NorWords

In 2002, Norwords was officially founded by Nancy Aarsvold and Kari Lie while they were teaching Norwegian together at St. Olaf College and in the midst of writing an introductory textbook for Norwegian called Sett i gang. They were also developing a large multimedia component for the textbook by videotaping native speakers talking about their everyday lives in Norway. During the process, Nancy and Kari collected nearly 1000 short video clips and pioneered the use of lamps from Target and K-Mart to light their home-made video studio. Now in 2005-2006, Nancy and Kari are piloting the textbook at several schools one last time before the final color printing in the summer of 2006.

Kari is offering online courses using the Sett i gang materials via her website, norwegianonline.com and Nancy is developing interactive materials for Norwegian language learners on her website, NorskNett.com.

Nancy Aarsvold

Nancy Aarsvold has been teaching Norwegian for over 20 years and is currently working as a Norwegian Instructor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She teaches beginning and intermediate Norwegian language courses and specializes in materials development, integrating technology into language teaching, and second language acquisition.

Nancy has a B.A. in Norwegian / English and Secondary Teaching Certification from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and an M.A. in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Minnesota. In addition, she attended the International Summer School in Oslo and took the Diplomeksamen after a year of study at the University of Oslo. Previously, Nancy has taught at Camp Norway, the University of Minnesota, and Augsburg College. She can be contacted at aarsvoln [at] stolaf [dot] edu.

Kari Lie
Born and raised in the Twin Cities (Minnesota), Kari is currently a Norwegian Instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently in a Ph.D. program with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics (how people learn, use and store second languages) and a minor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature. Her dissertation will focus on learning Norwegian online.

She has a B.A. in Scandinavian Studies, History, and Political Science from Concordia College in Moorhead MN, and an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction of Second Languages and Cultures from the University of Minnesota. Kari attended eight study abroad programs, seven of which were in Norway. Previously, Kari has taught Norwegian at the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College and at Skogfjorden, the Norwegian language village located in Bemidji, MN where she also a villager for 10 years. In addition, Kari has also taught numerous adult education classes for both language and cooking at the Edina Community center.

Kari specializes in second language acquisition and instruction, curriculum development, and Sami studies. She can be contacted at kari [at] norwegianonline [dot] com.