She studied English and German at the Universities Würzburg and Tübingen to become a teacher. After the first Staatsexamen she did her PhD on the acquisition of infinitival constructions in a research project at the University of Tübingen and trained to be a professional trainer in adult education. After an intermediate year in the English department of the University of Freiburg (replacing an Akademische Rätin), she came to the University of Mannheim in 1996. In 2002 she was awarded the Baden-Württemberg Award in Teaching. She spent the academic year 2012/
She teaches a large number of topics, among them:
Her philosophy of teaching is that students only really learn if they engage intensively with the subject matter and she increasingly uses digital media for this engagement.