| Franziska
Lys is Associate Professor of German and currently the
Director of Undergraduate
Studies in the Department of German. Dr. Lys received
her B.A.
and M.A. from the University of Rochester,
Rochester,
N.Y.
and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL. She has been involved in teaching
German
language and culture courses on all levels and
in a variety of methodological contexts as well as a course
on second
language acquisition theory. In 1988, she was
honored
by the University with the College of Arts and
Science Award
for Excellence in Teaching. She received the
1996 Lieutenant
Governor’s Award of the Illinois Council
of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ICTFL) for
outstanding
achievement
in the field of foreign language teaching and
research. She was selected as the Charles Deering
McCormick
University Distinguished Lecturer for 1997-98
at Northwestern
University. In 1998, she received the AATG/Goethe-Institute
Award
for outstanding achievement in furthering the
teaching of German
in the United States. And she is the recipient
of the ACTFL/FDP-Houghton Mifflin Award for Excellence
in
Foreign Language Instruction
Using Technology.
Professor Lys’ research activities
reflect her ongoing interest in applying and evaluating
the effectiveness
of media-related and technological innovations to improve
classroom instruction of foreign languages. Her work
is concentrated in two areas: cultural documentaries
for the
language classroom and multi-media applications for learning
foreign languages. Since 1987 Dr. Lys has been collaborating
with Dr. William Anthony on the production of various
educational documentaries. They have produced and
directed Drehort:
Neubrandenburg (On location in Neubrandenburg; 1991)
a video about the lives of the people in a former East
German
town, AZUBI (Three
Apprentices in Berlin, 1994) a video about the apprenticeship
system in Germany, Drehort Bern, Gesichter einer Stadt (On
location in Bern, faces of a city; 1997) a documentary
about people in the city of Berne, Switzerland, and Drehort
Neubrandenburg 2002 (2004) documenting the
lives of the people filmed in the original video in 1991.
Professor
Lys
is
also very
interested in the merging field of video and computer-assisted
language learning and has been developing and testing,
among others, multi-media language software using her
own documentary materials. She has developed Drehort:
Neubrandenburg Interaktiv and Azubi:
Interaktiv,
both CD-ROM applications. Most recently, she redesinged Neubrandenburg
Interaktiv for access over the Internet
and students can work now interactively with video material
online.
Dr. Lys has published
a wide variety of material that concerns the problem
of
second language acquisition and computer-assisted language
instruction in Task-Based Instruction in Foreign Language
Education: Principles and Practices, Body and
Language Intercultural Learning Through Drama, Schnittstellen:
Lehrwerke zwischen alten und neuen Medien, Computer
Enhanced Learning: Vignettes of the Best Practice from
America's Most Wired Campuses, Fremsprachen Lehren
und Lernen, and in Technology for Language Learning:
Faculty authored Libra Courseware.
| 
