In spring 2006, CHRISTINA FREI taught GRMN 216 "Introduction to Literature". This course offers a genre approach to literature from different literary epochs including aphorism, anecdote, fable, poem, fairy tale, short story, drama, and novella.

In fall 2006, she teaches GRMN 101 "Elementary German I" and GRMN 215 "Conversation and Composition".

In addition, Frei regularly offers courses in Second Language Acquisition (GRMN 516), Teaching and Learning with Technology (GRMN 517), and directs all courses in the two-year language program.

Frei received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis with a Special Emphasis in Second Language Acquisition. She specializes in new approaches to the teaching of German and diverse applications of technology in the foreign-language classroom and has co-written “Co-Constructing Learning: The Dynamic Nature of Foreign Language Pedagogy in a CMC Environment”. In this article, her colleagues and she develop the concept of spiraled interaction.

“Recent innovations in technology allow foreign language learners and their instructors to interact both inside and beyond the classroom using a variety of communicative tools. As a consequence the classroom has been transformed into an extended learning environment which has had a profound effect on both student and teacher roles. In an on-going collaborative research project, we seek to gain greater insights into the benefits of specific computer-mediated communication (CMC) activities and to examine the relationship between in-class, online, and out-of-class learning. In this article, we propose a concept of spiraled interaction—the dynamic interplay of in-class activities that in part focus on meaning and focus on form and online collaborations that have as their primary goal student-constructed representations of knowledge.”

Current projects include the expansion of the Homo.Cyber site:http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/german/215

and research in the development of students' discourse competence within threaded discussion, in particular Blackboard. See her article here:
http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v50/n22/teaching.html

Awarded for excellence in teaching, Frei is an enthusiastic and experienced teacher whose commitment to teaching is kindled by her students' self-reflective engagement with learning a language.

Curriculum Vitae