Thursday, August 24
Orientation for New MA Students*
Dr. Theres Grüter, Professor and Graduate Chair, UH: Mānoa
1. Navigating your MA progress
We will examine the MA advising form together and talk about optional tracks, core courses, seminar courses, and electives. Students will better understand what it takes to complete their degrees in a timely manner.
2. The relationship between language teaching and research
New students sometimes struggle to see connections between their interest in classroom teaching and research projects that they design and analyze in their courses; we will explore this and look at examples of research that are connected to teaching, as well as research on other topics in SLS that are not directly linked to classrooms.
3. Resources for academic and personal support
We will discuss the resources on campus that offer academic support (such as The Writing Center) as well as offices that offer counseling and other forms of support to students.
*This talk is internal to SLS MA students.
Thursday, August 31
Orientation for Continuing MA students*
Dr. Theres Grüter, Professor and Graduate Chair, UH: Mānoa
Dr. Betsy Gilliland, Associate Professor, UH: Mānoa
Getting your Scholarly Paper (SP) or MA thesis off the ground can be daunting, and you might be tempted to put it off and procrastinate. The goal of this Brown Bag is to help you get organized for conceptualizing, conducting, and writing up your SP/MA thesis research. We will go over the steps you need to take in this process, timelines towards graduation, and some tips for writing your SP/thesis. We will also go over some common questions about applying for jobs and PhD programs after you complete your MA.
This Brown Bag is primarily intended for continuing MA students, but all SLS graduate students are welcome to attend.
Come with any questions or concerns you might have about SP/thesis writing and beyond!
*This talk is internal to SLS MA students.
Thursday, September 7
Using CLT Resources to Promote Active Learning in SLS Classrooms*
Michaela Nuesser, PhD student, Department of Second Language Studies; Representatives from the Center for Language & Technology
With the aim of showing how easily the Center for Language and Technology’s (CLT) resources can transform SLS classes into interactive learning experiences, this Brown Bag session will highlight three examples of activities that use CLT facilities, carried out in SLS 150-002 in the Spring of 2023. Following Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956), the activities span from simple “understanding” to “creation” tasks, thus covering a wide range of learning objectives. This could be particularly beneficial in undergraduate classes, of which students may not encounter situations demanding the application of concepts presented in a simple lecture. Addressing common concerns of instructors, we uncover how these activities do not take longer than their lecture equivalents and, thanks to generous CLT support, simplify the teaching process. Attendees are welcome to come prepared to discuss possibilities for turning some of their class topics into interactive learning experiences using CLT resources.
We are fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with CLT experts who will be present during the talk to address any questions regarding facilities, equipment, and procedures.
*This talk is internal to the SLS department.
Thursday, September 14
Drafting Your IRB Protocol: Getting it Right the First Time
SLS Faculty (Dr. Dustin Crowther, Dr. Betsy Gilliland, Dr. Nicole Ziegler)
One of the key challenges for both graduate students and faculty is negotiating the requirements of a university’s institutional review board (IRB). In this presentation, Drs. Crowther, Gilliland, and Ziegler provide guidance on how to draft an IRB protocol, a necessary procedure for the vast majority of SLS scholarly papers, qualifying papers, and dissertations. Guidance will be provided on how to interpret the range of questions to be asked, the extent to which you should provide details in your response, and some tricks-of-the-trade relevant to IRB protocols specific to Second Language Studies research.
Thursday, September 21
No Talk Scheduled
Thursday, September 28
No Talk Scheduled
Thursday, October 5
Investigating the effect of materials motivational design on Saudi university students’ motivation and L2 writing performance: An experimental mixed-method design using Keller’s ARCS Model*
Raed Alzahrani, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
According to Boo et al. (2015), Between 2005 and 2014, the majority of L2 motivation studies focused on general learner motivation, neglecting research on motivating learners in classroom contexts. Similarly, Sudina (2021) stated that most research on motivation focused on students’ individual motivation, even though what teachers do to motivate students in the classroom is also of major interest. Although some attempts were made to propose motivational strategies for teachers (Dörnyei, 2001), traditional motivation research in SLA rarely considered the influence of classroom materials and instructional practices. To this end, the present study brings Keller’s (2010) Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction (ARCS) model from educational psychology to applied linguistics, as recommended by Crookes and Schmidt (1991) and Lamb (2019), to address how materials and associated teacher instructional practices can be motivating based on a motivational theory of instruction. It sought to investigate the effect of teachers’ implementation of an ARCS-based motivational strategies intervention on the motivation and L2 writing development of EFL learners.
The study employed an experimental mixed-method approach, randomly assigning 82 Saudi adult EFL students to an experimental group (N = 50) or a control group (N = 32). Two teachers in the experimental group received an instructional guide for implementing 17 ARCS-based motivational strategies, while one teacher in the control group followed conventional methods. Data collection occurred over a 7-week period, involving pre-posttest motivation surveys and writing tests collected from students, audio recordings and observations to ensure the implementation of the intervention, and exit interviews and reflection journals collected from teachers and students to gauge their perception of the intervention.
The findings obtained from the quantitative analysis showed that the ARCS-based intervention had a small to medium effect on students’ instruction-related motivation, while no significant changes were found on other aspects of motivation. It also showed that the intervention had a medium significant effect on students’ overall L2 writing development, specifically on aspects of content and communicative achievement. Nevertheless, no significant changes were discerned in aspects related to organization, language, and fluency, despite more pronounced changes over time in the treatment group compared to the control group. Qualitative analysis of students’ interviews unveiled students’ appreciation of specific strategies and a noticeable shift in their motivation. Teachers reported in the interviews personal growth as educators and expressed their intent to continue implementing these strategies in their teaching. The presentation will conclude by discussing the pedagogical implications stemming from these findings to encourage teachers to apply these strategies in their own educational contexts.
*This talk is internal to the SLS department.
Thursday, October 12
Automated Scoring for Elicited Imitation Tests: Proof of Concept for a Korean EIT and Sketching out Future Directions
Dr. Dan Isbell, Assistant Professor, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
In this talk, I will discuss (a) the findings of a recent study (with collaborators Kathy Kim and Xiaobin Chen) on the potential of automated scoring for a Korean Elicited Imitation test and (b) some ideas for future research and development work towards a suite of online, easily accessible autoscored EITs for L2 research.
Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are often used as a practical tool for measuring L2 proficiency. In this study, my colleagues and I explored the potential of applying three commercial automated speech recognition (ASR) tools—Amazon, Google, and Naver—in combination with several transcription
scoring metrics to automate Korean EIT scoring. Two hundred and four participants’ previously human-scored EITs (Isbell & Lee, 2022) were compared with automated EIT scores based on ASR transcriptions. Nearly all combinations of ASR platforms and transcription metrics correlated with original human EIT total scores above .90, with the Naver and Google transcriptions yielding the strongest correlations (r = .94-.96). Moreover, the item-level relationships between transcription metrics and original EIT scores generated moderate-to-large correlations near .80 for the Google and Naver transcriptions, thereby providing additional support for the validity of automated EIT scoring. We conclude with implications for prospective users and developers of machine-scored EITs.
So what next? I believe creating an online platform for administering and automatically scoring EITs for research purposes has a great deal of potential for improving L2 research and is more feasible than ever before. I will sketch out what this platform might entail, consider some technical and legal/ethical challenges, and describe what kind of research would be necessary to support the use of such online, autoscored EITs. Feedback on these ideas will be solicited, and I am also interested to receive comments or feedback from language program administrators and teachers about the potential use(fulness) of autoscored EITs for educational tests (e.g., placement tests).
Thursday, October 19
Going Post-Ac: Preparing for the Post-Academic Career
Dr. Karen Kelsky, Founder and President, The Professor is In
Abstract TBA
Thursday, October 26
Nativelikeness in L2 maturational constraints: L2 acquisition of Japanese by immigrant children in Japan
Dr. Tomomi Nishikawa, Associate Professor, Faculty of Languages and Culture, Ochanomizu University
I would like to start this presentation with a brief introduction to the child immigrant population in Japan. Following this, I will discuss my earlier projects on L2 maturational constraints with this population (Nishikawa, 2014; 2019/2022; 2021). The first two articles look at the acquisition of relative clauses and collocations, and try to argue that nativelike proficiency is not guaranteed even when L2ers receive substantial amount of input from very early childhood. The third article examines the acquisition of case marking at earlier stages of L2 acquisition, and discusses the time frame to reach age-matched monolingual norms. I will conclude my presentation by discussing future directions in research on L2 maturational constraints.
<References>
Nishikawa, T. (2014). Nonnativeness in near-native child L2 starters of Japanese: Age and the acquisition of relative clauses. Applied Linguistics, 35(4), 504-529. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu018
Nishikawa, T. (2019/2022). Non-nativelike outcome of naturalistic child L2 acquisition of Japanese: The case of noun-verb collocations. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 60(2), 287-314. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2018-0292
Nishikawa, T. (2021). Acquisition of morphology by L2 children in naturalistic environments: A case of Japanese case markers. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching. Online Advance Access. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2021-0092
Thursday, November 2
QP Showcase*
Michol Miller, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa; Hitoshi Nishizawa, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Critical Needs Analysis for Indigenous Language Revitalization
Michol Miller
There have been recent calls for language revitalization efforts to be self-determined, self-governing, and community-led, in the spirit of “‘by or with’ not ‘on or for’” (McIvor, 2020), particularly when developing indigenous language revitalization (ILR) education programs. One way to design an indigenous language curriculum that meets the self-determined needs of communities working towards language revitalization is through critical needs analysis. The first step for developing a language curriculum and supporting teaching materials should be a needs analysis, but this procedure, like all steps in critical additional language curriculum development, should be carefully reviewed and adapted for indigenous language program development. Although needs analysis is common in the field of second language curriculum development, little is known about implementing the procedure in ILR settings. I will discuss how taking a critical approach to needs analysis can contribute to the relevance, practicality, and overall success of language revitalization curricula by helping communities identify the needs of their learners.
How authentic are listening texts in TOEFL iBT and IELTS?: A case of academic lecture passages
Hitoshi Nishizawa
Previous studies on the authenticity of listening texts in high-stakes tests used either limited or non-objective measures. More critically, there was limited information about the reference point of authenticity due to the lack of corpus-based studies on temporal fluency measures, which made it difficult for test developers to increase authenticity. To address this issue, I created the Fluency Corpus of Academic English Lectures to offer insight into the thresholds of temporal fluency features in academic lecture settings. I compared the corpus data to the academic lecture passages in the TOEFL iBT and IELTS to examine the domain definition inference of these tests. In total, I examined 14 temporal fluency measures. One-way MANOVA, followed by a series of ANOVAs and Tukey test showed many dissimilarities between the corpus and the tests with few similarities, providing little support for the domain definition inference of academic lecture passages in TOEFL and IELTS. I suggest the thresholds of authenticity, which are useful for test developers to create and revise test materials.
*This talk is internal to the SLS department.
Thursday, November 9
SLS 690: Thailand Teaching Practicum
Dr. Betsy Gilliland, Associate Professor and SLS 690 instructor, UH: Mānoa
Are you dreaming of gaining teaching experience in a new context? Come hear from Dr. Betsy Gilliland and past participants of the Thailand teaching practicum about a unique opportunity to develop as a language teacher while discovering the rarely visited Issan region of Thailand. Dr. Gilliland will explain the logistics of the Summer 2024 SLS 690 course, while past participants will tell stories about their own summers teaching and exploring Thailand. The practicum is a 3-credit SLS graduate course, but is also open to graduate students in other departments and advanced SLS BA students with instructor permission. If you are interested in the practicum or just want to see beautiful pictures, join us. Not able to attend the brownbag? Contact Dr. Gilliland for more information about the practicum.
Thursday, November 16
Decision-making Narratives of Second Language Program Administrators: Identifying Critical Values and Practices
Daniel Holden, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Critical language pedagogy (CLP) reflects democratic values, signaling a research or practice perspective that is sensitive to issues of power, equity, and social justice. Researchers in the fields of applied linguistics and second language studies expend much energy exploring how critical issues in second language classrooms are taught in educational institutions whose administration has great positive or negative effects on the realities of L2 classroom instruction. Yet, there is little empirical investigation of these programs’ administration, or more specifically, how the stated or perceived values of second language program administrators can make a significant impact on decision-making within their schools.
Seeking to address this gap, this talk draws on survey and interview data collected from second language program administrators (all residents on Oʻahu) that have been asked to identify and describe their professional values and practices, particularly through narratives of challenging situations encountered when performing their regular responsibilities. Additionally, the connection between the stated professional values of selected second language program administrators and how those values manifest through on-site school observation data will be explored, highlighting how a critical orientation can influence existing policies.
As a supplement to the main talk, the speaker will also be sharing preliminary journal data on his recent time spent in the role of a second language program administrator, reflecting on his own conception of critical values in that role and the complex situations that tested the boundaries of maintaining those values.
Thursday, November 23
NO TALK SCHEDULED
Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 30
Teacher mobility during small-group instructional rounds for young EFL learners: Display of task progression and contingent assistance
Sera Chun, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Teaching is a highly complex and context-dependent activity that requires teachers’ strategic employment of embodied resources tailored to the specific instructional contexts. Particularly, the coordination of teachers’ whole body movements, or ‘mobility’, becomes indispensable for instructions during small-group rounds (Jakonen, 2020), where teachers monitor and guide student activity, organize on-task activity, and engage in social talk. Drawing upon multimodal conversation analysis, the present study explores teacher movement, extending beyond ‘walking’ to encompass ‘approaching,’‘bending over,’‘leaning in,’‘sitting with,’ ‘kneeling next to,’ and ‘crouching next to’ students. The analysis demonstrates how the teacher’s bodily instructions are sequentially, incrementally, and contingently designed in ways that project the state and progression of a learning task. In addition, the teacher’ bodily instruction contributes to displaying teaching that is sensitive to the ‘shifting demands’ and ‘simultaneity’ of the moment, enabling the teacher to maneuver between ‘institutional’ (task-oriented) and ‘interpersonal’ (friendly) participation framework. Such bodily instruction engenders mutually relevant bodily responses from the students, who display increased engagement by shifting from ‘head lying on desk,’ ‘sitting up,’ to ‘leaning forward.’ The findings reveal how various aspects of contingent instruction are more visibly realized through the deployment of the entire body in situ, which fosters the creation of extended learning opportunities and cultivates relationships among young language learners within the language classroom.
Thursday, December 7
Developing Technology-mediated TBLT Curriculum for Beginning Vietnamese: Insights from Action Research
Hoa Le, Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
During the initial stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic, foreign language educators faced unprecedented challenges as all classes were suddenly forced to transition to online formats. These issues were further exacerbated for less commonly taught language (LCTL) classrooms due to the range of constraints found in this context, including the co-presence of heritage and non-heritage language learners (HLLs) as well as a shortage of established curriculum, syllabi, and materials for this diverse student population (Carreira & Kagan, 2018). In addition, although the efficacy of task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been demonstrated through empirical studies and syntheses (e.g. Chong & Reinders, 2020; Keck et al., 2006), much of this work has focused on non-HLLs, with few studies having targeted program development and evaluation for LCTLs, or online curriculums for such programs (Bryfonski & Mckay, 2019). Seeking to address this gap, the current study uses action research (Burns, 2010, 2011) to report the experience of the teacher-researcher in creating, implementing, and evaluating technology-mediated TBLT materials for a beginning Vietnamese language class at an American university. This study addresses two research questions (RQ):
1) How can longitudinal action research guide the development of an online TBLT curriculum for mixed classrooms at the novice level?
2) How well does the provision of the online TBLT curriculum support students’ learning?
The technology-mediated TBLT curriculum (Ellis, 2003; Long, 2015) for this research was developed over multiple phases, including an initial needs analysis, subsequent task design and sequencing, curriculum implementation, and evaluation. To answer RQ1, data consisted of students’ task exit surveys, course evaluations, semi-structured interviews, and the teacher’s reflective teaching journals were analyzed using an inductive analysis for the qualitative elements and descriptive statistics for the quantitative ones. To address RQ2, students’ task assessments were analyzed, and starting from Cycle 3 the Avant speaking and writing proficiency test results from pre- semester, post cycle 1, and post cycle 2 were also reported. Results indicate the improvement of the curriculum over time and, while some students were concerned with the lack of grammar drills as a result of the TBLT program. Findings also demonstrate that the course helped improve learner’s task performance and speaking and writing proficiency. By exploring the affordances of multimodal technology-mediated TBLT, this research stands to make valuable contributions to the larger TBLT research and teaching community as well as provide evidence-based materials designed specifically for teaching online Vietnamese classes with mixed learner populations, thereby serving as a resource for future research and pedagogical applications.
On self-assessment, stancetaking, and schemata: An intercultural study of Chinese international teaching assistants
Rickey Larkin, Jr., Ph.D. Student, Department of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
International teaching assistants in the United States often face additional hurdles in obtaining and keeping assistantships. One such example can be found in state imposed requirements to take supplemental language classes with the explicit goal of improving English abilities. In such classes, self-assessment has often been promoted as a way for students to monitor themselves and become so-called “autonomous” language users. This interactional sociolinguistics based study examines a set of interviews conducted with nine Chinese international teaching assistants after their completion of a graduate level oral presentation course for international teaching assistants at a university in the Midwestern region of the United States. Analyses of excepts from the interview data are conducted line-by-line, with consideration to stancetaking and schema theory. Findings reveal a resistance toward self-assessment techniques based on aspects of native-speakerism, authoritative deference, and self-embarrassment. Alternatively, self-assessment is viewed positively by some as a way to confirm, for the self, assessment produced by another. These findings are then contextualized in relation to self-assessment and cultural schema literature. I conclude with suggestions on how best to implement self-assessment techniques in accommodation of existing stances.