I’m continuing a short but proud tradition of liveblogging on FIT but really doing it for the first time myself in a more public context, sitting here in Rm. C110 of the Haas School of Business for the full day unconference, Cal Educamp, put on jointly by Berkeley’s Educational [...]

As I tune in to tonight’s episode (14, but who’s counting?), Ratan is saying things about the different suitors, in what appears to be a slightly mocking tone. Her current target is Abhinav Sharma, the tallest of the bunch, a New Delhi software developer with a gaunt face and smoothed hair. The [...]

I am spending the summer in India with my wife and her family.  While I generally find it hard to forgo watching television, my desire to vegetate in front of frivolous entertainment has been severely challenged by the predominant share of programming allotted to films and serials in Hindi, a language I have not [...]

The late afternoons-when my husband and I play badminton in a park in a Delhi suburb-are a 100-and-something degree Fahrenheit here, extremely hot and dry. All day, we wait anxiously for the mercury to dip just a little so we can go out and play. The park is fun not just because it’s a lush [...]

As a U.S. citizen, I have had one reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden.  However, as a student of literature, I have found little to say about this symbolic victory in the “War on Terror” except, perhaps, that it is extremely distracting from the research papers I should [...]

During data collection earlier this year for my dissertation, exploring language and literacy socialization among a group of young boys at an orphanage in the suburbs of New Delhi, India, I headed over to National Council Of Educational Research And Training, or, as it is widely known, the N.C.E.R.T. I grew up [...]

The doorbell-which makes the sound of chirpy, chirruping birds-shrieked for my attention on a late Monday morning a few months ago. I was living in a suburb of New Delhi, India, collecting data for my dissertation. As I went to unlock the grill door, I saw a lady dressed in a dark salwar kameez [...]

A bit of a public service announcement: Modern Language Association President Russell Berman has issued a letter calling upon its members to protest the cuts to education, especially languages and the humanities, that are written into the new federal budget. This section from the letter, in particular, highlights the damage that [...]

I’m working on a project right now for the Berkeley Language Center called “Languages at Berkeley”. It’s an effort to put a comprehensive list of the languages that are being taught at UC Berkeley on one page, and to link from that page to introductions to each language. The basic idea is to give visitors [...]

Education First, “The World Leader in International Education” (as it calls itself) released what it called “the world’s first index to compare the English-language ability of adults in different countries,” which caused a flurry of excitement in the international news media. You can download the full report here. The report, compiled based [...]

From the FIT afternoon gathering last Friday, April 1. Several people seated around a table outside started passing a piece of paper around as we talked and this is what happened. What does it all mean?

Seeing a Japanese word I thought was buried in the past re-emerging in day-to-day use reminded me of a strand of posts I started but haven’t kept up with:「ありがとうございます」(Thank you very much),「入口」 (Entrance), and「おひさしぶりです」 (Long time, no see)  were posts I wrote as I tried to make sure my [...]

This is the first year in a while I can remember that I’m not planning to go to AAAL, the conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics that will take place this coming weekend in Chicago. And in not going, I’m perhaps more acutely aware of what I might be missing than [...]

I was online and on Facebook when the first news about the earthquake in Japan was posted. I hurriedly went to check English language news sites and found next to nothing on them. I switched over to the Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri, and Mainichi and spent half the night reading, refreshing, watching, and checking in on [...]

The 8.9 earthquake that hit Japan two days ago, the continuing revelations about the loss of life, the massive water damage, and now the minute-by-minute unfolding of an already bad and potentially horrific situation in a number of nuclear reactors in Japan … these seem to have reduced language to nothing. These are [...]

It’s rare, but every now and then I’ll be confronted by how many mistakes I learned through my mother.

Last week at a party, I discovered what a pomelo was. This green-peeled citrus fruit is something I am familiar with, having eaten it throughout my childhood. I always recognized the pomelo as a grapefruit, because they [...]

Admin note: An email announcement posted to the Berkeley Language Center mailing list earlier today, and re-posted here:

Dear Berkeley colleagues,

The White House has sent out a call for advice on education reform. The comment period is open until March 11 (Thursday). They promise every message will be read. During this small window of extra attentiveness, [...]

I have left my current residence in Oslo to spend a week in Guangzhou. I feel as though I’m starring in my own version of the film Inception, an American living in Norway conducting educational research in China. What will serve as my “kick” into familiar surroundings once again? Perhaps my move [...]

Like Jonathan, I found the recent announcement of an increase of half a million dollars to certain language course offerings at Berkeley to be heartening news. But I also find myself reacting with quite a bit of uncertainty to the announcement. Since my focus is in East Asian languages, my response to the [...]

Mr. Manu Joseph pens another Letter from India for the New York Times, this time on the “Uncompromising Practicality [that] Could Be India’s Downfall.” I covered his previous letter here, noting the gaping flaws in his argument about the spread of English in India. This time, he serves up [...]