Bio
Chris Litten is a PhD student in the Applied Linguistics and Technology program at Iowa State University and social gadabout. Born in Ohio but reared up in West Virginia he spent his teenage years working in radio. After falling off the turnip truck in Upstate New York he earned a B.S. from Ithaca College in Television & Radio Production with a concentration in audio production. However, the dust never settles in the mind of Chris Litten and after finding a career in radio unfulfilling he decided to put all his book learning to use and worked for a few years at a conversation school in Japan. Deciding it was for him he furthered his education and career by receiving an M.S.Ed. from Temple University Japan in TESOL. Upon graduating he spent several years teaching at various universities in the Tokyo area mostly specializing in teaching communicative English and a bit of academic writing using five-dollar words. He is interested in authentic & spontaneous spoken language, disfluencies, and bring more colloquial representations of language into the classroom. He is constantly trying to improve his Japanese as well as his English and enjoys spending time with his dog when he can.