I was born and raised in Denmark. I am married to an American, and I have lived in the United States since 1978. However, we spent the 1998-99 school year in Denmark where our three sons attended public school, and I was a part-time student at the University of Southern Denmark. I usually spend about eight weeks a year in Denmark, visiting friends and family and enjoying my beach house.
Translation and quality control
I have been involved in translation, editing and proofreading for over ten years. I am a team player and enjoy the dynamic, constantly changing nature of freelance work. I see the localization process as a cooperative endeavor between the client, the agency and the linguists, and I bend over backwards to help ensure that customer needs are met quickly and efficiently. I am thorough and detail-oriented, and I always meet my deadlines.
Teaching
Why do I teach? I teach because I believe in a multiethnic world where language skills can further international understanding; I teach because bilingualism is necessary as the key to facilitating the level of integration needed to ensure a just and egalitarian society; I teach because I am curious about other lifestyles, cultures and world issues and enjoy the diversity of cultures, attitudes and languages that my students bring to the classroom; and I teach because I love interacting with my students who are usually both inspiring and aspiring in a wonderful, intriguing way.
I am an outgoing, people-oriented, patient and caring person, and my open communication style makes it easy for me to develop rapport with others. Personally, I love any learning process, and I strive to communicate my love for life, learning and languages to my students, so they come to realize that learning a language is fun. I am a strong proponent of additive bilingualism and gaining the ability to codeswitch, so immigrants can maintain the beauty of their native languages and their pride in their cultural backgrounds and yet gain full access to their new society and the opportunities it offers.
In the classroom, I strive to create a safe, low-anxiety and fun learning environment where student-centered, interactive classroom activities facilitate effective, transparent instruction in which comprehensible input falls within the individual student’s zone of proximal development and allows for language acquisition to take place as a result of negotiation of meaning and the use of interlanguage. I believe in emphasizing all three learning styles and catering to as many of the different intelligences as possible. I believe in using a healthy combination of communicative and form-focused instruction. Grammar should be taught implicitly and/or explicitly, but not excessively. Error correction should be based on student or peer repair.
