Lenore Williams began self-studying German in high school, when her older brother was stationed at a military base in Bavaria.
“When [I was] thinking about ‘maybe I should go visit him,’ a natural first step was ‘maybe I should learn the language.’” Williams said. “I just started on Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, those sorts of things. I wasn’t really getting anywhere with it, of course, but the interest still stayed.”
Williams never had the opportunity to visit her brother in Germany, but stayed committed to her language studies when she entered college. While at Wake Forest, she studied abroad in two renowned German university towns—Freiburg im Breisgau during the academic year and Jena over the summer—and said the experiences changed her life.
She particularly enjoyed living with a host family in Jena, recalling conversations at the dinner table that immersed her in everyday German culture.
“Germans have a reputation for being very brash and direct, and they are very direct, but they’re very kind people,” Williams said. “It felt like I was able to be more open about who I am as a person, and be more open to other perspectives instead of just seeing a difference and feeling intimidated by that. Using the language, as well, was a great way to bridge that gap, because a lot of Germans are very appreciative when people try to learn their language.”
Since returning to Winston-Salem, Williams has continued to flourish along her German-learning journey. One semester, she undertook an independent study in second-language acquisition of German with Tina Boyer, the head of the German department.
“I’d already taken a few linguistics courses and had a baseline knowledge of it that we applied to German, but as the class evolved, since I was the only student… it turned into a pedagogical class for teaching German,” Williams explained. “We looked into a lot of German textbooks and methods of teaching, and that’s what led me to writing my honors thesis about German textbooks.”
Williams’ honors thesis assesses three German textbooks that were designed for American universities to compare their methods of instilling communicative and cultural competence.
“It’s supposed to be a guide for curriculum designers or heads of departments at other schools to see ‘is this textbook good for our goals?’” Williams explained.
While she’s excited to help other students through her research, Williams is just as eager to continue pursuing her own language learning goals.
“I’m always going to be a lifelong student,” she said. “I feel like I have more to learn about other cultures. I would love to learn more languages, especially in other language families. I would love to learn Chinese [and] Spanish.”
After graduating from Wake Forest, she will dive even deeper into her passion for language education through a post-baccalaureate program for speech pathology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Reflecting on the close-knit academic community fostered by her professors and classmates, Williams recommended that every Wake Forest student take at least one German or a German in translation course.
“The German department, I would say, is one of the best departments,” Williams said. “The main reason I even stuck with German here is because the professors are really kind [and] the study abroad opportunities are not to be missed at all. Even if you don’t want to learn the language… I think the community that they’ve built there is really amazing.”
