Elizabeth O'Connell-Inman

Biography

I can remember the precise moment during the first week of my high school Elementary French  class when I marveled at how amazing it must be to have access to an entirely other language in which  to express one’s thoughts and experiences. I did not realize that that moment would eventually define  my professional life. I have spent over 30 years in the language classroom attempting to recreate that  “aha moment” for my students, that moment when they realize that learning another language is not  just about memorizing vocabulary lists and verb conjugations, but that language learning releases us from the singular view of our native tongue and opens up new perspectives, possibilities, and potentials. 

 I am most fortunate to work at  something I love and from which I derive great satisfaction. It is my belief that what I do in the classroom, when I do it successfully, is indeed about more than verb conjugation. Language learning  requires students to interact and share oddly personal information with relative strangers (What time  do you go to bed? What will you have done in 10 years? What do you worry about?) It encourages them to support each other as they perform sometimes challenging, sometimes silly tasks. Learning a  language compels students to make connections, increases their capacity for understanding and  broadens their perspective. At its best, language teaching builds empathy. How better to spend a life?

Primary Research Interests

• Contemporary Latin American Literature
• Technology in the Language Classroom
• Directed Independent Language Instruction