Department of German
George M. Roth Distinguished
Professor of German
German Department
Georgetown University
Intercultural Center 469
Washington, DC, 20057
Phone (direct): (202) 687-8386
Phone (deptmt): (202) 687-6051
FAX: (202) 687-7568;
byrnesh@georgetown.edu
Second Vice President
American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL)
OFFICE HOURS, FALL 2008: Tue, Th: 2:15 - 3:15 or by appointment
Professional Background
A native of Germany, I began university level studies in Germany and completed B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in the United States. I have been a faculty member of the German Department at
My research, scholarship, and teaching address a range of issues pertaining to adult instructed second language learning and teaching, with a particular emphasis on German. This general interest has led to a focus on the development of advanced levels of literacy in non-native languages in a variety of areas.
Specifically, in considering phenomena that are central to L2 advancedness and learners' development toward them, I have turned to systemic functional linguistics as developed by M. A. K. Halliday as an advantageous theoretical framework. Its fundamental concern with oral and written texts that are embedded in contexts of culture and contexts of situation and realized in culture-specific genres provides the intellectual environment for most of my recent professional work. But I have also been influenced by sociocultural theory and the work of Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Together, these areas provided the intellectual context for the 2005
In the German Department my interest in advanced literacies has enabled me to be instrumental in the creation of a four-year integrated content-oriented, genre-and task-based curriculum that has gained national and international recognition since its development from 1997 to 2000. The departmental website provides extensive information on this collaborative project, entitled "Developing Multiple Literacies," which involved the entire department, faculty and graduate students and continues to advance our understanding of the nature of advanced instructed L2 learning. During the academic years 2006-2008, the Department has engaged in extensive assessment of this curriculum effort, seeking input from all enrolled students (spring 2007) via a questionnaire, from all German majors (spring 2007) via focus groups, and from its alumni (fall 2007) via a questionnaire. The results of this extensive analysis will be available in the fall of 2008. They are to be published in an edited volume (Norris, Sinicrope, & Watanabe) at the University of Hawai'i Press (Toward useful program evaluation in college foreign language education).
Empirical research associated with this unique curriculum has focused on syntactic development across the five curricular levels, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, and, more recently, on the development of textual abilities at the advanced levels through the constructs of theme and grammatical metaphor. How L2 advancedness comes about in different acquisitional contexts has also been the focus of a Humboldt Foundation Transcoop Grant (2005-2007) that has led to collaboration with the corpus-linguistic research group at the Humboldt University in Berlin, using its extensive resources for the analysis of learner data within FALKO (Fehlerannotiertes Lernerkorpus). Teacher oriented action research was the focus of a Spencer Foundation grant from 2000-2002 (with John Norris).
I see those efforts as broadening and deepening my earlier involvement, in the 1980s and 1990s, in the shift in foreign language education toward communicative- and proficiency-oriented approaches, including the Standards Project. An advanced literacy orientation motivates my current interest in reading and writing, curriculum and materials development, assessment of L2 abilities (especially in writing but also in content-based instruction), and integrated curricular structures for linking content, culture, and language. Publications on those topics have appeared in The Modern Language Journal, Language Testing, Language Teaching, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language Annals, Profession, Text, The German Quarterly, Die Unterrichtspraxis, in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education and in edited volumes. Those topics have also been the subject of numerous presentations at professional conferences, both nationally and internationally, and invited talks and keynote addresses. They have also influenced my undergraduate and particularly my graduate course offerings.
Over the years I have collaborated with colleagues in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics on numerous projects, including collection of learner data under the GU-FLIRT project, teaching cross-listed courses in SLA, and seeking greater integration across departments in second language studies.
I am currently working on a guest edited issue for Linguistics in Education, entitled "Instructed foreign language acquisition as meaning-making: A systemic-functional approach". With Hiram Maxim and John Norris I am preparing a volume in the MLJ monograph series on developing and assessing writing abilities, tentatively entitled "Realizing advanced L2 writing development in a collegiate curriculum: From outcomes expectations to assessment" (scheduled publication 2010). I continue serving as an Associate Editor of The Modern Language Journal, in charge of the twice-yearly column Perspectives, which addresses topics of current professional interest and, at times, controversy. Through Perspectives, I have gained a particular interest in foreign language education policy in the United States. For details, click here. Click here for a complete list of the topics addressed in Perspectives.
I have held diverse academic and administrative positions within the University, as department chair (1987- 93), as chair of
I currently serve as Second Vice President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), will serve as AAAL's 1st VP and conference program chair in 2010 (Atlanta), and will assume the presidency of the organization in 2011.
For more information, see subsections of this web site. For an extended cv, please click here.
Degrees