Professor Emerita, School of Education and Linguistics, University of Michigan Research Scientist, Emerita, U-M Former Director, ELI, U-M
She/Her
About
Diane Larsen-Freeman was the director of the ELI from 2002-2008. She was also a professor of education and a professor of linguistics. From 2008 to 2012, she was a Research Scientist at the ELI. Prior to her arrival in Ann Arbor, Diane was a professor of applied linguistics at the Graduate SIT Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont. She was, however, no stranger to the University, having earned her master's degree and doctorate in linguistics here in the mid-seventies.
For the past almost 50 years, Diane has conducted research in second language acquisition and reviewed and synthesized research literature, the latter activity leading to the publication of a leading introduction to the field, An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research (Longman Publishing, 1991, with Michael Long).
Diane has also edited a book Discourse Analysis and Second Language Research (1980, Newbury House), and coauthored (with Marianne Celce-Murcia) The Grammar Book: Form, Meaning and Use for English Language Teachers (Cengage, 3rd edition, 2015.) She also has directed the popular grammar series Grammar Dimensions: Form, Meaning, and Use (Heinle/Cengage, 2007), which is in its fourth edition. In addition, her language teaching methodology book Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (with Marti Anderson, Oxford University Press, 2011) is now in its third edition.
In 2003 Diane published Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring, in which she looks at language from the perspective of dynamical systems. In the book she explores the complexity, dynamism, and nonlinearity of language and its acquisition (Heinle/Thomson, 2003). Her book with Lynne Cameron, Complex Dynamic Systems and Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press, 2008) amplifies this perspective for the applied linguistics areas of first and second language acquisition, discourse and the language classroom. The final chapter is on researching applied linguistics from a complexity theory perspective. This book was awarded the Kenneth W. Mildenberger book prize by the Modern Language Journal. Nick Ellis and Diane coedited Language as a Complex System (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and she authored Second Language Development: Ever Expanding in 2018.
In 2010 Diane was Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and in 2011 she received the highest award that the American Association for Applied Linguistics confers, its Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award.
Diane was a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Educational Linguistics Division of the University of Pennsylvania beginning in 2012 and retiring in 2019.
