Fulbright Scholar's Seminars about Language Teaching Tools
Last modified: 2020. February 03.
Chandler Fritz is currently serving as a Fulbright Scholar to teach English at Eszterházy Károly University (EKU). The Centre for International Relations is pleased to host Chandler and we have already organized two interactive seminars for our English-teaching faculty members and for language teachers from various schools in Eger.
Chandler holds a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and Philosophy from Arizona State University. In addition to being a Fulbright Scholar, he is the recipient of the following prizes: Arizona State University Outstanding Graduate in Humanities, Dean's Medalist in English, and President's Scholar.
Chandler has written and edited sketches, jokes, monologues and directed improv practices for weekly, student-run comedy shows during his undergraduate studies. He also served as head writer for his university's variety comedy troupe, Tempe Late Night. The topic of his first seminar at EKU was from the field of American improvised comedy ("improv"), its history and its many games. The „Comedy in the Classroom" seminar gave the participants a chance to see first-hand how improvisation can be used in classrooms. Chandler presented that theatrical elements, usually dramatic acting, has long been an effective tool in ESL classrooms. Adding elements of comedy training to this tradition could help cater to the approach to younger students struggling with vocabulary or to advanced students interested in perfecting their conversational timing.
Chandler is also the sole grantee under the Roma Initiative Project to strengthen the Roma community's cultural awareness. He taught literature and creative writing in Juvenile and State Prisons in the United States and also to orphans in Haiti. In our University, Chandler taught participants on his second seminar about „Creative Writing", a topic that was once an obscure and questionable field of academics and is now one of the most popular forms of English study in nearly all respectable American universities. Chandler argued how creative writing exercises can be a useful tool for language instructors. In this workshop, we learned about the standard of creative writing instruction in the US ("the writer's workshop") by actively participating in creative writing exercises.
Chandler is going to give another public lecture during the International Week, where the topic of this upcoming conference hosted by the Centre for International Relations at EKU is VISION 2020: Innovation in English Foreign Language Teaching.
We hope to see you there!
Written by Johanna Geml, CIR
