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SLA Students Bios
Terry Andrews
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Hello. I was raised in Wisconsin and received my BA from Marquette University in Milwaukee. After three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, I taught elementary school ESL in New York while completing a MA in TESOL under the Peace Corps Fellowship/USA Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. I have since taught ESL in public schools here in the United States, and EFL abroad in Morocco and Japan. Currently my main interests involve classroom discourse and interaction in immersion and dual language contexts at the early elementary grades.
Emphasis: ESL
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Jacques Arceneaux
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Emphasis: French
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Daniel Audaz
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I am from Marseille, France and I am currently working at the French Resource Center at UW-Madison. I previously worked at the UW-Madison study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, France, and have taught numerous undergraduate courses in French language and culture. My interest is in foreign/second language use, interculturality and pedagogy. I wish to focus my research on study-abroad students’ communicative practices in culturally organized systems and in particular to study how these participants evolve from foreign language learners to second language users.
Emphasis: French
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Michele Back
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Michele Back is a PhD candidate in second language acquisition. Her dissertation explores the role of additional language acquisition on identity and the maintenance of Ecuadorian Quichua among its speakers in the Seattle, Washington area. Her other interests include poststructuralist theory, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, study abroad, and conversation analysis. She has nearly ten years of experience teaching Spanish, Portuguese and Quichua to diverse audiences, from elementary school to university-level learners. Currently, she teaches Intensive Brazilian Portuguese for Speakers of Spanish at the University of California, Riverside. https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/mpback/web
Dissertation: "We did the wrong dance": Ecuadorian musicians negotiating
language and identity in a transnational context.
Emphasis: Spanish, Quechua
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Carolina Bailey
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Hola! My name is Carolina Bailey, a student pursuing a joint PhD in SLA and Linguistics. My previous degrees include a B.A. in Modern Languages from the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) and a M.A. in French as a Foreign Language from the Universite Paul Valery-Montpellier III (Montpellier, France). My professional experiences are in teaching French and Spanish in Colombia, France and the US, as well as linguistics at UW-Madison. My reasearch interest is focused on how L2 learners learn the clitic "se" in Spanish, what are the generalizations that they do when learning it, and if they can differentiate among the different uses of this clitic. I study the position of this clitic; whether it has different (or maybe specific) positions in the Deep Structure in syntax. I am also interested in negation; what are the difficulties that the students face when the negation changes the word order in a sentence.
Emphasis: Linguistics, Spanish
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Barbara Bird
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I have a BA in Italian and History from BYU and an MA in Italian from UW-Madison. I have lived in Italy for about 3 years and taught English there both to adults and in a preschool. While teaching Italian in various capacities, I have become interested in heritage learner identity, literacy in the L2, and instructional technology. I am currently a teaching assistant in the Department of French and Italian. For more information, see https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/bbird/web/
Emphasis: Italian
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Sookyung Cho
Email
I'm originally from Korea, and received my M.A. from the University
of Hawaii at Manoa. Second language writing is my research interest.
In particular, I'm interested in peer review among nonnative speakers
in the ESL writing classroom, and would like to research how peer
review affects ESL students' writing and their perceptions about
writing in English.
Dissertation: Literacy among bicultural Koreans in the United States
Emphasis: ESL
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Anne Dargent
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I am from Rambouillet, France and will be working at the French Resource Center at UW-Madison this year. I have a M.A in Foreign Languages and International Business from the Sorbonne and a M.A in Teaching French as a Foreign Language from Université René Descartes. I have worked as a TA in French at Gustavus Adolphus College in MN (2004/2005) and at UW-Madison last year, and as a French teacher at the Institut International de Rambouillet (France) in 2005/2006.
Emphasis: French
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Peter DeCosta
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I'm from Singapore. I've a B.A. in English from the National University
of Singapore, an M.Ed. with a concentration in Administration, Planning
and Social Policy from Harvard University and an M.A. in Applied
Linguistics from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. I'm
interested in studying the impact of language policy on classroom
discourse. I'm a teaching assistant with the English as a Second
Language (ESL) Program for the 2004-2005 academic year.
Emphasis: ESL
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Maria del Carmen De Avila
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Emphasis: Spanish
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Isabelle Drewelow
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I am from Bordeaux, France and I am currently working as an editorial assistant for The Modern Language Journal. I am interested in foreign/second language use, cultural identity and the teaching of language and culture in the classroom. I am focusing my research on the influence of instructed learning on American college students’ cultural assumptions about the French language and the French people. More specifically, I am investigating how students perceive factors within and outside the instructed situation as influencing their impressions.
Dissertation: The influence of instructed learning on American college students’ cultural assumptions about the French language and people
Emphasis: French
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Christine Elliott
Email
I am originally from Delaware but have lived and worked in Pennsylvania,
Hawaii, Laos, and Vietnam. I have a BA in French from the University
of Virginia and an MA in ESL from the University of Hawaii. I have
also participated in the Southeast Asia Studies Summer Institute
(SEASSI) studying Lao. I am particularly interested in EFL and L1
language issues in Southeast Asia and the study of less-commonly
taught languages in the US.
Emphasis: ESL, Lao
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Erika Hanson
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Emphasis: Spanish
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Atsushi Hasegawa
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I am from Tokyo, Japan. I have a BA in Japanese language and culture from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and an MA in Japanese pedagogy and SLA from Purdue University. I am currently working on my dissertation, in which I attempt to describe numerous cases of pair-work interactions occurring in Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classrooms. The primary aim of my research is to understand learners’ constructions of pair-work phenomena – a system of activity in and through which experiences of classroom learners are shaped. Other research interests include learner autonomy in language learning (LALL) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL). I am currently a teaching assistant of Japanese.
Dissertation: Learner experiences of pair work
Emphasis: Japanese
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Suyeon Kim
Email
I am from Korea. In my dissertation research, I am examining how gesture interacts with second language acquisition and learning of Korean adult learners of English. In other words, one of the primary purposes is to see how the visibility between speakers and listeners affects gesture production in order to explore if gesture functions interpersonally and/or intrapersonally for speakers themselves. In addition, I am interested in whether Korean English bilinguals maintain their L1 Korean typology (Verb-framed language) or shift to L2 English (Satellite-framed language) patterns.
Dissertation: Do L2 gestures serve only for speakers or listeners? No, for both.
Emphasis: ESL
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Aree Manosuthikit
Email
Emphasis: ESL
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Jennifer Robinson-Morgan
Email
I'm originally from South Dakota and have a BA in Spanish from Augustana
College (Sioux Falls, SD) and an MA in Spanish from UW-Madison. I
am interested in learning processes in post-secondary second language
classes. I also work as an editorial assistant for the Modern Language
Journal.
Emphasis: Spanish
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Paula Rucks
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My name is Paula Rucks and I recently relocated from California
where I have been teaching French for the past 5 years. My interest
in French first started when I was an exchange student in a French
high school living with a French family. I graduated from Michigan
State University with a degree in Zoology and French. I worked as
a wildlife biologist for two years in Kenya and Yosemite. I returned
to California to get my teaching credential and M.A. in French from
the University of California Santa Barbara. I'm looking forward to
learning as much as possible from the SLA program to learn how to
facilitate the second language learning process for others.
Dissertation: Learner participation in cultural discussions on a discussion board
Emphasis: French
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Chihardu Shima
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I am from Shingu, a small city with a population of 30,000 in Japan. I obtained a BA in Japanese language and culture from Tsukuba University in Japan, and an MA in applied Japanese linguistics from Monash University in Australia. I have taught various Japanese language programs in Australia, France, and Japan. Through my teaching experience, I have become more interested in the complex and dynamic nature of learning in classrooms. Currently, I am interested in learning processes involved in learner interaction in language classrooms, in relation to changes of learners’ goals or their relationships with their peers.
Emphasis: Japanese
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Sandra Elena Terra
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I am originally from Punta Arenas, Chile but grew up in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. I am currently a teaching assistant in the department of Spanish and Portuguese and I have also previously taught Spanish in other U.S. universities. I have my M.A. from the University of Oregon in Spanish Literature and Language and a B.A. in French from Oregon State University. Most recently I received my TESOL certificate and taught English in Ecuador.
Emphasis: Spanish
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Betsy Tremmel
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Emphasis: ESL
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Liu Yang
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Emphasis: ESL
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