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Margie Berns

Professor, Department of English
Director of English as a Second Language Office: Heavilon 432
Office Phone: (765) 494-3769
Office Fax: (765) 494-3780
Email: berns@purdue.edu

Specialization: English as a Second Language; World Englishes

Margie Berns is Professor of English as a Second Language and Director of the English as a Second Language Graduate Program. With world Englishes and second language pedagogy as areas of specialization, her research focus is the sociolinguistics of English in a variety of settings, especially, South America, China, and Europe. She most recently completed an interdisciplinary study of the intersection of English, media, and youth in four European countries. Publications on these and related topics include In the Presence of English: Media and European Youth (Springer, 2007); “English in South America”, a special issue of World Englishes (2003); “Expanding on the expanding circle: where do WE go from here?”, World Englishes (2005); “English language proficiency in lower secondary: a comparative study of four European countries” in Globalization of English and the English Language Classroom (Gunter Narr/Germany, 2005); “Applied linguistics: history and overview”, in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, K. Brown, ed., 2006); and, “World Englishes and communicative competence”, in Handbook of World Englishes (Blackwell, 2005). Earlier publications are Contexts of Competence: Social and Cultural Considerations in Communicative Language Teaching (Plenum, 1990), Initiatives in Communicative Language Teaching (Addison-Wesley, 1984), and Initiatives in Communicative Language Teaching II (Addison Wesley, 1987). For the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, she served as Coordinating Editor for Sociolinguistics and the Applied Linguistics sesctions. She is Editor of the journal World Englishes. Her teaching includes graduate courses in sociolinguistics, world Englishes, and theoretical foundations of second language teaching. A Past President of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) and Chair of the 2006 meeting of IAWE, she is also a member of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), which she served as its President in 2001 and as the Chair of the 2002 conference.