University of Wisconsin–Madison
A group of UW-Madison Memorial Union Terrace chairs on a sunny day

April 2025 – 18th Annual Second Language Acquisition Student Symposium

April 18-19, 2025

Hybrid format at the University of Wisconsin-Madison & online!

Friday, April 18

A photo of Dr. Tasha Austin

Keynote presentation: Dr. Tasha Austin (SUNY Buffalo) on Labor, Leisure and Language: Towards World Languages for Black Linguistic Reparations

 

Invited panel “Belonging in an Interdisciplinary Field”: Drs. Michele Back (University of Connecticut), Isabelle Drewelow (The University of Alabama), and Colleen Hamilton (National Louis University)

 

Saturday, April 19

A photo of Dr. Chantelle Warner

Plenary talk: Dr. Chantelle Warner (University of Arizona) on Principles for a Human-Centered Approach to Second Language/Culture Education

 

Invited panel “Multiple Paths to Professionalization after the Ph.D.“: Drs. Tim Cavnar (The University of Michigan), Hadis Ghaedi (University of North Carolina), Gordon West (WIDA – Wisconsin Center for Education Research), and Bingjie Zheng (Answerlab).

For more information about the invited speakers’ talks and panel discussions navigate the tabs below.

Each year since 2008 students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison SLA Doctoral Program have joined with graduate students from The University of Iowa and The University of Minnesota to host the SLA Student Symposium. The Symposium is a wonderful chance for students to meet other scholars, young and more experienced, gain practice presenting at a safe and friendly space by and for students, and get collegiate feedback from peers. Our theme of this year is Belonging in SLA: Locating the researcher and the researched in a transdisciplinary field.

As students investigating language phenomena from diverse perspectives, we know that our research can belong in many different academic strands often kept separated by academic units, departments, or conferences. Consequently, we believe a wide variety of research can be used to consider: How does Second Language Acquisition (SLA) belong as its own field in broader academia and how do SLA researchers transform and apply instruments from other research areas to examine language-related issues that impact our world? The 2025 SLA Student Symposium intends to be an opportunity for researchers at early stages of their academic career to showcase how their work belongs in such a transdisciplinary field. The Symposium seeks a diverse range of presentations about how language acquisition, language learning, language teaching, and multilingualism belong within today’s world in relation to sociocultural, educational, psychological, anthropological and technological perspectives. We especially welcome work that considers historically underrepresented participants, perspectives from historically underrepresented researchers, and that pushes the boundaries of what could be considered SLA phenomena.

|

Thank you for considering submitting a proposal for our event! Here you will find some guidelines for submission of your proposal(s) as well as the link to the proposal submission form. This year’s symposium will be the first edition of the event that will be open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Additionally, presenters will have the chance to submit their presentations in the form of paper or poster presentations.

Guidelines

  • All submissions must be original, unpresented, and unpublished work. In your submission, you will be able to indicate if you would like to be considered for a paper or a poster presentation.
    1. Paper presentations will be allotted 30 minutes, including 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. Papers “are formal presentations on a contribution of original knowledge by one or more authors (…) [when] you feel your work is complete and ready for a more comprehensive presentation of your research” (American Association for Applied Linguistics, 2024).
    2. Poster presentations will be simultaneous and on-going during a sole poster session (allotted time TBD based on number of submissions). Poster presentations will be in-person only. “Poster presentations are especially useful for presenting information visually (e.g., charts, graphs, tables, diagrams). A longer time period and a more interactive format provide opportunities for extended discussion with other researchers” (American Association for Applied Linguistics, 2024).

Note: If submitting a proposal for a paper presentation, you will be able to indicate the modality for which you are submitting: Either in-person or online. Online paper presentations will be done synchronously via Zoom. We encourage proposals for in-person presentations as there will be more slots available.

  • All abstract submissions should be anonymous. A presenter can be involved in a total of TWO (2) proposal submissions: ONE (1) as a single/first presenter and ONE (1) as a co-presenter. No individual’s name should appear in more than two proposals of any type. Each proposal must be submitted separately.
    1. Proposals’ titles cannot exceed the 15-word limit.
    2. Proposals’ abstracts cannot exceed the 300-word limit.
  • Criteria for acceptance of proposals will be based on quality of abstracts and content of submissions, originality, significance to the field(s), and relevance to the theme of the conference.
  • The call for proposal submissions closed on Friday, February 7.

Notes

  • All activities will take place at Memorial Union (800 Langdon St.) on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. All activities are in person unless otherwise specified.
    • Tripp Commons and Profile rooms are located on the 2nd floor of the Memorial Union.
    • Beefeaters and Old Madison rooms are located on the 3rd floor of the Memorial Union.
  • All times listed here are on Central Standard Time.
  • Further details on the concurrent sessions can be found in the tabbed content below.

Friday, April 18

Time

Event

Location

11:55am-12:25pmRegistrationOutside Tripp Commons
12:25-12:35pmOpening Remarks: Dr. K.D. ThompsonTripp Commons
12:35-1:50pmKeynote presentation: Dr. Tasha AustinTripp Commons
1:50-2:00pm10-minute break
2:00-4:00pmConcurrent Paper Presentations Block “A” (in person & online)Beefeaters & Old Madison
4:00-4:10pm10-minute break
4:10-4:40pmPoster SessionTripp Commons
4:45-6:00pmPanel 1: Belonging in an Interdisciplinary Field (online)Tripp Commons
6:00-8:00pmDinner (provided)Tripp Commons + Profile Room

Saturday, April 19

Time

Event

Location

8:00-8:30amRegistration & breakfast (provided)Tripp Commons + Profile Room
8:30-10:30amConcurrent Paper Presentations Block “B” (in person & online)Beefeaters & Old Madison
10:30-10:40am10-minute break
10:40-11:55amPanel 2: Multiple Paths to Professionalization after the Ph.D.Tripp Commons
12:00-1:00pmLunch (provided)Tripp Commons + Profile Room
1:00-2:15pmPlenary presentation: Dr. Chantelle WarnerTripp Commons
2:15-2:25pm10-minute break
2:25-3:55pmConcurrent Paper Presentations Block “C” (in person & online)Beefeaters & Old Madison
4:00-4:10pmClosing Remarks: SLA Student Symposium Co-ChairsTripp Commons
4:30-6:00pmSocial Mixer (optional; on your own)Nitro Beverage Lounge (502 W. Washington Ave)

A photo of Dr. Tasha Austin

Dr. Tasha Austin is an assistant professor of teacher education, language education and multilingualism for SUNY Buffalo, Graduate School of Education. As a critical theorist, she engages Black feminist epistemologies to qualitatively examine language, identity and power through a raciolinguistic perspective, investigating the manifestations of antiBlackness in language education. Her dissertation and scholarly publications have been awarded by the American Educational Research Association, New York State Foreign Language Teachers and Northeast Conference on Teaching Foreign Languages. Her research can be found in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Foreign Language Annals and Applied Linguistics among others. As a 2024 NAEd/Spencer Fellow who was previously awarded a Spencer Small Grant for her ongoing study entitled, “Excavating the Oral Histories of Black World Language Teachers” (2024), her scholarship aims to reposition teachers as learners particularly alongside their racially minoritized students with an emphasis upon co-constructing knowledges in language education spaces. You can find more information on Dr. Austin’s Keynote Presentation at the 2025 SLA Student Symposium below.

Labor, Leisure and Language: Towards World Languages for Black Linguistic Reparations

The present climate of U.S. public education has placed the access to a general course of study in the public discourse at levels unseen in recent decades. This discourse centers on the privatization of K-12 schooling, the policing of federal funds with regard to education research, and the place of nationalism in compliance measures tied to federal resources. World language (WL) education access, however, has not been prevalent in these discourses at the same levels unless attention is directed to the years preceding the 2025 presidential election. The replacement of liberal arts with vocational-oriented programming, WLs with computer science or artificial intelligence-driven instruction, and the elimination of full departments of WLs have steadily taken place prior to the larger sweeping changes of the past months. How has the steady divestment from WL study and the diminishing expectation of a liberal arts education set the stage for the present attempt at overhauling U.S. public education? This talk will explore the genealogical implications of those discursively framed as worthy of language study since the colonial era (e.g. propertied white men) of the formation of the U.S. It will trace the framing of those suited for leisure as opposed to those suited for labor (e.g. enslaved/liberated African[s] Americans) and the ways in which both public and private funding has been distributed along racialized lines. Further, it will trace these discourses to the current era of executive orders and normalized elitist conceptions of WL study. Finally, it will conclude with recommendations for WLs as a site for Black Linguistic Reparations (Austin & Anya, 2024) through the 1) Redistribution of resources 2) Repairing of relationships among language educators, learners and content, and 3) Recreating of WLs as a field that represents the Black and immensely diverse linguistic world.

A photo of Dr. Chantelle Warner

Dr. Chantelle Warner is Professor of German Studies and Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs in the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona, where she long directed both the German language program and Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL). Dr. Warner’s research focuses on affective, experiential, and aesthetic dimensions of language use and learning, foreign language literacy development, pedagogical stylistics, and critical multilingualism studies and she has published and presented widely across these areas. Her recent monograph, Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom (Bloomsbury, 2024), argues for an expansion of models of literacy development and related pedagogies in second language teaching and learning to better integrate not only a wider range practices and modalities, but also different aesthetic and feeling rules that tacitly shape our responses to different language uses. Most recently she has been working on an empirical project that explores the role of emotion labor and pedagogies of care in adult second language teaching. You can find more information on Dr. Warner’s Plenary Talk at the 2025 SLA Student Symposium below.

Principles for a Human-Centered Approach to Second Language/Culture Education

Over the last couple of decades, researchers and practitioners in second language teaching and learning have emphasized approaches, which view language as not first and foremost formal structures for encoding ideas but as socially and culturally shaped systems for meaning making (e.g., Kramsch 2011; Liddicoat & Scarino 2013; Paesani et al 2015; van Lier 2004; Warner & Dupuy 2018). Concurrently and with increasing insistence, scholars in these same fields have paid renewed attention to the not only communicative but also subjective dimensions of language learning, with many arguing that the personal and aesthetic aspects of learning a new language/culture are not a bug in our internal language acquisition systems, but rather an essential and significant feature of language as it is lived, through human relations with one another, the world, and themselves (e.g., Levine 2020; Phipps and Gonzalez 2004; Ros i Solé 2016). The notion that language shapes not only how we communicate, but how we make sense (read: meanings and feelings) of human activities and our environments has led some in language education to argue that the second language-culture classroom is an ideal space for realizing humanistic learning goals (e.g., Levine 2020, 76-99; Oxford et al 2020). Building upon these discussions from the field and using examples from second language classrooms in the U.S., this talk proposes a set of core principles for a more human-centered approach to second language teaching. Along the way, the case will also be made that the humanistic dimensions of language and language learning can help those in second language studies to articulate rationales for why multilingual capabilities ought to be a foundational part of contemporary education.

Belonging in an Interdisciplinary Field (online)

This online panel will discuss how scholars at different points in their careers found their unique place in the field of SLA, how their perspectives and approaches have shifted over the years, and how their diverse positions shape their sense of belonging. Panelists discussions will be relevant to a large number of students from different departments who approach language teaching and research differently. The panel will also help to stimulate conversations on how these different perspectives can complement each other as well as on how unique each stage in the academic career might be. Panelists include: Dr. Michele Back (University of Connecticut), Dr. Isabelle Drewelow (The University of Alabama), and Dr. Colleen Hamilton (National Louis University).

Multiple Paths to Professionalization after the Ph.D. (in person)

This in-person panel will touch on topics ranging from continuing education and researcher-teacher identity, to other paths of the profession inside and outside academia. The focus of this panel is to share the types of professional opportunities available to students at all levels of language and linguistics studies after they conclude their time in higher education. This panel can be of great interest to graduate students soon to be in the job market as well as to undergraduate attendees who might be considering continuing their education at the master’s or doctoral level. Panelists include: Dr. Tim Cavnar (The University of Michigan), Dr. Hadis Ghaedi (University of North Carolina), Dr. Gordon West (WIDA – Wisconsin Center for Education Research), and Dr. Bingjie Zheng (Answerlab).

 

All in-person and online panelists are University of Wisconsin Badgers, who we are proud to “bring back” to campus!

Friday, February 7, 2025: Proposal submissions ended

Monday, February 10, 2025: Registration opened!

Friday, February 21, 2025: Acceptances/rejections sent out

Monday, March 17, 2025: Registration closed

Friday, April 18 – Saturday, April 19: Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

Have questions or need accommodations? Contact the 2025 SLA Student Symposium Co-Chairs directly at Martiniano Etchart, Rebecca Sawyer, and/or Natalia Petrova.

UW-Madison logo

The 18th SLA Student Symposium is sponsored by the Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition and by the Language Institute.

Our event is funded by the grants & programs below.

 

Associated Students of Madison logo

 

 

 

Global Badger Experience Grant logo