Sandra Alfers designs mobile app for studying German

Sandra Alfers, associate professor of German at Western Washington University, has designed an app for studying German that recently was released by Study By App, LLC on I-Tunes. The app, “German for Beginners,” includes more than three hours of easy-to-follow audio lectures and numerous images that can aid students in understanding the German language and its culture. The app is presented as an introductory German course, designed around Mia Haussmann, a German teenager from Berlin, and provides cultural information as students study items such as the alphabet, numbers, verb conjugations, cases, prepositions and basic vocabulary. “One of my interests is in the area of second-language acquisition, and I am particularly intrigued by the implementation of new technologies in the classroom. This quarter, I am teaching two sections of German 101, and I am testing how (and even if!) students respond to this mobile way of learning,” Alfers said. Alfers, originally from Oldenburg, Germany, received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2003. At Western, she teaches German on all levels of the curriculum. She has received several teaching awards, among them the Inspirational Faculty Member Award at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., and the Faculty Member of the Year Award at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. A past recipient of a prestigious TraiNDaF leadership scholarship from the German government and the American Association of Teachers of German, Alfers is actively involved in promoting the study of German in Washington State and beyond. As a trainer for the Goethe-Institute San Francisco, Germany’s premier cultural institution, she regularly leads workshops for German teachers (K-12). The study of German language and culture at Western is part of the university’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages, which also includes Chinese, Classical Studies, French, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.