Presenters

  • Ruth Adler Ben-Yehuda (Brown University)

Ruth Adler Ben-Yehuda is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the program in Judaic Studies at Brown University. She is a long term Hebrew teacher and expert of the history of the Hebrew Language and Language acquisition. She regularly presents lectures and training workshops for instructors of Hebrew as a second language in the U.S. and in Israel. Before coming to Brown University in 1989 to instruct beginning, intermediate, and advanced Hebrew language courses, she served as Hebrew Instructor, and Head Teacher at the Rothberg School for Overseas Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Between 2002 and 2009 Ruth was a member of the Hebrew Board of the National Middle East Language Resource Center, which was initiated by the U.S. Department of Education. Since 2016, Prof. Adler Ben-Yehuda serves as Chair of the Pedagogy Committee of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. She is the author of “Daily Life in Israel- Listening and Viewing Comprehension” published by Magnes / Hebrew University in 2011. 2nd edition published in 2012.


  • Rym Bettaieb (Columbia University)

Rym was born and grew up in Tunis, Tunisia. She earned her B.A. in English with a minor in Spanish from the University of Tunis in 1994. She received her M.A. in English with Honors from the College of Staten Island, City University of New York in 1999. She was a recipient of an International Scholarship Award to pursue her Ph.D. in English Literature at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, where she obtained her M.Phil. in 2007 and her Ph.D. in 2013. Ms. Bettaieb has taught foreign languages (Arabic and French), English composition, and Literature in colleges and universities in the New York Metropolitan area since 1998. She is currently a Lecturer in Arabic at Columbia University, NY and has written two Arabic Language textbooks that were published by Random House Company: Complete Arabic: Arabic Script. A Guide to Reading and Writing and Complete Arabic: The Basics (2008). She also writes non- fiction and poetry. Her creative pieces, entitled “Chapter 1”, “Her Language” and “Chapter 2”, were published in And Then magazine (2007, 2008 and 2013). Ms. Bettaieb has interest in Sufi Literature, Arab and Arab-American Literature, Autobiographical Writing, Twentieth Century Ethnic-American Literature, and Feminist Literary Theory. She wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the unpublished Sufi poetry of Maryam Hand, an American poet. The title of her dissertation is Maryam Hand’s Poetry in Relation to Sufi Teachings and to the Tradition of Sufi Authorship. Ms. Bettaieb is the recipient of the Provost Innovative Course Design Award in Spring 2020.


  • Isabel Choinowski (Cornell University)

Isabel Choinowski is a PhD student and graduate instructor in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University, where she currently teaches an upper-intermediate German language course. Prior to joining Cornell’s German Studies department in 2019, Isabel studied Art, English and Education at the University of Cologne, Germany (B.A., 2017), and obtained her M.A. in German Studies from the University of Connecticut, Storrs in 2019. Isabel’s pedagogical research and practice interests include intercultural communication, authentic interaction, visual literacy and the integration of technology in the language classroom.


  • Reem Faraj (Columbia University)

With an enormous fascination with Language, and with the exhilaration derived from being in a classroom, I have spent most of my life learning and teaching languages and linguistics with immeasurable passion. Examining, analyzing, understanding and teaching languages and linguistic phenomena have become one of my life’s purposes. For the past twelve years, I have been teaching Modern Standard Arabic at Columbia University to students from multiple backgrounds and at different levels. I have taught beginner, intermediate, advanced as well as heritage students. Currently, I am teaching a Levantine Arabic spoken course. Additionally, I am a PhD student in linguistics at CUNY Graduate Center and I am an active researcher in pedagogy and linguistics.


  • Fan Liu (Yale University)

Fan Liu is a Senior Lector in Chinese at Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University. Before joining Yale, she taught at various universities and programs, including Princeton University, and Princeton-in-Beijing (PiB). She worked as a Chinese Program coordinator overseeing teaching, training, and evaluation at International Education of Students (IES) in Beijing and Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) in Shanghai. She has been teaching Chinese heritage students since 2002, and is keen on developing learning materials to integrate Chinese heritage learners through the community-based learning and to build identity among the learners. In 2014-2017, she worked as head teacher at Duke in China summer program (DSIC) in Beijing since 2014. In 2018, she took the position as Program Director at DSIC. She is also a co-author of two textbooks in Chinese: Fun with Chinese and Reading in Classic Chinese Short Stories: Passion and Desire.


  • Elsa Belmont Flores (Brown University)

Elsa Belmont Flores grew up in Mexico City and has lived in Wales, Egypt and Jordan. She joined Brown University in 2018 where she teaches beginning through advanced-level courses in Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine Colloquial Arabic. Concurrently to her appointment as Lecturer in Language Studies, Elsa serves as Assistant Director for the Center for Language Studies collaborating with faculty, graduate students and departments in support of the teaching and learning of all languages, with a special focus on educational and instructional technology.

Prior to her work at Brown University, Elsa was Assistant Director and Resident Coordinator for the Middlebury School in Jordan where she worked collaboratively with faculty and community members to achieve the program’s goals for curricular development and student immersion. Elsa’s teaching and research interests include youth culture in the Arab World, media and film, and the use of technology in the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language. Her Researchers@Brown Profile link is https://vivo.brown.edu/display/ebelmont.


  • Claire Menard (Cornell University)

Claire Menard is a Lecturer of French Language at Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University. She obtained her PhD from Rutgers University and Paris 8 in September 2016. She received a Maîtrise in Anglophone Studies from the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France, in 2007. After spending a year as a French intern at Colgate University and a summer at the French school at Middlebury College, she decided to continue her academic career in the U.S. and obtained a M.A in French Literature from Miami University, Ohio, in 2009. She spent the following year as a Teaching Associate at Brown University before applying to the doctoral program at Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ. Her current research interests lie in 20th-21st century literature and films, especially hypermodernism and theory. She also works on Senegalese and West African Films as well as French films dealing with issues of social classes, immigration and refugees. She is also very interested in second language acquisition and the use of technologies in the language classroom. As a film specialist, she teaches the history of French and Francophone films, as well as film theory. She also coordinates French language courses, such as the Intermediate French course level and beginners' levels.


  • Verónica Moraga (The University of Chicago)

Verónica Moraga has a M.A. degree. She is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Spanish at The University of Chicago, where she has worked since 2007. Her pedagogical research and practice include L2 pedagogy, Language for Specific Purposes curriculum, and materials development, Community-Based Learning, and Interculturality.


  • Shiva Rahmani Khanghahi (The University of Chicago)

My family emigrated from Iran to Germany when I was only forty days old. I was raised in Heidelberg and German is my first language. I completed my undergraduate studies in German Literature at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and my graduate studies in German Translation at the University of Tehran. I came to the U.S. in 2012 and obtained another graduate degree in Germanic Studies from Purdue University. Before coming to the University of Chicago, I taught introductory German courses for two years at Purdue University and was responsible for the German Culture Club. In 2016, I then joined the team at the Goethe Institute in Chicago, where I continue to teach to this day. I joined the University of Chicago in 2018 and started teaching first and second-year German courses. I have designed several courses for all quarters of the Intensive Course Sequence together with other courses. In addition to teaching, I am also responsible for organizing and coordinating cultural and social events for students in the language program and anyone interested in the German language and culture. Currently, I also serve as the faculty contact to the German Club at the University of Chicago. My teaching and research interests include foreign language pedagogy, technology integration in language teaching, and revisiting songs in language pedagogy. I am currently working on technology integration in language teaching and leveraging music to facilitate language learning.


  • Nandipa Sipengane (Yale University)

I work for the Council on African Studies at Yale University where I teach Zulu. I also have the privilege of working with the council’s Shared Course Initiative which allows me to teach Zulu to Columbia University and Cornell University students. I obtained a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Pretoria with a major in Business and Zulu. I hold an M.A in African Languages and Literature form the University of Wisconsin Madison where my foundation and language teaching philosophy began. I am particularly interested in ethnomusicology and the pedagogy of using Mbaqanga and Isicathamiya music (traditional Zulu music genres) in the L2 classroom.


  • Angela Lee-Smith (Yale University)

Dr. Angela Lee-Smith is Senior Lector II of Korean in the East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. She was awarded The Richard H. Broadhead Prize for Distinguished Teaching at Yale College. Her pedagogical research and practice areas include HL/L2 pedagogy, curriculum, and materials development; Project-Based Learning, Multiliteracies, Content-based Instruction, Interculturality, and Standards-based Assessments. She currently serves as president of the ACTFL Korean SIG. She is certified as an ACTFL OPI; WPT; AAPPL Tester and Rater in Korean. For her recent publications, lectures, and project works, refer to her Teaching Portfolio: https://campuspress.yale.edu/angelaleesmith/).


  • Gunhild Iris Lischke (Cornell University)

Gunhild Iris Lischke is a Senior Lecturer and Language Program Director at Cornell University. Her main interest is in applied linguistics, language pedagogy, curriculum development, and professional development for language teachers.


  • Diana Palenzuela (The University of Chicago)

Diana was born and raised in the Basque Country, Spain. She completed her studies at the University of the Basque Country, where she received a B.A. in Translation and Interpreting, an M.A. in Education and Multilingualism and conducted a doctoral research on the influence of popular culture on Basque language learning. She came to the United States to work as a professor of Spanish and Basque language and literature at the University of California Santa Barbara and currently holds a position as an Assistant Instructional Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.


  • Grit Matthias Phelps (Cornell University)

Grit Matthias joined the Department of German Studies in 2008, after completing her degree in German as Foreign Language, American and Romance Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Her research and teaching interests include interactive use of the Internet in language teaching, cultural communication, foreign language acquisition and teaching, and language competencies for life long learners. Every semester her students work collaboratively via synchronous Computer Mediated Communication with students in Germany. She is the German House Fellow of the German Language House, and the Faculty Advisor of the German Club, and the Pons Babela Cross-Cultural Exchange Forum. She is also a Certified Tester for exams by the Goethe-Institut.


  • Janet Sedlar (The University of Chicago)

Janet Sedlar holds a Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics and an M.A. in French Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, with specialization in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. Her dissertation proposed a working theory of humor based on a corpus of comic strips from Spain, Argentina and France. She also holds an Advanced Certificate from New York University in Foreign Language Pedagogy (an interim degree between the M.A. and the Ph.D.), a Diploma of Education (the equivalent of an M.A.) in Teaching English and French as Second Languages from McGill University (Montreal, CA) and a Baccalauréat ès lettres (the equivalent of a B.A.) in Linguistics from the Université de Montréal. Since 2018 Janet has been Co-Director of the Spanish Language Program at the University of Chicago, and from 2008 to 2018 was the sole Coordinator of the program. She designed the first- and third-year language sequences in collaboration with colleagues, and has contributed a large number of pedagogical materials to all levels of the program in the form of audio(-visual) recordings and their corresponding transcripts, selected and adapted authentic readings, testing materials of all types, grammar practice activities, lesson plans, etc. In 2013 she co-authored the 3rd edition of ¡Con brío!, the beginning-level textbook used in the first-year program. She also developed and taught the intermediate-level Spanish course offered in University of Chicago's Study Abroad program in Barcelona, Spain in Winter 2018. She has taught all levels of Spanish, a course in Spanish sociolinguistics, and the doctoral seminar in foreign language pedagogy and acquisition offered to all graduate students in the RLL department. She and a colleague are currently working on an advanced-level textbook focusing on advanced grammar, authentic readings and listenings, and all four linguistic skills.


  • Olufeyisayo Soetan (Brown University)

Feyi Soetan is an Educator with years of experience teaching both language and art. She

graduated from the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, where she conducted a pragma stylistic research on adverbials used in texts; and has ever since worked in the sectors of Education, Media and Entertainment. She is passionate about the development of education in developing countries, especially in the aspect of curriculum development and instructional design, and she has worked with various NGOs that collaborate with educational institutions to develop more productive curricula of secondary schools in Nigeria. When she is not teaching, Feyi is an actor performing either stage drama or films, and this has reflected so greatly in her creative methods of teaching language. She is currently a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at Brown University where she is teaching Yorùbá for her second year. In her time at Brown, the Yorùbá language has thrived and generated a lot of interests.


  • Meejeong Song (Cornell University)

Ms. Meejeong Song is a senior lecturer and a coordinator for the Korean Language Program in the department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. Ms. Song has experience teaching all levels of Korean including the heritage and non-heritage tracks at Cornell. Her research interests include PBLL (Project-Based Language Learning), CBT (Content-Based Teaching), and technology-aided teaching material development. Ms. Song is actively attending various workshops and talks related to language teaching. She is serving as a board member of AATK (American Association of Teachers of Korean), and a member of ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages)) and IALLT (International Association for Language Learning Technology). She has been conducting various summer projects supported by a grant from the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, and creating the course project websites with students. On October 13, 2014 Ms. Song was featured on Daily Edventures by Microsoft, which highlights global heroes in education. Please follow the link to see the interview with Ms. Song.


  • Lulei Su (Brown University)

Lulei Su is a Lecturer in Chinese Language at Department of East Asian Studies, Brown University.. Before Lulei joined the EAS family at Brown University, he taught at various institutions and language programs, including Harvard University, The Ohio State University, College of the Holy Cross, Beloit College, Harvard-Beijing Academy, Princeton-in-Beijing, School-Year-Abroad (SYA), and International Education for Students (IES). At Holy Cross, he also taught content courses in Chinese film, environment, and culture. Lulei has also taught a first-year seminar course in the Montserrat program at Holy Cross. In 2018, Lulei was accepted into the Junior Faculty Fellow Program at the Sheridan Teaching Center at Brown University. In 2019, he received a Salomon Curricular Mini-Grant, an Engaged Course Development Mini-Grant, and a Center for Language Studies Consortium Travel Grant at Brown. He is also a co-author of Writing and Truth: Formal Chinese Writing and Speaking, a textbook for highly advanced learners. Additionally, Lulei was the reviewer for Buckeye East Asian Languages (Volume 2) and the Second Buckeye East Asian Languages Forum in 2016. In 2016 and 2017, Lulei served as the Reviewer for individual and group proposals at the annual ACTFL conferences. In 2018, Lulei was one of the three Conference Committee Members for the 2018 Annual Conference for Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA), USA.


  • Orit Yeret (Yale University)

Orit Yeret teaches Modern Hebrew in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. She received her M.A. in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing (University of Haifa, Israel), and soon after became certified to teach Hebrew as a Second Language (Hebrew College, Boston). She has previously taught at Bard College, NY and at Vanderbilt University, TN. She has served as a committee member for the SAT subject test in Modern Hebrew, appointed by College Board. She is a certified Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tester of Hebrew, recognized by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In her teaching, Orit integrates different techniques and utilizes various technological tools to encourage individual thought, and a thirst for knowledge among learners. She finds great satisfaction in creating, and shares her love for the arts with her students.