Galal Walker
Professor Emeritus, DEALL
100 Hagerty Hall
1775 College Road
Columbus, OH
43210
Areas of Expertise
- Language and culture
- Computer applications to language pedagogy
- Chinese language pedagogy
Galal Walker, Professor, OSU Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director, National East Asian Languages Resource Center at The Ohio State University, has served the fields of Chinese language study and the less commonly taught languages in varied capacities such as President of the National Association of Self-Instructional Language Programs; member, Steering Committee of the National Council for the Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages; member, Executive board of the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers' Association; task force member for the College Boards Chinese Advanced Placement Program. He is instrumental in the development of Ohio State’s World Media and Culture Center, a unique facility for language and culture learning, development, and exchanges. Currently he serves as President of the Midwest US-China Association, a non-partisan association that promotes economic, educational, and cultural exchanges between China and the Midwestern American states. Grants and awards he has received include Chinese: Communicating in the Culture (US Department of Education), Principal Investigator and National Foreign Language Resource Center (US Department of Education), development contract for Kaleidoscope: A Course in Intermediate to Advanced Spoken Cantonese (Center for the Advancement of Language Learning); development grant, Defense Language Institute. Selected publications include co-authorship of Chinese: Communicating in the Culture and audio programs for beginning Mandarin; he has designed and edited the five-volume series and ancillaries for Kaleidoscope. He has written widely on issues related to the less commonly taught languages, including Learning Less Commonly Taught Languages: An Agreement on the Bases for the Training of Teachers (co-authored), OSU Foreign Language Publications; "Design for an Intensive Chinese Curriculum" in Chinese Pedagogy: An Emerging Field, Scott McGinnis, ed.; Foreign Language Annals; Shaping the Future: Challenges and Opportunities (Northeast Conference Reports). In 2010, he edited and contributed to The Pedagogy of Performing Another Culture. He was instrumental in the development and implementation of Individualized Instruction in Chinese at OSU, and he has been actively investigating the integration of media in the advanced language instruction. Walker is currently Director of the OSU Midwest US-China Flagship, which includes the Global Professional Service Corps—a program of internships in China for Americans with advanced language proficiency. The Flagship Program provides American students the opportunities to reach the highest levels of proficiency in spoken and written Chinese in the context of Chinese workplaces.
In 2003, Galal Walker became the first recipient in the US and the English speaking world to receive the “China Language and Culture Friendship Award,” from the Ministry of Education of China. In 2010, the People’s Government of the City of Qingdao awarded him the “Qingdao Award” for contributing to the social and economic life of the city.