The Thursday "Brown Bag" Lecture Series takes place on Thursdays from 12:00pm to 1:15pm.
Presentation slots for Spring 2026 are still available: those interested in presenting should contact Brown Bag Coordinator Betsy Gilliland at egillila(at)hawaii(dot)edu.
Unless otherwise noted, all talks will be held in person in Moore 155A; a Zoom option is available for all in-person talks, with links sent to mailing lists the Monday of the week of the talk. If you did not receive a link to register, please email sls(at)hawaii(dot)edu.
Starred (*) talks are internal to SLS faculty, staff, and students.
The following dates and talks are tentative, and are updated regularly.
Thursday, January 15
Writing for Publication and Managing Your Writing Process
Dr. Betsy Gilliland, Professor and Department Chair, UH: Mānoa
This workshop-format session is intended for both new and continuing graduate students. I will share ideas and help you develop a plan for managing your writing process, whether you are working on course papers, a dissertation, or a journal article. I will then provide an overview of the publication process and offer some tips for getting started with writing an article for publication and how to carry the project through to final published form. Spoiler alert: there's no silver bullet, but anyone can succeed with some discipline!
Thursday, January 22
Language and Young People in Conflict with the Law
Dr. Jeannette Schaeffer, Professor and Former Visiting Colleague, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Evidence suggests that unmet language needs may be associated with broader life challenges, including poor literacy, school drop-out, and challenging behavior (Cross 2007; Gross 2011; Hartshorne 2011; ATLAS 2024). Building on this, this talk’s central premises and claim are as follows:
- Complex language presents challenges for young people with language needs
- Young people with language needs are over-represented in the criminal justice system
- Effective participation in criminal justice requires complex language skills
→ Unrecognized and unmet language needs threaten the right to a fair trial.
While the prevalence of language needs worldwide is around 10% (Norbury et al. 2016), this figure exceeds 65% in young people in conflict with the law (YPCL) (Bryan et al. 2007; 2015). These needs include Developmental Language Disorder, but may also arise from deafness, multilingualism, varied educational backgrounds, or neurodevelopmental disorders. When unrecognized and unsupported, such language needs increase the risk of re-offending (Winstanley et al. 2021).
Given that children with language difficulties struggle with complex linguistic structures, we discuss two ongoing studies on the syntactic complexity of language in criminal justice proceedings, which YPCL are expected to understand. These studies are conducted within the European COST Action 22139 “Justice to Youth Language needs”, which brings together researchers working across 20+ languages, including many under-researched eastern European languages.
Preliminary findings indicate that complex syntactic structures such as wh- questions, relatives, conditionals, passives and recursive clausal embeddings frequently occur in police interviews and legal texts conveying youth suspects’ rights, as illustrated in (1) and (2).
(1) Tell the police if you want to consult with a solicitor wherever you are to be interviewed.
(Home Office England & Wales 2018)
(2) En wat vind je ervan dat X nu aangifte heeft gedaan waar ook jouw naam in wordt genoemd?
and what find you there-from that X now declaration has done where also your name in gets called
“And what do you think of the fact that X has now filed a report in which your name is being mentioned as well?”
(Fleetwood-Bird 2025)
These findings raise concerns about YPCL’s ability to fully participate in criminal justice proceedings, and ultimately, about their right to a fair trial.
Wednesday, January 28
Corpus Research: Intersections across SLS & Industry
Dr. Susanne DeVore, Lecturer, College of Education, UH: Mānoa
This presentation discusses learner corpus research on Mandarin learner writing and its intersections with industry research. It highlights key findings from research on the relationship between syntactic complexity and sophistication measures and their relationship to writing proficiency. It then turns to processes of development, specifically focusing on testing Network Science and its ability to capture and quantify L2 writing development in a holistic way. Throughout, it discusses how learner corpus research methods have been applied in a variety of industry settings and in turn how work in industry has influenced learner corpus research.
Thursday, February 5
Leveraging LLMs in Learner Corpus Research
Dr. Hakyung Sung, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Rochester Institute of Technology
Second language (L2) learner corpus research examines how L2 learners use language by analyzing representative samples of spoken and/or written texts. Natural language processing (NLP) focuses on computational methods to process and analyze linguistic data at scale. These two domains naturally intersect in their shared goal of empirically modeling L2 use. Recent advances in NLP, particularly large language models (LLMs), enable researchers to extract linguistic features that have been difficult to capture and to extend analyses to under-explored learner corpora. In this talk, I illustrate this potential through two applications: (1) modeling usage patterns of argument structure constructions in an L2-English corpus and (2) developing NLP pipelines for L2-Korean research. More broadly, I suggest that meaningful progress in learner corpus research depends not on technology alone, but on its integration with linguistic theory, analytical frameworks, and long-term investment in high-quality annotated data.
Tuesday, February 10
Second Language Corpus Linguistics in Practice: Analysis, Annotation, Compilation, and Pedagogical Applications
Dr. Minjin Kim, Instructor, Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi
How can learner language data be transformed into robust linguistic evidence and actionable pedagogical insight? This talk presents an integrated approach to second language corpus linguistics that addresses this question by connecting corpus analysis, annotation, compilation, and pedagogical application. Drawing on my research, I show how quantitative and linguistic analyses of learner corpus capture variation in learner language across time, tasks, learner populations, and linguistic features. I address methodological issues across the corpus analysis pipeline, including rule-based preprocessing and large language models as structured, interpretable tools for linguistic tagging. I also articulate principles for compiling learner corpora with standardized tasks, rich metadata, and designs aligned with analytical goals. Finally, I demonstrate how corpus data can directly inform pedagogical design through AI-mediated instructional tools. I conclude by outlining future directions that extend this work across learner populations and instructional contexts, positioning corpus linguistics as a bridge between theory, methodology, and pedagogy.
Thursday, February 12*
Developing a Sustainable Exchange Program Between UHM and Ehime University, Japan
Dr. Dongping Zheng, Associate Professor, Dept. of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa; Dr. Chika Takahashi, Professor and Azuki Miyoshi, Yuria Sakai, Haruka Toshishige, Yuta Yamane, Haruki Yamashita, Students, Ehime University
This presentation focuses on the past, present, and future academic exchanges between the Department of Second Language Studies, UHM, and Ehime University, Japan—one of UHM’s partner universities. Since 2019, various types of exchanges have been developed including Ehime University students’ visit to SLS in 2019, regular online exchanges since 2021, a shared online class between SLS250 (instructors: Dr. Dongping Zheng) and an Ehime University’s upper-level course open to all faculties in 2025, and a summer English-teaching internship program at Ehime University for UHM students in 2025. Furthermore, currently an agreement allowing for an official student exchange program between the two universities are being discussed. In this talk, the presenters will discuss some keys to successful academic exchanges as well as future opportunities for UHM students. Ehime student presenters will introduce Ehime University, reflect on their exchange experiences, and encourage UHM students to participate in future programs.
*Zoom only
Thursday, February 19
TBA
TBA
Abstract TBA
Thursday, February 26
Open for Presentations
Thursday, March 5
AAAL/TESOL Practice Talks
Gabriella Sosnowski, MA Student, Dept. of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Open for Presenters (up to two presentations)
Abstracts and Titles TBA
Thursday, March 12
AAAL Practice Talks
Seungeun Lee, PhD Student, Dept. of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Open for Presenters (up to two presentations)
Thursday, March 19
NO TALK SCHEDULED
Spring Break
Thursday, March 26
NO TALK SCHEDULED
Kuhio Day
Thursday, April 2
Open for Presentations
Thursday, April 9
Web Presence for Academics
Dr. Daniel Isbell, Associate Professor, Dept. of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa
Thursday, April 16
Title TBA
Dr. Michelle Kunkel, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Pusan National University
Thursday, April 23
“Don’t You Come to Me with This” : Constructing and Resisting Patrilineal Jewish Narratives
Caroline Zuckerman, AGC Graduate and Whitten Award Winner, Dept. of Second Language Studies, UH: Mānoa