Jeff Mellor

JEFF MELLOR received his early education in public schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He began his teaching career in German as a Lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology and as Instructor at the University of Chicago, before joining the faculty of the University of Tennessee in 1970. He was an exchange student at the Johann Wolfgang University in Frankfurt, participated in a Goethe Institute Seminar in Schwäbisch Hall in 1979 and received a Fulbright Summer Stipend in 1979 for Bonn and Berlin. A founding member of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German, he served one term as President and co-edited its newsletter, Der Spottvogel, for thirty years. He served as President of the Tennessee Foreign Language Teaching Association. He was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Association of Teachers in German in the 1980s and edited its journal, Die Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German from 2000 to 2004.

He oversaw the testing of spoken English (SPEAK® Testing Program) at the University from 1983 to 2006. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Interim Head of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures. Professor Mellor's research has touched on a variety of areas, beginning with his work on the Deutsches Wörterbuch of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

He has published on the Nibelungenlied and published materials for the AATG Materials Center (Weihnachten in Deutschland: Unterrichtsmaterialien vom deutschen Radio; Mögliche Begegnung der Herren Bach und Händel im Jahre 1747) and published on oral proficiency testing. He was the content author of Learn to Speak German, German Language Survival Manual, and German for Everyone (HyperGlot, subsequently: Learning Company, now: eLanguage). His current research is on the development of a spoken German norm in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with special emphasis on Johann Christoph Adelung.

Contact Information

Jeff Mellor
Professor; Ph.D.
The University of Chicago
714 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville , TN 37996

Phone: (865) 974-3298
E-Mail: mellor@utk.edu