Daniel Walter
Associate Professor of German and Linguistics
Dan Walter is a scholar in second language acquisition, with intersections in psychology, linguistics, education, and German studies. Specifically, he is interested in the effects of conscious knowledge on learner trajectories and the development of morphosyntax in second language learners. He received his BA in German, with a Teacher Certification in German, from Dickinson College in 2008. From 2008-2009, he received a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant fellowship and taugh at English as a second language at Gymnasium Eppendorf in Hamburg. He received his MA in German Studies from Michigan State University in 2011 and his PhD in Second Language Acquisition from Carnegie Mellon University, under the supervision of Dr. Brian MacWhinney, in 2015. In the 2015-16 academic year, Walter taught at Morehouse College and Atlanta Technical College and served as a coordinator for the German American Cultural foundation before joining the faculty at Oxford College as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2016. Following a national search, he was promoted to Assistant Professor of German and Linguistics beginning in the Fall of 2019. In 2024 he was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
Dr. Walter’s teaches primarily at the elementary and intermediate German level and in Linguistics. His linguistics offerings include Structure of Human Language, Foundations of Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics. He also teaches upper level German courses over the summer, including Reading for German for graduate students in various disciplines and special topics in German studies. He has co-directed the Emory German study abroad program and taugh an advanced course on Dialects and Multilingualism in Germany. He also advises senior theses and directed studies in linguistics and German.
As a researcher, Walter takes part in the Oxford Research Scholars program and his students have presented at local, national, and international conferences. He continually works with undergraduate students on publications in linguistics, education, and German studies journals. He has presented at a number of international conferences, such as the Second Language Research Forum and the American Association of Applied Linguistics.
In service to his field(s), he has been the president of the Metro German Group of Atlanta, the president of the American Association of Teachers of German Georgia Chapter, the reviews editor for the German language education journal Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German from 2016-2022, and serves on the editorial board of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German and the newly establish open-access journal Language Development Research. He also reviews frequently for Applied Psycholinguistics, Die Unterrichtspraxis and Foreign Language Annals, among others. He is a member of the American Association of Applied Linguistics, the Modern Language Association, the American Association of Teachers of German, the German Studies Association, and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Education
BA| Dickinson College| 2008
MA| Michigan State University| 2011
Ph.D.| Carnegie Mellon University| 2015
Courses Taught
English 185 (First Year Multilingual Writing), 186 (First Year Writing), 399R (Independent Research)
German 101 (Elementary German 1), 102 (Elementary German 2), 201 (Intermediate German 1), 202 (Intermediate German 2), 210 (German for Reading), 297R (Independent Study), 301 (German Studies 1, Literature), 370B (The Austrian Experience)
Linguistics 201 (Foundations of Linguistics), 212W (Structure of Human Language), 317 (Psycholinguistics), 318 (Second Language Acquisition), 397R (Independent Research), 499 (Senior Guided Research)
DSC 101 (Discovery Seminar), MLP 101 (Milestone Project)
Accomplishments
Editorial Board Member, Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German
Editorial Board Member, Language Development Research
German Professor of the Year 2022, American Association of Teachers of German, Georgia Chapter
Publications
* indicates undergraduate co-author
Books and Edited Volumes
Walter, D. & Embeywa, R. (under contract). Haven? Forced migration and learning German as a second language in Hamburg, Germany. DeGruyter.
Walter, D. (2023). Psycholinguistic approaches to instructed second language acquisition: Linking theory, findings and practice. Multilingual Matters.
Miller, R., Martin, K., Eddingtion, C., Henery, A., Miguel, N., Tseng, A., Tuninetti, A., & Walter, D. (Eds.). (2014). Selected proceedings of the 2012 Second Language Research Forum: Building bridges between disciplines. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Refereed Journal Articles and Conference Proceedings
Blake, C., Ivanoski, L., & Walter, D. (in preparation). Labor market returns for linguistic clusters: An application of gravity models to employment and compensation outcomes. Journal of Regional Science.
Walter, D., Ruck, J., & Lehrich, S. (in preparation). “It’ll be real German, but German with a little twist”: Teaching dialects in the study abroad classroom. Modern Language Journal.
Walter, D. & Shi, J.* (accepted). Beyond Xier: An exploration of neopronoun usage by German speakers on Twitter. Journal of Gender and Language.
Walter, D., Galya, F., & Cai, J. (2024). The effect of cue length and position on noticing and learning of determiner agreement pairings: Evidence from a cue-balanced artificial vocabulary learning task. PLoS ONE 19(7), e0302355.
Walter, D. (2024). Uncertainty is in the form: A functional, meaning-based approach to teaching ambiguity as author choice through Kafka’s Vor dem Gesetz. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 57(1), 118-134.
Yoon, H.*, Bond, K.*, & Walter, D. (2023). Concept-based language instruction effects for second and heritage language learners: The case of Korean speech level. Heritage Language Journal 20, 1-34.
Walter, D. & Schenker, T. (2022). Surviving or thriving? Experiences and job satisfaction of language instructors in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Language Teaching, 2(11), 1-14.
Blake, C. & Walter, D. (2021). Heritage language labor market returns: The importance of speaker density at the state level. Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 4, 1-19.
Walter, D. (2020). The acquisition of German declension in additive and concept-based approaches in instructed SLA. Linguistics, Interaction and Acquisition, Special Issue: The second language acquisition of case systems, 11(1), 130-162.
Walter, D. (2019). Student uses of the first language for L2 classroom interactions. In H. Wilson, N. King, E. J. Park, & K. Childress (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2017 Second Language Research Forum at Ohio State University (pp. 200-214). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Walter, D. & MacWhinney, B. (2018). The impact of co-occurrence and context on the prediction of long-distance separable prefixes. Language and Communication 58, 24-33.
Walter, D. & van Compernolle, R. A. (2015). Teaching German declension as meaning: A concept-based approach. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 11(1), 68-85.
Carpenter, B., Achugar, M., Walter, D., & Earhart, M. (2015). Developing teachers’ critical language awareness: A case study of guided participation. Linguistics and Education, 32(A), 82-97.
Walter, D. & MacWhinney, B. (2015). German majors‘ grammatical gender knowledge. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 48(1), 25-40.
Walter, D. & Kraemer, A. (2013). SPRICH: Student Provided enRICHment: Building a language community. Neues Curriculum.
Walter, D. (2013). Negotiations of power in multilingual university environments. The International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, 2(4), 1-19.
Walter, D. (2012). Of man and (Schreib-)Maschine. Focus on German Studies, 18, 53-66.
Book Chapters
Walter, D. (2024). Bi/Multilingual skills development in second language education programs. In S. Karpava, N. Pavlou, & K. Grohmann (Eds.) New approaches to multilingualism, language learning, and teaching (pp. 161-178). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Walter, D. (2023). Boundary crossing from the start: 55 years of second language grammatical gender research in review. In D. Zhang & R. T. Miller (Eds.) Crossing boundaries in researching, understanding, and improving language education (pp. 57-78). Springer.
Presentations
"High Impact Practices in Study Abroad Contexts." ACTFL. Philadelphia, PA, 2024.
"Bringing German Dialects from the “Wild” into the Study Abroad Classroom." German Studies Association Conference. Atlanta, GA, 2024.
"Labor market returns for linguistic clusters: An application of gravity models to employment and compensation outcomes." North American Regional Science Conference. San Diego, CA, 2023. & Southern Regional Science Association. Savannah, GA, 2023.
"Beyond Xier: An exploration of neopronoun usage by German speakers." American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Langauges. Boston, MA, 2022 & German Linguistics Annual Conference. Banff, Canada, 2023. & Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, Boise, ID, 2023.
"Uncertainty is in the Form: A systemic functional approach to ambiguity in Kafka's Vor dem Gesetz." German Studies Association. Houston, TX, 2022 & German Linguistics Annual Conference. Banff, Canada, 2023.
"Heritage language labor market returns: The importance of speaker density at the state level." American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference. Denver, CO, 2020 *cancelled due to covid - virtual 2021.
"Student Uses of their L1 in the L2 classroom: 'How much' is the wrong question." Second LanguageResearch Forum. The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2017.
"Concept-based instruction of German declension." Workshop: L2 Acquisition of Alignment Patterns in Typologically Diverse Languages: Case and Agreement. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, 2016.
"A concept-based approach to teaching German declension." American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference. Toronto, Canada, 2015.
"Critical language awareness approaches in the Americas: Theoretical principles, pedagogical practices and distribution of intellectual labor." American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference. Portland, OR, 2014.
"Graduating German majors’ knowledge of grammatical gender." Germanic Linguistic Association Conference. Purdue University, IL, 2014.
"Using discussion boards to foster a classroom community." Northeastern Association for Language Learning Technology Conference. Carnegie Mellon University, PA, 2012.
"Scaffolding L2 reading comprehension with Prezi: A new medium for German fairytales." 4th Biennial Not Your Grandma’s German(-ic Languages) Classroom: Language, Literature and Culture in 21st Century Foreign Language Education. University of Texas, Austin, TX, 2012.
"SPRICH: Student Provided enRICHment: Building a language community." 8th Annual Southeast Coastal Conference on Languages and Literatures. Georgia Southern University, GA, 2011.
Research Interests
Second Language Acquisition
Morphosyntax
German as a Second Language
Psycholinguistics
Interdisciplinary Language Research
Minority Issues in Second Language Education