Teaching focus

Linguistics:

• Psycholinguistics, with a focus on research in second language acquisition;
• phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics

English didactics:

• The teaching of English in preschools and primary schools;
• types of bilingual education

Main areas of research

• Psycholinguistics and phonetics, e.g. the production and perception of speech sounds in first and second language acquisition and interactions between early phonological and lexical development
• Foreign language learning and teaching, e.g. bilingual (immersion) programs in kindergarten, primary and secondary schools

Current research projects

• The acquisition of English as a second language by children in three German-English bilingual preschools
  (funded by grants from the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd, the "Stiftung Ravensburger Verlag" and the City of Heidenheim)
• The role of linguistic and subject variables in second language learning
• Bilingual programs in preschools, primary and secondary schools 
• Studies of cross-language vowel perception and production
• ELIAS – Early Language and Intercultural Acquisition Studies
  (EU Comenius project)

Publications

Links

http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781847691095

http://www.elias.bilikita.org/

Biography

Thorsten Piske studied English, Russian, general linguistics, educational sciences and philosophy at the University of Kiel, Germany. During his studies he spent one year in Wales working as an assistant teacher and conducting research on bilingualism and bilingual education. Two further study visits in St. Peterburg, Russia, followed in 1991 and 1992. After graduating with the university degree required for the teaching profession in Germany in February 1993, he spent four years as a lecturer in linguistics in the English Department of the University of Kiel. During this time he also worked on his PhD thesis, which was based on a research project on child language development funded by the German Research Foundation and which looked at interrelationships between early phonological and lexical development in children aged 7 to 24 months. From November 1997 to September 1999 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Alabama, USA. Here he was involved in various research projects, which were funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and which examined the role of linguistic and subject variables in second language learning. Since then he has also served as peer reviewer for several scientific journals such as Language Learning, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Phonetics and Phonetica. When he returned to Germany in the fall of 1999 he became assistant professor at the University of Kiel, where he continued to work in the field of second language acquisition and started to conduct research on immersion education. In October 2004 he was appointed Professor of Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language at the University of Education in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. On October 1, 2008 he became Vice Rector for Research, Development and International Relations at this institution.

In October 2011, he became chair of  "Teachin English as a Foreign Language" (TEFL, Fremdsprachendidaktik mit Schwerpunkt Didaktik des Englischen) at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg.