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Hiram H. Maxim
Associate Professor
Department of German Studies
Core Faculty, Program in Linguistics
Director, Emory College Language Center
Emory University
532 Kilgo Circle
214 Modern Languages Building
Atlanta, GA 30322
phone: (404) 727-9234
fax: (404) 727-2903
hmaxim@emory.edu
Office hours, Spring 2012: TTh 11:15-12:15, & by appointment
The path to my current position as Associate Professor in the Department of German Studies and Core Faculty in the Linguistics Program at Emory University has certainly not been a direct one. As an undergraduate at Washington and Lee University I double majored in German and Economics with the idea of becoming an international banker, only to realize during my senior year that teaching German was far more appealing to me. I therefore felt extremely fortunate to land a teaching position in Orange, Virginia where I taught all levels of high school German for three years. From there I received my M.A. in German from Middlebury College that included two semesters of study at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany. Following that I held college-level instructorships in German and ESL at Rutgers University and high school teaching positions in Istanbul, Turkey, and Atlanta, Georgia. I then continued my studies at the University of Texas at Austin where I received my Ph.D. in German with a specialization in foreign language pedagogy. During the penultimate year of my doctoral studies I was awarded a DAAD grant for study and research at the Freie Universität Berlin.
My first post-doctoral position was as Assistant Professor and Supervisor of Graduate Teaching Assistants in the German Section of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. From there I spent six years as Assistant Professor and Curriculum Coordinator in the German Department of Georgetown University before joining the Department of German Studies at Emory University in August 2007 as Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies and Core Faculty in the Program in Linguistics.
My research focuses on instructed adult second language acquisition (SLA) with specific interest in curricular models that support the longitudinal nature of second language development. This research interest poses a formidable challenge for SLA researchers working in collegiate foreign language departments in the United States because of the well-documented bifurcation between so-called language courses at the lower levels and so-called content courses at the upper levels. Overcoming this departmental division has served as the impetus for much of my research. At the outset of my career I focused on the feasibility and efficacy of extensive and extended reading in beginning classrooms as way to integrate increased textuality into lower-level instruction. Then, while at Georgetown University I expanded the scope of my research by examining multi-year, text-based curricular frameworks for facilitating language development. Serving as the research context for this work was the groundbreaking literacy-oriented and genre-based curriculum in the German Department at Georgetown. To investigate language development in this curricular setting, my colleagues and I found Systemic Functional Linguistics to be an especially helpful theoretical framework, and I have since conducted functionally oriented analyses of longitudinal writing data to ascertain the trajectory toward and the characteristics of advanced second language writing. Much of this work on advanced-level writing is the focus of the recently published monograph in the Modern Language Journal that I wrote jointly with Heidi Byrnes and John Norris. Because the writing in such a context draws so heavily from textual sources, I also am interested in the phenomenon among second language learners of textual borrowing and its role in language development. The insights into the language learning process gained from this research have figured heavily in my current efforts at coordinating a major reform of the undergraduate curriculum in the German Studies Department at Emory. In addition to the extensive materials development necessary in such a project, I have begun data collection in this research setting to track learners’ progression up through the curriculum and thereby to make a contribution to the further understanding of instructed adult second language acquisition. I have included more information on the curricular reform on my “projects” page.
My research and curricular work have had a significant impact on my teaching. I happily teach all levels in the curriculum and look to implement the same pedagogical approach regardless of the curricular level. To begin with, I feel students need to be exposed to and interact with authentic language use from the very beginning of the language learning process. Such exposure and interaction will provide students not only with appropriate models and opportunities for their own fledgling language use, but also with material for conducting cultural inquiry. An approach that calls for immediate and extensive interaction with authentic language will naturally be strongly text-based and will require that reading receive equal attention along with the other three modalities right from the outset. Because of the strong textual focus, text selection and presentation is of central importance. The texts themselves can come in many media and do not necessarily have to be linguistically complex, but I feel they should respect the mature cognitive abilities of their readers. The primary criteria for text selection is that they provide effective exemplification of meaningful language use and that they be arranged and presented based on a content-oriented, rather than a linguistically-oriented, syllabus. The objective behind organizing texts around a specific content or topic is that they will expose students to a desired level of semantic and thematic redundancy and frequency that will facilitate their acquisition of content and language knowledge.
It is my strong belief that such acquisition will not happen subliminally, however. Conscious attention to the language and the content needs to take place in order for students to progress. Arriving at textual meaning requires a procedural approach that first examines a text for major events and people and then establishes in which rhetorical format the text presents this information. In addition, attention will be directed to how and which language is used to deliver meaning. In other words, the linguistic system is not to be viewed in isolation, as an object of study; instead, its role and function in making meaningful utterances should be the centerpiece of any linguistic analysis. The final step of this procedural approach is an analysis of the textual information for its cultural significance. At this point, students need to recognize the text as a cultural artifact and examine what the text reveals about the socio-cultural context out of which it originated. In most cases, this step involves students’ determining which behaviors, values, or ideas are weighted or emphasized in the text and which are not and what this particular emphasis reveals about the culture for a given context. Through their exposure to a multitude of texts, students can begin to extrapolate their findings onto a larger plane and make some preliminary statements about the belief systems and values of a particular culture within a specific context. To be truly effective at this type of analysis, students also need an understanding of the context as well as the author or source of the text. Moreover, students need to practice this type of analysis repeatedly with a variety of texts. Such repetition and in-depth analysis can only be possible within an integrated and coherent curriculum that has a clear sequence of courses that logically build upon each other, both in terms of content and language.
Ultimately, it is hoped that this method for approaching FL texts can be transferred to students’ own surroundings and culture for the purpose of better understanding which behaviors and ideas are most valued. FL teaching therefore becomes much more than exposing students to another language and culture; it involves opening their eyes to how they and their culture relate to a world filled with diverse cultures and belief systems.
Last but certainly not least I would like to recognize all the students I have taught over the years who have challenged and motivated me in this profession. I also would like to acknowledge certain teachers and colleagues who have had a significant effect on my own development as a teacher and researcher. While at Washington and Lee Prof. Robert Youngblood instilled in me a deep appreciation for German cultural history and the rewards of study abroad. At Middlebury College during the height of the Proficiency movement Robert DiDonato pulled my teaching pedagogy out of the dark ages. While a Ph.D. student I was awarded a DAAD scholarship to attend a six-week summer seminar at the University of California-Berkeley conducted by Claire Kramsch who transformed the way I understood the interaction between language and culture. Frank Donahue (Texas-Austin) and Peter Pfeiffer (Georgetown) have taught me much of what I know about program coordination and administration. John Norris (Hawai'i) has changed my approach to and thinking about language assessment. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to two teacher-researchers who have had a particularly profound effect on my career. Janet Swaffar at the University of Texas at Austin has helped me understand how texts work and the central role they can play in language teaching and learning, and Heidi Byrnes at Georgetown University has taught me the importance of curricular thinking and the benefits of systemic-functional linguistics for foreign language education. There have no doubt been many other influential educators in my life, but I feel a need to single out these scholars in particular.