PEOPLE

Claire Babanoury

The Lauder Institute (French) | email | (Website)

Claire Babanoury is the Director of the French language and Culture Program at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, which she joined in 1999. A French native, she lived and worked in Germany, Belgium, and France before coming to the US. She holds degrees in Language and Translation (Ecole d’Interprètes Internationaux, Mons, Belgium), English and German Languages and Literatures (University Jean Monnet, France), and in Teaching French as a Foreign Language (University Stendhal, France). Her fields of interest are in business language teaching practices and business communication, intercultural relations, francophone studies, and translation studies.

Haewon Cho

East Asian Languages and Civilizations (Korean) | email

Haewon Cho is Director of the Korean Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Lecturer in Foreign Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught Korean language courses since 1999, from beginning to advanced levels, at the University of Washington, University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania, and has also co-authored You Speak Korean!, a basic classroom-based Korean language textbook series, with Soohee Kim and Emily Curtis. She holds M.A. degrees in Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Washington and in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching and research interests include language assessment, and language curriculum development, and teaching with technology as well as the teaching of business language.

Sophie Degât-Willis

Romance Languages (Business French) | email

Sophie Degât-Willis is the Coordinator of Fren 130 and a Lecturer in French in the Department of Romance Languages since 2012. She holds three Master’s degrees. She earned her Master of Science in Management & Business Administration with a double major in European Law and Corporate Law from ESSEC Business School (Cergy, France) while pursuing a degree in Law at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise. In 2010, she decided to go back to her first love, languages (her undergraduate studies focused on the Humanities with a major in Italian) and combined it with her technical knowledge by enrolling in a Master of Arts in Specialized Business and Legal English Translation (Université Paris X, Nanterre). Among various professional experiences in fields such as marketing, foreign affairs, and law, she has founded two companies and is still managing one of them, Sophie Degat Translations. Her translation business specializes in legal, financial, and marketing documents, and works for various industries, including international hotel management groups, law firms, and audit companies.  After starting teaching French language and culture at the University of Pennsylvania, she decided to enhance her pedagogic and curricular design skills by pursing an M.S.Ed. in Intercultural Communication from Penn Graduate School of Education, writing her thesis on performing arts as a tool of empowerment in immigrant literacy education. She has presented her work at numerous conferences including NEALLT, ACTFL, and the Penn GSE Ethnography Forum. She teaches all levels of French, including specialized advanced courses, such as the French for Business curriculum (Fren211, Fren313), as well as Le Français dans le Monde (Fren229).

 Dr. David James

Germanic Languages and Literatures (Business German)| email

David James holds the position of Lecturer of Foreign Languages and Coordinator of Business German in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania.  He primarily teaches Business German and other language classes. His research interests include teaching culture in business language classes, second language acquisition, the intersection of language and identity and curriculum design. For the last four years, he has served as the Co-Director of the Summer Immersion Program in Germany.  Before coming to Penn in 2005, he taught German at Southwestern University and East Carolina University as well as ESL in Germany and the US. He received his PhD in Germanic Linguistics with a specialization in Sociolinguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003.

Geraldine Lebaudy

Romance Languages (Business Spanish) | email

Geraldine Lebaudy (Buenos Aires, Argentina) has been at the University of Pennsylvania since 1999.   She is an instructor in the Spanish Department, specializing in Business Spanish teaching and curriculum design for foreign language students as well as heritage and native speakers. In addition, she served as course coordinator and was the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching award.  She has taught English for Business in various English Language Programs at Penn, both for international business students and business professionals.  She has participated and presented at various national or regional conferences, such as Ciber (business languages) and Neallt (language learning and technology).  Moreover, she has directed the Summer Immersion Program for the Lauder Institute (a joint-degree program with the Wharton School of Business) and has accompanied incoming MBA students to Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Spain to study the local language, culture, and business (one and two-month programs, summers 2004-2011).  Before joining Penn, she taught French, English, and Spanish in universities in the US, Argentina, and France.  She has studied at the Sorbonne, Paris and is ABD at SUNY at Albany specializing in comparative cultural studies.  Her interests include language pedagogy, technology and teaching methods, and intercultural studies.

kdryanKatie Ryan

English Language Program (ELP) | email

Katie Ryan is Programs Manager at Penn’s English Language Programs (ELP), where she oversees study abroad experiences for visiting international undergraduates and professionals seeking to improve their English for specific academic or professional purposes. Katie specializes in developing and implementing custom programs for university and corporate partners, such as the Toyota Motor Corporation, Hitotsubashi University in Japan, and the University of Electronic Science & Technology of China. Before joining the administrative team in 2011, Katie taught in the ELP’s general Intensive Program and the International Teaching Assistants program. She has also worked as a teacher trainer and materials writer/editor with the US Department of State’s Office of English Language Programs, and as a teacher of English as a foreign language at St. Gabriel’s College in Bangkok, Thailand. She holds a BA in Communication from Loyola University Maryland and an MA in TESOL from American University in Washington, DC.

Tomoko Takami

East Asian Languages and Civilizations (Japanese) | email

Tomoko Takami is Director of the Japanese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Senior Lecturer in Foreign Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has been teaching Business Japanese/ Japanese for the Professions since the year 2000.  Her research interests include business language instruction with a focus on cross-cultural issues, curriculum and material development, teaching and learning of culture and language and its roles and functions in globalization.  She is Founding Chair of Japanese for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group at the American Association of Teachers of Japanese since 2007.  She chaired “Symposium on Teaching Japanese for Professional Purposes” held at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.  She also has chaired “Student Panel: Career and Internship Opportunities in Japan” at the University of Pennsylvania annually since 2007.

Tomoko has been engaged with multiple projects on business language instruction.  She received SAS Language Teaching Innovation Grant from the University of Pennsylvania for the material development for her Japanese for the Professions course in 2006 and 2007 and won the “Best Project Award” in the 2007 Grant Showcase.   She also received Penn Lauder CIBER Faculty Research/Curriculum Development Grant in 2008, 2009 and 2010.  Furthermore, she was awarded with Business Language Research and Teaching Grant from CIBER Consortium for Business Language Research and Teaching in 2007 and 2013.  She has made numerous presentations, led workshops, and published a book and several academic articles on business language instruction.

Tomoko is a Board Member and National Japanese Exam Director of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ).

Selected Publications:

  • Powering UP Your Japanese through Case Studies: Intermediate and Advanced Japanese.  (2014) Japan Times, Inc.
  • “Infusing the National Standards into Business Language Curriculum” (2010) Global Business Languages. 15, Article 4. Purdue University CIBER.
  • “Building Connections between Language and Culture Learning: A Hybrid Curriculum Model for More Effective Business Japanese Teaching.” (2010). In M. Gueldry (Eds) How Globalizing Professions Deal with National Languages: Studies in Cultural Studies and Cooperation (pp.79-99) The Edwin Mellen Press.
  • Editor, “Meeting Student Needs: Perspectives on Teaching Japanese for Professional   Purposes” (2010). Association of Teachers of Japanese Occasional Paper.
  • “Employing International Business Cases for Business Language Instruction.”  (2008)  Global Business Languages. 13 (pp 63-79). Purdue University CIBER.

Grace Wu

East Asian Languages and Civilizations (Chinese) | email

Grace Wu is a Senior Lecturer in Foreign Language in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Chinese literacy and Chinese character teaching. Currently, Grace is the Chinese Reading and Writing Course coordinator (CHIN 031, CHIN 032, CHIN 231, CHIN 232) at the Penn Chinese Language Program. Her Chinese Biographies series have been selected as the SAS best grant project of 2012. Grace Wu has been teaching CHIN 081-980 Online Beginning Business Chinese I since 20012 and CHIN 082-981 Online Beginning Business Chinese II since 2014.