Try come! Welina me ke aloha!

Register at:��

Many teachers and students of Ōlelo Hawaiʻi make regular use of Pidgin in the classroom. In addition, residents of the state often comment on the similarities between Pidgin and Hawaiian grammar. Scholars of Ōlelo Hawaiʻi point out the importance of understanding Pidgin and Pidgin Hawaiian in researching Ōlelo Hawaiʻi. And, scholars and members of the community regularly��note a strong connection between speaking Pidgin and identities that are rooted in Hawaiʻi. This talk story conference invites conversations about these topics and more.

Featuring talks by:

Dr. Jason (Iota) Cabral,��Ka Haka��ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, UH-Hilo
Dr. Laiana Wong, Dr. Kekeha Solis,��Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language, UH- Mānoa

For more information, contact Christina Higgins at��cmhiggin@hawaii.edu

The post October 25: Hawaiian-Pidgin Summit appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Presenter: Christina Higgins, Professor & Graduate Chair, Second Language Studies, 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.

September 6
Effects of Oral Rehearsal on Second Language Speaking Improvement

Presenter: Mutsuko Nagasaki, Associate Professor, English Education Center, Ehime University

This presentation summarizes three studies that investigated the effects of oral rehearsals in first-year Japanese university classes (155 participants in total). The impetus for the research was to increase the English output opportunities in an EFL setting by combining a speech in class and oral rehearsals at home.

Professor Nagasaki’s research interests include L2 output and interaction and assessment in the L2 classroom.

September 13
Reproducible Quantitative and Qualitative Data Analysis in R and RStudio

Presenter: Geoffrey LaFlair, Assistant Professor, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Do you have or are you planning on collecting data this semester? If so, you probably intend to analyze that data at some point. You may be wondering how you can analyze your data using reproducible methods—processes that make it easier to re-analyze your data using the same procedures. If so, one answer is to use R and RStudio. This brown bag session will demonstrate how to use R and RStudio both quantitative (e.g., descriptive statistics) and qualitative (e.g., hand-coding interactions) data analyses.

September 20��
Latent Classes of Smartphone Dictionary Users among Chinese EFL Learners: A Mixed-method Inquiry into Motivation for Mobile Assisted Language Learning

Presenter: Xiqin Liu, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

Co-Authors: Dongping Zheng, Associate Professor, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa; Yushuai Chen, Department of Applied Psychology, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

This mixed-method study explored types of motivation for smartphone dictionary use among Chinese university EFL learners. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted, followed by a confirmatory survey (N=577). Using a latent class analytical tool, Mplus, we identified from the survey a model with three user classes: Customisation, Learning and Utility. They respectively imply individuating use of dictionary features, authentic English language learning, and utilitarian purposes. Multinomial logistic regressions showed these tendencies: male users or non-key university students were more likely to fall into the Customisation class; high-proficiency learners or key university students, Learning; and female users or low-proficiency learners, Utility. The research offers insights into e-dictionary customisation and education in e-dictionary use.

September 27
Fostering Critical Thinking Discussion for Student’s Choice and Voice in Class

Presenter: Linda Wong and Moeko Norota, MA Students, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

The presentation discusses creating, developing, analyzing, teaching, and evaluating an EFL class based on critical language pedagogy. The course was designed for a short-term, five-day English language program tailored for Japanese high school students visiting Hawaiʻi. Following an action research methodology, the project consisted of materials production, implementation of these materials within a classroom setting, and collection of student feedback concerning their perspectives on student enjoyment and their perceived value of the course curriculum and implementation of that curriculum. The overarching aim of this study is to analyze the participants’ opinions and responses towards critical language pedagogy.

October 4
Thailand Practicum Debrief

Presenters: Hayley Cannizzo, Precious Arao, Lin Wang, Linda Wong, Moeko Norota, & Leeseul Park, SLS Graduate Students, UH-Mānoa

Sawasdee kha! Are you interested in teaching English for academic purposes for university students? What about teaching English where you don’t share an L1? Have you tried to conduct action research, but you don’t know where, when, and how? Here is the perfect opportunity for you to explore action research in your own classroom and teaching in Thailand. Hayley Cannizzo, Precious Arao, Lin Wang, Linda Wong, Moeko Norota, and Leeseul Park will share their experience in 2018 ESL Teaching Practicum in Thailand, including their classes and living environment. Please do not miss the real happenings in Thailand, including lovely students and running brown water!
Kob kun kha!

October 11
SLRF Practice Talks (Part I), Two Talks

Word Association Task Revisited: Exploring Multidimensional Links with Vocabulary Size, Depth, Speed, and Use

Presenter: Masaki Eguchi, PhD Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Over the past decades of L2 vocabulary research, various attempts have been made to utilize word association task (WAT) as a measure of L2 lexicon due to its potential to capture various interlexical links (e.g., synonyms, collocations; Fitzpatrick, 2012). Meanwhile, studies agree that the lexical links elicited through WAT are difficult to relate to L2 general proficiency (e.g., Higginbotham, 2010). However, considering the multidimensional nature of lexicon (Daller et al., 2007), the potential should be revisited by finer-grained measures of lexical proficiency. In particular, few studies have tested theoretical compatibility between WA and free lexical production (see Dózci & Kormos, 2015). Taken together, this study examines the extent to which WA behaviors tap into a) size, depth, and speed of vocabulary knowledge and b) aspects of spoken lexical sophistication (Kyle & Crossley, 2015).

The effects of task-based interaction on second language acquisition: A replication meta-analysis

Presenter: Kristen Urada, MA Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

This study is a replication of Keck, Iberri-Shea, Tracy-Ventura, and Wa-Mbaleka’s (2006) meta-analysis on the effectiveness of task-based interaction on second language acquisition. This meta-analysis is based on an updated collection of primary studies published from 2004 to 2017 in which the substantive and methodological features from these studies are examined following the procedure from the Keck et al.’s (2006) meta-analysis. Initial results support the original findings of Keck et al. (2006), demonstrate the efficacy of task-based interaction, and show the important role of moderating variables for second language development.

October 18
SLRF Practice Talks (Part II), Two Talks

Lexical Sophistication of L2 Spanish in a Longitudinal Learner Corpus

Presenter: Mery Diez, PhD Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Lexical sophistication, or the production of low-frequency words or advanced words, is one of the main areas investigated in learner corpus research (LCR). This study analyzes learners’ lexical sophistication during a study abroad program using a Spanish longitudinal learner corpus, LANGSNAP (Mitchell, Tracy-Ventura, & McManus, 2017). Indices of lexical sophistication were measured by task type (oral narrative, interview, and argumentative essay) and mode at each collection point: pre-departure, three collection points abroad, and two post-tests. This project adds to the emerging field of Spanish LCR and shows how the lexical sophistication of learners develop over time in a study abroad setting.

Motivation to Learn Languages Other Than English: A Critical Research Synthesis

Presenter: Anna Mendoza, PhD Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

This research synthesizes studies on motivation to learn languages other than English (LOTEs) published from 2005-2018 and using Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self-System as a framework. The authors applied a method called critical research synthesis—a qualitative alternative to quantitative meta-analysis in SLA. Taking a critical, postcolonial approach to applied linguistics, they examine the most commonly investigated target languages, educational contexts, and research questions in three world regions: the EU, North America, and East Asia, concluding not only with a call for more studies on LOTEs, especially from other regions, but a broadening of the research agenda in each world region.

October 25
BULD Conference Practice Talks, Two Talks

Testing for adjunct island effects using topic structures in L1 Chinese and L1/L2 English

Presenter: Fred Zenker, PhD Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Co-Author: Bonnie Schwartz, Professor, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

This study provides evidence that L1-Chinese L2ers can become sensitive to adjunct island effects (Huang, 1982) for English topic structures with object gaps despite showing no such sensitivity in Chinese. Advanced L1-Chinese L2ers completed closely-translated English and Chinese acceptability judgment tasks; L1-English speakers also completed the English task. While both groups evinced island effects in English, L1-Chinese speakers exhibited no parallel effect in Chinese. These results suggest that Chinese topic structures with object gaps in adjuncts are base-generated but that L1-Chinese L2ers can nevertheless come to have obligatory movement in English topicalization.

Processing of Remention Biases in Korean Learners of English

Presenter: Hyunwoo Kim, PhD Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Co-Author: Theres Grüter, Associate Professor, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

This study investigates how L2 learners use remention (or implicit causality) bias (Garvey & Caramazza, 1974; Hartshorne, 2014) for referential processing in real time. Some interpersonal verbs create biases to remention either its subject or object in causal dependent clauses (“Tom surprised Bill because he___” vs “Tom hated Bill because he___”). Here we present evidence from a visual-world eye-tracking experiment investigating how L2 learners with varying English proficiency use remention bias in reference processing while listening to English sentences in real time. Analyses of participants’ eye-movement showed that L2 learners were able to use remention bias information for referential processing during online comprehension, but the effect of this information was delayed compared to L1 processing. This delay may be associated with learners’ reduced ability to access and retrieve lexical representations in their use of remention bias information during real-time sentence processing. When L2 learners were split into higher- and lower-proficiency groups based on their proficiency scores, the higher-proficiency group showed some trend toward fixating on the bias-consistent referent more often than the bias-inconsistent referent during a certain time interval, whereas such a trend was not found among the lower-proficiency group, suggesting a weak role of proficiency in the L2 processing of remention biases.

November 1
A linguistic analysis of the communication demands in typical technology-mediated learning environments

Presenters: Kristopher Kyle, Assistant Professor, Geoffrey LaFlair, Assistant Professor & Nicole Ziegler, Associate Professor, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

An important aspect of a validity argument for a language assessment tool is a demonstrated alignment between the linguistic demands of the target language use domain and the assessment tasks (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2011). Corpus linguistic analyses are well suited to generate such evidence (Biber et al., 2004), provided appropriate corpora exist. A number of corpora exist that represent various types of language that university students encounter and/or produce in traditional academic settings (e.g., Alsop & Nesi, 2009; Biber et al., 2004; Römer & O’Donnell, 2011). Increasingly, however, a typical university experience may be supported with technology mediated learning environments (TMLEs) (Jacoby, 2014; Means, Toyama, Murphy, & Baki, 2013), which are not represented in extant academic corpora. The proposed project seeks to address this gap in three stages. First, a survey will be conducted to determine the types of texts that are typically encountered and produced in TMLE. Second, a corpus of the typical texts that are encountered and produced in TMLEs will be collected. Finally, linguistic analyses will be conducted to explore the linguistic features of TMLE, both across registers within the corpus and in relation to extant academic corpora comprised of more traditional registers. The main outcomes of the project include the addition of a large, balanced corpus of TMLE texts to existing resources and an in-depth report of the linguistic demands of typical TMLEs, including how these demands compare with more traditional university learning environments.

November 8
Multicultural Multilingual Strategic Initiative

Presenters: Graham Crookes, Professor & Department Chair, and Kapua Adams, MA Student, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

November 15 �� (Cancelled, will be rescheduled to a later date)
Discourse itineraries of sea turtle tourism and conservation at Laniākea Beach, Hawai‘i

Presenter: Gavin Lamb, PhD Candidate, Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

In this talk, I present dissertation research on the sociolinguistic practices of sea turtle conservation and tourism in Hawai‘i. At Laniākea Beach, on the North Shore of O‘ahu, thousands of international tourists come to this beach everyday to encounter honu, or Hawaiian green sea turtles, in the wild. The species is currently listed as ‘threatened’ in Hawai‘i under the Endangered Species Act. Since 2003, a sea turtle volunteer organization has been active at this beach in an effort to protect sea turtles from being disturbed or harmed by visitors. But a core motivation of this volunteer organization is also to educate tourists from a range of linguistic backgrounds about green sea turtles. Drawing on multimodal discourse data from a two year ethnographic ‘nexus analysis’ (Scollon and Scollon 2004) at this beach, I trace the circulation of sea turtle tourism and conservation discourse across different moments of communicative production and reception: in mediatized representations, face-to-face interaction, the semiotic landscape and online. The study investigates the strategic efforts of tourists and volunteers to cultivate and extend sociomaterial networks (Latour 2005; Scollon 2008) of sea turtle discourse for different – and often conflicting – communicative purposes. The findings shed light on how, as divergent sea turtle discourses are made to travel across multimodal channels of discursive movement – now linguistic, now material, now interactional, now virtual – sociolinguistic practices are transformed, and new ‘ecocultural’ practices emerge along the way. I conclude by suggesting possibilities for future research and interdisciplinary engagement between practice-based applied linguistics and emerging research in the social sciences investigating the local dynamics and sociocultural specificity of human interactions with animals and the natural environment (Bucholtz 2015; Lorimer 2015; Pennycook 2017).

November 29
CELTA Forces Unite

Presenters: Dre Childs, Special Projects Manager and Community Outreach, & Betty Compton, CELTA Instructor, Intercultural Communications College Hawaiʻi; and Joel Weaver, Director,��University of Hawaiʻi English Language Program, Kendi Ho, CELTA Course Trainer & PhD Student, Department of Second Language Studies

The University of Hawaiʻi English Language Program (HELP) and Intercultural Communications College (ICC) Hawaiʻi both offer the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA).

CELTA��is the most widely recognized basic��certification��in English language teaching. It is great for recent graduates, career changers, and teachers who seek to earn a formal, internationally recognized qualification. Trainees in CELTA gain foundational knowledge, hands-on teaching experience, and classroom confidence as teachers of English as an additional language (ESL and EFL).

At this Brown Bag, both HELP and ICC will share course details and information on how to apply. ��Learn about opportunities to gain SLS credit for the CELTA as well as the discount for SLS students when taking CELTA at HELP.

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PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense

Jayson E. Parba

Empowering the Filipino Language Classroom:
Towards Critical Pedagogy and Curriculum

Chair: Graham Crookes

Wednesday, May 2, 2:00–4:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 155A

Abstract

This dissertation research is situated in critical applied linguistics, critical language pedagogy, and heritage and second language (L2) education, within which Filipino language teaching in the U.S. context has remained almost invisible. Drawing on the work of Freire and other critical pedagogues and critical applied linguists, this dissertation examines power negotiation in two Filipino language upper intermediate courses at a University in Hawaiʻi to analyze how critical language pedagogy (CLP) looks in practice. Most of the existing literature of CLP reports ESL and EFL settings and examines specific aspects of critical language teaching such as dialogue and incorporating critical topics in the curriculum. The field of heritage language (HL) education, however, has drawn on CLP only recently and work of this kind in the HL literature mostly comes from the Spanish language education context only. My dissertation work, therefore, addresses this gap in the literature and directly responds to appeals for tangible guidance and concrete examples coming from teachers of languages other than English (LOTEs) who are interested to adopt a critically-oriented teaching praxis but do not know how and where to start.

Using Teacher Research (TR), I analyze the process of curriculum negotiation in my two Filipino language classes where students took an active role in generating critical themes, making assessment more democratic, and using thematic codes that are drawn from their immediate experiences, identities, and language resources. I also examine the Freirean notion of dialogue as a framework to foster critical consciousness which allows students to identify, challenge, and reframe status quo discourses and ideologies. Moreover, drawing on the notion of translanguaging both as pedagogy and theory of language, I analyze how a classroom language policy, which is anchored on the heteroglossic view of languages and the dynamic language practices of multilinguals, can make language learning more meaningful, empowering, and participatory.

The findings reveal that creating spaces for curriculum negotiation and critical dialogue provides students with opportunities to transform status quo discourses of schooling and education. It also allows for new ways of seeing and understanding oppressive ideologies and practices (e.g., racist stereotypes and discrimination) to emerge in order to resist social inequalities and to promote social justice. The findings further show that curriculum negotiation in Filipino language classrooms where students have very diverse linguistic starting points is possible through adopting critical perspectives of education, multilingualism, language teaching, and teaching philosophy. This study illustrates that politicizing one’s teaching praxis through critical pedagogy in HL and L2 classrooms necessitates a rethinking of language, HL education, teacher and students’ roles, and classroom language policy.

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PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense

Jing Zhou

Component Skills of Reading among Learners of Chinese as a Second Language

Chair: Richard R. Day

Friday, March 9, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 155A

Abstract

The component-skill approach to reading comprehension) intended to understand reading as a complex but decomposable component -skill system where various component skills contribute to reading comprehension while interacting with each other. Even though significant progress has been made in understanding how various component skills collaborate to contribute to second language (L2) reading comprehension, there is a lack of empirical studies that examine the component skills of L2 Chinese reading.

To fill this gap, this dissertation examines the direct and indirect effects of semantic radical knowledge, character knowledge, morphological knowledge, vocabulary knowledge and grammar knowledge to L2 Chinese reading. Using a mixed method research approach, this dissertation investigates the direct and indirect effects of components skills on L2 Chinese reading, the component skills that distinguished skilled and less-skilled readers, learners’ perception of L2 Chinese reading, as well as the convergence and divergence of quantitative and qualitative data.

The participants were 209 learners of Chinese as a second language. A test battery with 12 subtests was designed to measure six latent constructs, including a receptive semantic radical knowledge test and a semantic radical meaning matching test; a lexical decision test and a character knowledge test; a morpheme discrimination test and a compound structure discrimination test; a receptive vocabulary knowledge test and a vocabulary synonym test; a word order test and a grammaticality judgment test; and a multiple-choice reading comprehension test and a cloze test. Thirteen interviews and four focus groups were conducted among 25 participants.

The main findings of the study include:
• Vocabulary knowledge was found to have a significant direct effect on L2 Chinese reading comprehension.
• The receptive vocabulary knowledge test score and vocabulary synonym test score could best distinguish skilled from less-skilled readers

The pedagogical implications of extensive reading for L2 Chinese reading are discussed.

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The post March 14 SLS Occasional Talk – Dr. Melanie Peffer appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Presenters: Carrie Bach, Hye Young Jung, and Mitsuiko Suzuki, PhD in SLS Students; and
Rachel Hughes, Raquel Reinagel, and Kumi Sweely, MA in SLS Students, UH-Mānoa

This Brown Bag will showcase graduate students’ work from the course SLS 730: Second Language Materials Evaluation, Selection, Adaptation, & Development, taught by Professor Richard Day this past Fall, 2017. The format of this meeting will begin with a brief description of the seminar course, followed by quick introductions of the projects by the students. For the main segment of the Brown Bag, attendees will be invited to view the project posters and to discuss questions and comments with the presenters.

January 18
English Education in South Korea

Presenters: Choi Jeong-eun,��Dong Su-hang,��Hwang Su-bin,��Jin Hyae-joo,��Kim Yu-jeong,��Lee Ye-jin,��Lim Ye-young,��Shin Yoo-jeong,��Yoo Eun-ji, and Yoon Won-kyung

Visiting Students from the BA Program in TESL, Sookmyung Women’s University

How is English taught in South Korea? How has English education evolved there? And what new changes are in the works? The ten students listed above, undergraduate students majoring in TESL at Sookmyung Women’s University who are visiting SLS for one week, will discuss these questions and more.

This talk may be of particular interest to SLS majors and graduate students who want to teach English in Korea after finishing their degrees, or who have taught in Korea.

January 25
Introducing the (Small) UHM Multilingual/Multicultural Strategic Initiative: Topic for Discussion and Dialogue

Presenter: Graham Crookes, Professor of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

A small interdepartmental project initiated by SLS, EALL, and CoE faculty was recently approved by the UHM administration. Its intent is, among other things, to increase the multilingual and multicultural dimension of UHM. The presenter will introduce the project (a) in the context of our roles in a public university (so as to make the matter of perhaps broad relevance), and (b) with the intention of fostering some interest in how the matter might be promoted and extended in the near future. The goal of this session is to raise departmental awareness of a project in its beginning stages, and invite some discussion. After a brief and informal presentation, key faculty members will engage the audience in exploring possible directions for the initiative.

February 1
Modeling the perceived value of compulsory English language education: A replication

Presenter: Amy Marquardt, MA in SLS Student, UH-Mānoa

The current paper reports on an approximate replication study of Rivers’ 2012 article on modeling the perceived value of compulsory undergraduate English classes in Japan. Both studies analyze similar linguistic tensions seen in countries where compulsory English classes are mandated and the replication study highlights these tensions in the regional context of Catalonia, Spain. This study uses Rivers’ mixed methods approach to identify the abstract concepts of value and investment by coding long-answer textual responses into themes, creating and administering a survey from these themes, and modeling the survey responses into a suitable structural equation model.

February 8
Two Talks

Presenter 1: Wenyi Ling, PhD Candidate, Department of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

The Perception, Processing and Learning of Mandarin Tone by Second Language Speakers

The goal of this project is to investigate how adult second language learners of Mandarin perceive tone variations, process tones in spoken word recognition and learn tones in different training conditions, using the categorical perception tasks and visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. Since experiment 3 is still under design, I am going to present my first two experiments.

Presenter 2: Priscila Leal, PhD Candidate, Department of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

How do English language teachers develop critical consciousness?

Under what circumstances and to what extent, and caused by what factors and experiences, do English language teachers come to have an understanding of their potential role in fostering social justice (i.e., critical consciousness)? How can language teacher education programs support future language teachers to be committed to strengthening their students’ critical consciousness? As I continue to investigate this phenomenon with several groups of teachers, both less experienced and more, I share some of the highlights from surveys and interviews of this work in progress.

February 15
Two Talks

Presenter 1: Gaiyang Wang, Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar, Xi’an International Studies University, China

Cultivate Contextual Lexical Inferencing Competence in L2

This research is a practice of lexical pragmatics in L2 vocabulary pedagogy. The primary is to determine whether pedagogic intervention targeted at raising Chinese EFL learners’ awareness of the pragmatic nature of contextual lexical meaning can enhance their contextual lexical inferencing competence (i.e. CLIC) which is crucial for their vocabulary development, reading ability improvement and greater learning autonomy in reading. Attempts were made to tackle the following two research questions.
1. Does pedagogical intervention targeted at raising L2 learners’ awareness of the pragmatic nature of lexical meanings help to develop their CLIC?
2. Can improved L2 learners’ CLIC also result in more efficient vocabulary acquisition, better reading ability, and higher degree of learner autonomy in reading?
To answer the two research questions, we first established a CLIC conceptual model and a CLIC instruction model. And then, an empirical test of the CLIC instructional model was conducted to check the feasibility of the conceptual model.
From the results of the investigation, it is concluded that while the CLIC-based linguistic abilities will grow with learners’ general L2 proficiency, the power of CLIC instruction mainly lies in its effectiveness in enhancing learners’ self-confidence in making lexical inferences, which is crucial for the development of learner autonomy in reading since it will help to speed up their progress from intermediate level to advanced level of L2 learning.

Presenter 2: Jayson Parba, PhD Candidate, Department of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

“It feels good to have a voice”: Negotiating Power in the Filipino Language Classrooms

In this talk, I will share how I implemented critical language pedagogy (CLP) in two upper intermediate Filipino language courses at a university in Hawaiʻi in order to examine how it looks in practice. Though CLP has been explored in ESL and EFL contexts, the extant literature is bereft of discussions of how critically-oriented teachers engage in critical pedagogy in the heritage language (HL) and languages other than English (LOTE) contexts, except perhaps in Spanish. Using teacher research, this dissertation work (in progress) aims to address this gap in the literature and directly responds to appeals for concrete examples of how to negotiate syllabus contents, assessment, and classroom language policy in linguistically diverse HL/LOTE classrooms.

February 22
Online Extensive Reading in EAP Courses

Presenters: Richard R. Day, Professor of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa; and Jing Zhou, PhD Candidate, Department of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

Extensive reading (ER) has been shown to be an effective approach in helping second language (L2) students learn to read the target language. Of particular interest is how L2 learners in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course that included ER would react to ER since ER involves L2 learners reading easy, interesting books that they select themselves. We examined the reactions of forty-one EAP university students to ER. We used Xreading, an online, virtual library with hundreds of graded readers. We gathered both quantitative and qualitative data to determine the extent to which the Xreading program affected the learners’ attitudes toward reading in English, their academic reading, and English proficiency in general.

March 1
Measuring Lexical Richness: A Hands-on Workshop

Presenter: Kristopher Kyle, Assistant Professor of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

In this talk, I will briefly introduce the construct of lexical richness and will highlight some common ways in which it can be measured. I will then conduct a hands-on workshop wherein we will analyze a learner corpus using the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (TAALES; Kyle & Crossley, 2015) and then investigate the relationship between indices of lexical richness and holistic scores of writing quality. Participants are encouraged to bring laptop computers to this talk so that they can follow along as I explain the different steps for the analysis. Data will be provided.

March 8
Two Talks

Presenter 1: Meryl Siegal, SLS Visiting Colleague, Laney College

Visiting Colleague Talk:��“It’s not brain surgery for Christ sakes!”: A look at the college level transfer course at the community college

About 20 years ago, Hawai‘i’s community colleges reformed their English departments. This kind of reform, “evidence-based,” is occurring in Californian community colleges and currently called acceleration. I have been interviewing teachers to understand teachers’ understanding of freshman composition and how they prepare students to transfer to a 4-year institute of higher learning. This presentation discusses the importance of community colleges and the understanding of language and learning in community colleges.

Presenter 2: Chi Phung, Fulbright Vietnamese TA, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures (IPLL)

Fulbright TA Talk: Learner agency and academic achievements in speaking skills at the tertiary level

Learner agency, which is defined as “the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p. 4) is argued to lay foundation for autonomy’s development and also self-regulation learning, or strategic learning. This study, which employed qualitative case study method, is an insightful investigation into the exercise of learner agency of four second-year English majors who are classified as successful and less successful learners. This understanding has elucidated how those learners exercise their agency differently to take ownership of their learning. Findings revealed that the exercise of successful learners’ agency experienced continual development and adaptation to changes in the social context whereas less successful learners’ agency tended to be fluid and changeable. The study is valuable in shedding light on learners’ inner voice and contributing to the call of considering a learner as a holistic human being with learning histories, unique goals and ambitions, and in interaction with the social context. This understanding can guide teachers and educators to effectively facilitate the strong exercise of learner agency in order to foster learner autonomy and strategic learning.

March 15
AAAL/TESOL Practice Talks

Talk 1 Presenters: Betsy Gilliland, Associate Professor of Second Language Studies & Priscila Leal, PhD Candidate in Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

“I Wanna Know What You’re Gonna Do to Help Them”: Adolescent Micronesian Girls Representing Conflicting Worldviews in Personal Writing

We report on a community-based workshop in Hawai‘i teaching Micronesian girls about writing a scholarship statement of purpose. Critical sociocultural theory underlies the workshop design and analysis. Data analysis focused on how the girls characterize their current lives, past histories, and future aspirations in their oral and written texts.

Talk 2 Presenter: Junichi Yagi, PhD Student in Second Language Studies,��UH-Mānoa

Enacting Culture Outside of the Classroom: A Case of Microgenetic Learning in Japanese as a Foreign Language

Aligning with CA work on ‘language learning in the wild’, this study illustrates how enactment as a method of explaining leads to microgenetic learning. The analysis of lunch talk among L1-L2 Japanese speakers reveals how the participants accomplish the shared understanding of a word: ‘burikko’ through enactment.

Talk 3 Presenter: Kristin Rock, PhD Student in Second Language Studies,��UH-Mānoa

English Language Learner Dialogue Journals: A Bridge to More Complex Writing

Dialogue journals provide a unique opportunity for teachers and students to engage in meaningful communication in English. This presentation describes research analyzing the lexical and syntactic complexity of English language learners’ journal writing over time and discusses practical suggestions for incorporating this engaging literacy activity in the classroom.

March 22
Developing Online Extensive Reading and Listening Materials

Presenter: Raquel Reinagel, MA Student in Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa

From failed app to website-based online/mobile materials, this presentation explains how graded readers and podcasts were developed with English-medium university students in mind. This project originally began as a single graded reader intended for an app, but was instead turned into multiple graded readers and a podcast project. Designed to increase reading and listening fluency and provide free, fun English language materials, the products resulted from the work of many MA students from the Department of Second Language Studies. Possible next steps for these materials will also be discussed.

March 29
Spring Break – No Brown Bag

April 5
Tasks in Technology-Mediated Contexts: Plenary Talk from TBLT 2017 Conference

Presenter: Marta González-Lloret, Professor of Spanish & Portuguese, Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas, UH-Mānoa

This presentation defines what technology-mediated tasks are and how they fit within principles of TBLT/L. It explores challenges of developing and integrating technology-mediated tasks in a curriculum and what research is being done to bridge those challenges. A few existing examples of technology-mediated TBLT curricula will be presented before focusing on current research on technologies and tasks. Since the inclusion of technology in an environment is never neutral, it is important to explore how technology affects the task and what it means for principles of TBLT/L. To address this, suggestions will be offered on how research can be expanded to inform theories and practices of TBLT/L. Finally, a few questions and challenges for technology-mediated TBLT will be offered to help move the field forward.

April 12
Critical and Multimodal Literacies: Implications from EFL Learners

Presenter: Shin-ying Huang, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University

This presentation reports on a study that explored the ways in which EFL learners, through a multimodal approach, reflected on the politics of English as it relates to race, class, and gender. Through a detailed examination of two students’ ensembles, it was found that thinking multimodally rather than only linguistically may contribute to the consideration of an issue from a less dominant point of view, leading to critical reflection. In addition, multimodal compositions may allow learners to express their critical engagement with an issue in ways that the linguistic mode might restrict. The pedagogical implications of these findings will also be discussed using examples from the two students’ multimodal works.

April 19
2017 English Language Placement Test Revision Project

Presenters:
James Dean Brown, Professor of Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa
Huy Phung, PhD Student in Second Language Studies, UH-Mānoa
Kenton Harsch, Director, English Language Institute, UH-Mānoa
Priscilla Faucette, Associate Director,��English Language Institute, UH-Mānoa

This Brown Bag will present and explain the results of the 2016–2017 ELIPT revision project. The goal of this project was to use Classical Test Theory and Rasch analyses to improve all of the subtests of the ELIPT to make it a better placement battery.

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PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense

Eunseok Ro

Interaction and Learning in an Extensive Reading Book Club

Chair: Gabriele Kasper

Monday, November 13, 4:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 155A

As a pedagogical approach to second language (L2) learning, Extensive Reading (ER) has been practiced in various contexts of foreign and second language learning. Evidence for the benefits of ER has accumulated in an extensive body of research (Jeon & Day, 2016; Nakanishi, 2015 for reviews) that documents the effects of individual reading on various L2 learning outcomes. Although ER is often implemented through pedagogical activities that associate individual reading with talk (e.g., Jung, 2017; Shelton-Strong, 2012; Song & Sardegna, 2014; Suk, 2016), there is a lack of empirical studies that examine how ER activities evolve as social interaction and whether and how students benefit from participating in them.

To fill this gap, this dissertation examines students’ long-term development of literacy practices in a book club designed in accordance with ER principles (Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002; Green, 2005). Using multimodal conversation analysis, the study addresses three main topics.

(1) It explicates the interactional organization of the book club and the multimodal practices through which the participants accomplish the institutional agenda.

(2) It tracks how the students become interactionally competent participants over the course of two terms (18 weeks). Specifically, it describes how the students improve the recipient design of their contributions when they present a book to the group and more effectively align themselves as recipients.

(3) The dissertation reveals how the facilitator’s instructions work as a catalyst for transforming the students’ participation practices and evolve the institutional norms. The findings suggest directions for providing ER with an interactional footing and for conducting ER book clubs specifically.

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Thursday, August 22, 2019
2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

Location: Center for Korean Studies Auditorium

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Sunday, October 15, 2017
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Center for Korean Studies
1881 East-West Road
Honolulu, HI 96822

East Asian Psycholinguistics: Recent Developments is a free satellite workshop held in conjunction with .

This workshop intends to gather people working on various topics of psycholinguistics with reference to East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The goal of the workshop is to highlight recent theoretical advances in language processing, and also to foster the scientific community working in these three languages.
The workshop will feature an invited talk on the topic of the L1-L2 processing (Dr. Ian Cunnings, University of Reading). There will be also a training session for the use of eye tracking methodology covering programming as well as data analysis (Dr. Marcus Johnson, SR Research).

Invited speaker:����(University of Reading, UK),��‘Parsing and Working Memory in Native and Non-Native Sentence Processing’

Eye-tracking method training:��Marcus Johnson (SR Research, Canada)

For more information, please see the Workshop website:

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