Kristine Kershul

Kristine Kershul
Kristine Kershul, Rwanda 2011
Born	Kristine K. Kershul Oregon, U.S.
Occupation	Author, Publisher Linguist, Teacher Creator of the 10 Minutes a Day Series and the Language Map Series Founder and President of Bilingual Books, Inc.
Education	Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees in German Languages and Literature
Genre	Foreign Language Learning
Notable works	10 Minutes a Day Book Series 10 Minutes a Day Audio CD Series Language Map Series
Website
www.kershul.com

Kristine K. Kershul is an American author, publisher, linguist and teacher. Kershul founded Bilingual Books, Inc. in 1981 with the publication of her first book, German in 10 Minutes a Day and the development of the 10 Minutes a Day Series. She has authored books, audio CDs, phrase guides and interactive computer software for 20 languages.

Kershul attributes her lifelong passion for languages to her family. She grew up in a trilingual home where in addition to English, her father spoke Croatian and her mother spoke Danish.

Kershul studied in the U.S., then took her academic endeavors to Heidelberg, Germany where she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She received a second graduate degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and then went on to do her doctoral studies in German Languages and Literature.

Kershul worked her way through school as a bilingual tour guide, traveling all over Europe and parts of Asia and Africa.

She also served as a translator for the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, West Germany and for Berlitz in Europe and the U.S. She spent ten years teaching at universities in Germany and the U.S. where she noticed students experiencing the same problems. They were self-conscious speaking and Kershul wanted to help them progress to the level where they were laughing and using the language comfortably.

The idea for her first book grew out of what she observed as a teacher and a traveler.

Kershul saw the need for a language instruction method that would not intimidate or frustrate beginning students. She wanted to fill the gap between text books and traditional phrase books. She developed a fresh approach to learning a foreign language, which remained academically solid while geared to the traveler. In 1981 she designed and wrote her first book, German in 10 Minutes a Day, which was the beginning of a series of language-learning books that launched Bilingual Books, Inc. By the end of the first ten months, Kershul had authored a total of five books, adding French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese to create the 10 Minutes a Day Series. In the next three years, she would add Inglés, Norwegian, Japanese, Russian and Hebrew languages to the Series.