Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition

WPR interview with K. D. Thompson, Religious Studies Program, on Celebrating African Languages

(August, 2024) In their Wisconsin Public Radio interview, SLA director K.D. Thompson discusses their experience with learning, teaching, and researching African languages and cultures. In addition to addressing class, ethnicity, race, and other issues, they make a case for studying African languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including the Multilanguage Seminar, a self-instructional model for learning less commonly taught African and other languages.

L. J. Randolph, Jr. , Curriculum and Instruction, World Language Education, named Morgridge Fellow

(June, 2024) Fifteen faculty and campus members at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been named Morgridge Fellows. The fellows were selected through a juried process to participate in the year-long learning community designed to further institutionalize and support Community-Engaged Scholarship. Community-Engaged Scholarship is defined as: teaching, research and scholarly activities that are performed in equitable, mutually beneficial collaboration with communities to fulfill campus and community objectives.

Library of Congress interview with K. D. Thompson, Religious Studies Program, on Islam, Gender and Swahili in East Africa

(May, 2024) In their interview for the Library of Congress, SLA director K.D. Thompson, the Library's Lilly Scholar-in-Residence, talks about their current research focusing on "Two Projects on Islam, Gender and Swahili in East Africa."

Junko Mori, Asian Languages and Cultures, received a resident faculty fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities

(April, 2024) Professor Mori has received a resident faculty fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities, to continue to work on her ongoing research project that examines the development, implementation, and legacy of the Japanese Language and Culture Assistant Program (JALCAP), administered by Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction from 1989 to 1993.
This study combines contemporary history and ethnography to explore how the fundamental purpose and benefits of Japanese language and culture education in Wisconsin were envisioned differently by diverse stakeholders. Partially autobiographical, the study is also informed by her personal experience with this internship program, which prompted her to move to Wisconsin from Tokyo and eventually led her to begin her academic career at UW-Madison.

Emily Machado, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, received Chancellor’s Inclusive Excellence Teaching Award

(January 2024) Thirteen UW-Madison faculty members have been chosen to receive this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor given out since 1953 to recognize some of the university’s finest educators. A ceremony will take place at 5 p.m. April 16 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

K. D. Thompson and Adeola Agoke, African Cultural Studies, received a 3-year U.S. Department of Education grant

(September 2023) This groundbreaking study on Exploring Full Learner Autonomy in Self-Instructional LCTL Learning documents the strategies and outcomes of fully self-instructional learning of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), responding to the national need for increased access to effective learning opportunities for studying LCTLs, especially at high proficiency levels. The study also addresses international calls for empirical research on language learner autonomy, self-directed learning, self-assessment, and resource management strategies. The study will analyze data collected from 60 self-instructional language learners (SILLs) studying 28 African and Southeast Asian LCTLs through UW-Madison’s Multilanguage Seminar, an innovative two-semester sequence of fully self-instructional LCTL learning developed and taught by the co-PIs, over nine academic years and three summers. The dataset includes SILLs’ individual study plans, daily or weekly learning journal entries and students’ responses to one another, learning resources SILLs created, reflective essays, self-assessment plans and results, emails to the instructors with assignments or feedback, and other homework assignments. The core project activities are data preparation, analysis, and dissemination of findings, including a free workshop for language instructors and program administrators, presentations at scholarly conferences, and at least one publication, a book, in Year 3. Robust dissemination and evaluation plans ensure that the project will broadly impact U.S. foreign language education and research.

Julia Goetze, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+, received ACTFL Research Priorities Project grant

(September 2023) The project is titled "Exploring teacher emotions and instructional behaviors in social justice-oriented foreign language (FL) classrooms" and addresses 3 of the 6 research priorities that ACTFL identified in 2023: Equity and Access in Language Learning, Equity and Access in Language Teaching, and K-16 Language Educator Development. It is inspired by recent empirical evidence for the perceived lack of training and support language instructors experience when they are tasked with or desire to bring critical pedagogies into their traditional communicative or task-based language classrooms. Specifically, it takes instructors’ unpleasant emotions and uncertainty relating to their rethinking of the value of traditional language teaching approaches, their shifting beliefs about the nature of language instruction, their performance assessments, the lack of time to dedicate to additional learning outcomes, and the perceived lack of agency in curricular decision-making as a starting point and systematically examines teachers’ current self-reported beliefs, emotions, instructional behaviors, and perceived support systems in social justice-oriented FL classrooms. Research will be published in Foreign Language Annals.

2022 SLA alum Ryan Goble published article based on dissertation in the Modern Language Journal

(June 2023) In his Modern Language Journal article, "Resumes and Job Postings as Cognitive Tools for Narrating Anglophone Language Learners’ Multilingual–Professional Identities and Trajectories in Career Advising Appointments," Ryan Goble, 2022 SLA PhD Program graduate, addresses a gap in empirical research as related to language learners' prolonged multilingual development and treatment of multilingual competence as a skill. Goble examines the narrative co-construction of US collegiate language learners' professional identities and trajectories in career advising meetings where college decisions and experiences, including language learning and study abroad, are framed to facilitate the transition to the world of work. The secondary objective is to better understand college language learners' capacity to translate classroom language learning to participation and TL use in personally relevant multilingual communities.

L.J. Randolph, Jr, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, published a co-edited volume "How We Take Action: Social Justice in PK-16 Language Classrooms"

(May 2023) Co-edited with Kelly Frances Davidson, Valdosta State University and Stacey Margarita Johnson, Vanderbilt University, this book brings an important diversity of voices, contexts, and collaborations to the ongoing conversations about social justice in language education. Organized into three sections, some of the chapters in this collection report on classroom research while others focus on key practices and experiences. Section I, entitled Inclusive and Empowering Classrooms, takes a critical approach to classroom practices by breaking with the status quo or creating spaces where students experience safety, access, and empowerment in language learning experiences. Section II, Integration of Critical Topics, addresses a variety of ways teachers can incorporate justice-oriented pedagogies in day-to-day instructional experiences. Section III, Activism and Community Engagement, explores how teachers can empower students to become agents for positive change through the study of activism and constructive community engagement programs at local and global levels.

Julia Goetze, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+, published an article in Modern Language Journal based on her study on teacher emotions

(April 2023) Julia Goetze's study adopts a framework rooted in appraisal-based emotion theory to explore the complexity of teachers’ emotional lives and the nature of language teacher emotions in the classroom, using anxiety as a starting point and drawing on vignette methodology for emotion elicitation.

Katrina Daly Thompson, Department of African Cultural Studies, published the sole-authored book "Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America"

(March 2023) In their new book, Katrina Daly Thompson draws extensively from conversations and interviews conducted both in person in North America and online in several international communities. Writing in a compelling narrative style that centers the real experiences and diverse perspectives of nonconformist Muslims, Thompson illustrates how these radical Muslims are forming a community dedicated to creative reinterpretations of their religion, critical questioning of established norms, expansive inclusion of those who are queer in various ways, and the creation of different religious futures. "Muslims on the Margins" is a powerful account of how Muslims are forging new traditions and setting precedents for a more inclusive community— one that is engaged with tradition, but not beholden to it.

Three graduate students, Kazeem Sanuth, Sara Farsiu, and Kathryn Mara, received funding from the SLA PhD Program to assist Thompson with transcription and data analysis for this study.

Dianna Murphy, Language Institute, awarded 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Leadership

(March 2023) This highly competitive academic staff excellence award recognizes demonstrated exceptional organizational leadership. In their review of nominations, the members of the Academic Staff Professional Development and Recognition Committee considered nominees' outstanding achievement and performance, personal interaction, and initiative and creativity, among other criteria. Thank you to Monika Chavez, SLA PhD Program director, who submitted the nomination and to SLA and other colleagues for their support!

Heather Willis Allen, Department of French and Italian, signs contract for the sole-authored book "A Design Orientation to Second Language Writing Instruction"

(February 2023) The book "A Design Orientation to Second Language Writing Instruction" extends New Literacy Studies scholarship on multiliteracies pedagogy and Learning by Design and elaborates five principles of a Design orientation to second language (L2) writing instruction. The book examines topics including L2 writing as a multidimensional Designing process, multimodality and intertextuality as affordances for writing, and the roles of creativity and collaboration in writing and communicating about texts in a learning community. Presenting an approach to L2 writing instruction relevant for today’s diverse, multilingual educational contexts and ever-changing literacies, this book provides readers a comprehensive treatment of the theoretical and pedagogical dimensions of a Design orientation to L2 writing that will be of particular interest for L2 researchers, teachers, and teacher educators.
(Routledge's Multiliteracies and Second Language Education book series, Gabriela Zapata, editor)

Jacee Cho, Department of English, received Vilas Associates Award 2023-24

(February 2023) The Vilas Associates award supports faculty research at UW-Madison in a wide variety of disciplines. Awardees are chosen from a pool of applicants based on a detailed research proposal. Professor Cho’s project title is “Multilingual Acquisition: Kazakh–Russian bilingual speakers’ L3 English Acquisition.” Thank you to Rajiv Rao, Language Sciences who submitted and to SLA colleagues for their support of the nomination!

Diego Román, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, recognized with Distinguished Teacher Award

(January 2023) Twelve UW-Madison faculty members have been chosen to receive this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor given out since 1953 to recognize some of the university’s finest educators. A ceremony will take place at 5 p.m. April 25 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.