The Multilingual Turn: Reframing Research and Instruction, the 9th annual Second Language Acquisition student symposium, will be held April 15-16,2016 at Union South on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The symposium will be of interest to students and scholars interested in language learning, research, and education. This free, student-run symposium is hosted in conjunction with students at the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota.
Invited plenary speakers include Elaine Tarone (University of Minnesota), Kristine Muñoz (University of Iowa), and Catherine Stafford (UW-Madison). Elaine Tarone has investigated the impact of social context on learner language and second language acquisition. Kristine Muñoz has addressed intercultural communication, persuasion and personal relationships in cultural context through the ethnography of speaking. Catherine Stafford examines the influence of bilingualism, memory, and age on second language learning by adults.
Two panel discussions are featured. In “Critical Multilingualism,” Katrina Daly Thompson, Mariana Pacheco (both UW-Madison) and Martha Bigelow (Univ. of Minnesota) will address the question of how research can avoid monolingual bias and incorporate multilingual norms? In “Professional Development of Language Instructors,” Jeanne Schueller (UW-Madison), Judith Liskin-Gasparro (University of Iowa) and graduate students will share professional opportunities available to instructors of foreign languages.
In addition to the plenary sessions and panels, approximately 50 students and scholars from UW Madison, the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, and beyond will present their research in SLA.