Hi! I'm Sandra
J. Savignon Professor of Applied Linguistics at Penn
State University. I teach courses in second language
acquisition, language and gender
and World Englishes.
My classes draw students with an interest in language learning and teaching
from the College of Education and from the departments of Linguistics
and Applied Language Studies (LALS), French, German, and Spanish in the
College of Liberal Arts. Prior to coming to Penn State in 1997 I was professor
of French and of English as an International Language at the University
of Illinois where I founded and directed a multidisciplinary doctoral
program in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE).
My books include Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice, winner of the Modern Language Association of America Mildenberger Medal for an outstanding research publication in the field of second/foreign language teaching. This book is now in its second edition (McGraw Hill 1997). More recently, Yale University Press (2002) published Interpreting Communicative Language Teaching: Contexts and Concerns in Teacher Education. This edited volume looks at CLT and teacher education from an international perspective. The contributors include distinguished researchers from the US, Asia, and Europe. My research has focused mostly on issues related to second language acquisition, language testing, and communicative language teaching curriculum design. I am a past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and served as convenor of the Scientific Commission for Language Teaching Methodology and Teacher Education for the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) from 1996-2005.
My books include Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice, winner of the Modern Language Association of America Mildenberger Medal for an outstanding research publication in the field of second/foreign language teaching. This book is now in its second edition (McGraw Hill 1997). More recently, Yale University Press (2002) published Interpreting Communicative Language Teaching: Contexts and Concerns in Teacher Education. This edited volume looks at CLT and teacher education from an international perspective. The contributors include distinguished researchers from the US, Asia, and Europe. My research has focused mostly on issues related to second language acquisition, language testing, and communicative language teaching curriculum design. I am a past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and served as convenor of the Scientific Commission for Language Teaching Methodology and Teacher Education for the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) from 1996-2005.
I have taught in
ASIA
EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
giving seminars and consulting on communicative language teaching (CLT). I am proud to count among my former students classroom teachers, program administrators, materials developers and university faculty working to promote understanding of CLT in language programs around the world. Drawing on my experience of language use and bilingualism, I am currently exploring issues of language and gender for a book with the working title, The Making of a Crone: On Language, Culture, and Wising-Up.
