2008-2011 Executive Director

Claudia Kunschak (Ph.D. in Education, University of Arizona, 2003; M.A. in Interpreting, University of Vienna, 1992) joined the ELC in Fall 2006 and has been teaching ELC5 - Academic Writing for the past three semesters. In Fall 2007, she initiated a professional development program, including a series of workshops for incoming teachers, a peer observation system and a mentoring plan. She currently serves as the Assistant Director of ELC.

Before moving to Shantou, Claudia variously taught translation, language for specific purposes, literature and culture in her home country Austria, in Scotland, Ukraine, the US and, most recently, Spain. She has presented and published widely in her areas of interest such as language variation, multilingualism and intercultural communication (e.g. Language Variation in Foreign Language Teaching: On the road to communicative competence, Peter Lang, 2004). In 2006, she was awarded the First Prize in Teaching Innovation as a team member of Project Electra at the Universidad Europea de Madrid.

As a teacher, Claudia is particularly interested in fostering learner autonomy, language awareness and sociocultural competence. As an administrator, she hopes to contribute to smooth interaction among a diverse faculty, to program growth and interdisciplinary collaboration, and to improving the evaluation and feedback processes for program, faculty and students. As a sojourner in China, she enjoys interacting with her colleagues and students, traveling all over the country, and trying to make herself understood in Chinese.

Research:

• (2008). Intelligibility, Acceptability, Target-likeness: Teacher vs. Student Perspectives on the Teaching of Pronunciation within an EIL Framework. Philippine Journal of Linguistics, 1, 1-13