabama, UT-Austin, UIUC)
  • Language Program Administration (University of Alabama, UT-Austin)
  • German for Reading Knowledge (UT-Austin)
 
Independent Studies: Task-based Language Teaching (University of Alabama), Language, Culture, & Identity (Duke), Multimodality (UT-Austin), Systemic Functional Linguistics (UT-Austin, UIUC), Issues in Study Abroad Research (UIUC)
 

Last updated on March 9, 2025