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Understanding Language - and Why It Matters
Long before China became an economic and political powerhouse and hosted the 2008 Olympics, Foreign Language Education Associate Professor Michael Everson knew that neglecting Chinese language and literature was foolish—perhaps even fatal. “If you look at where American bodies are buried since, say, 1945, there’s almost a direct correlation to areas we don’t teach in school,” Everson said. “Why is it we always seem to be fighting people we don’t learn about? Doesn’t that tell us something?” Everson has dedicated his career to helping illuminate how we learn language and why it matters. “America has to decide how it’s going to educate its young people, and I believe we have to train them to be global citizens,” he said. This means teaching students to understand other countries, cultures and, especially, languages. Everson’s Oak Park, Ill., high school offered an Asian history class that sealed this interest. “After I took that course, I can honestly say that the pattern for my life’s work was set,” he said, adding that he still corresponds with the course’s teacher. Upon completing his master’s degree in Chinese literature and studying at Taiwan Normal University for a year, Everson decided he wanted to see the world. So after a stint teaching English in Japan, he joined the Air Force, embarking on a 21-year military career that took Everson and his family to Australia and Korea. Most of his work involved military intelligence and air defense. He later taught Chinese at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The military also funded his return to graduate school, and in 1986 he received a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from The Ohio State University. While at Ohio State, he befriended fellow scholar and current colleague Leslie Schrier, who encouraged him to consult on an ambitious initiative—the Iowa Critical Languages Program, a combined effort by the College of Education and UI language departments training Russian, Chinese, and Japanese teachers for high schools. Everson joined the Iowa faculty after his retirement from the Air Force and has spent the last 14 years pursuing his second career as a scholar. Everson’s primary research interest is exploring how Western students whose first languages employ alphabetic writing systems learn to read Chinese. Most research in this area has focused on university-level students. “It’s exciting to think of the research opportunities that will avail themselves if Chinese is introduced to elementary, middle, or high schools,” Everson said. “We will gain a rare glimpse into how literacy skills develop among children and adolescents learning to read languages that involve two qualitatively different writing systems.” Everson was one of the first scholars in the world to study Chinese second-language reading through empirical research. “Many that have followed me have told me that my research studies and the way I’ve conducted them have been very influential to their work,” he says, describing this contribution as both humbling and gratifying. Though a scholar of Chinese language almost his entire career, Everson didn’t visit mainland China until 2007. “I’ve always studied China from afar and over a longer trajectory,” he says. “China has gone on that super trajectory of engaging us in a different way, and will continue to do so.” |
