Edie Allen |
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Edie Allen began teaching English while pursuing a BA in International Studies and an MA in Linguistics from UNC-Chapel Hill. In her first teaching job in 1988 she taught English survival skills to migrant farm workers in rural North Carolina. Since that time she has remained active in various outreach efforts promoting literacy in the public schools and the community, coordinating programs such as Spanish School Reading Partners and the Prison Book Project.
Professionally, she has taught in adult education at Durham Technical Community College and in higher education at UNC and Duke University. She served on a steering committee at UNC–Chapel Hill to design and develop the first International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Summer Institute and fall curriculum. As Director of the ITA Summer Institute she taught presentation skills and coordinated professional events. She also taught presentation and communication skills at IBM and in Summer Institutes in American Business, Communication and Culture at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University where she was responsible for organizing trips to local businesses and to Washington D.C. In 1999 she joined the English for International Students program (EIS) at Duke University where she is currently teaching oral communication skills and academic writing skills to international graduate students.
Professional interests include vocabulary acquisition, genre analysis and pronunciation. Recent presentations at TESOL 2004 and 2005 explored the use of semantic analysis in teaching the Academic Word List. Outside of work she is learning how to be a better photographer and enjoys traveling, spending time with friends and supporting the creative endeavors of her husband and their three children.