MA TESOL student Damkerng Mungthanya reflects on his work for the Social Innovation Foundation
During this summer, I went back to Thailand and had a chance to work with the Social Innovation Foundation, an organization which aimed to help prepare graduated university students with disabilities to have necessary skills for their career. Realizing the importance of English knowledge in their career, I was invited to organize an eight-week remote English skills training course for them. There were 15 learners assigned into two sections based on their availability. The class met weekly from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. Since the learners were diverse in their disabilities and English proficiency, I have tried hard to make the content suitable for them. Weekly homework was used to help me see their learning progress. The topics ranged from basic English conversation, preparing for a job interview, conversations in the work place, basic sentence structures, and business email writing. A well-organized lesson and collaboration among staff and learners were the key for making this eight-week English skills training successful.
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Congratulations to Truc Dinh, recipient of the 2021/2022 Nattinger Scholarship
Before starting my MA TESOL program at PSU, I was a product manager, whose job was to collaborate with software engineers and business people to build software products. Although being a product manager, I still had a burning desire for English linguistics. I wanted to learn English linguistics, learn how to teach the language effectively, and research how to do that through a mobile application (app). That is the main reason why I applied to this program.
Currently, there are millions of people who learn languages using mobile applications. According to their 2020 report, Duolingo, one of the most popular language learning apps in the world, had 500 million users in total and around 40 million monthly active users. Along with Duolingo, there are also other language learning apps such as Babbel (10 million subscriptions sold), Busuu (100 million users), Memrise (60 million users) and so on. However, “the effectiveness of these commercial apps for L2 learning has received little attention from ISLA researchers” (Loewen et al., 2020, p.211). As far as I am concerned, there is no published research on the impact of those apps on Vietnamese, particularly those learning English. This raises two questions: (1) How do language learning applications help Vietnamese people to improve their English skills? (2) Based on the result of the first question, how can we build the most effective application to teach English to Vietnamese? With the knowledge and research experience I have been gaining and will gain in my MA TESOL program, I hope to conduct research to answer those questions.
I am extremely grateful to be granted the James Nattinger Scholarship this year. The scholarship has eased my financial burden and motivated me to follow my research interest. This is not only an opportunity, an experience, but also an honor that I will forever be thankful for.
Scholarship applications for the 2022/2023 academic year are available on the department's website.
Now more than ever the world needs applied linguists and our students need your support. If you can give even a small amount, please donate to the Nattinger Scholarship.
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MA TESOL alumni adventures
Erin Watters (MA TESOL ‘13) and Estelle Konrad (MA TESOL ‘12) established a consulting business earlier this year called Third Spaces (www.thirdspacesinc.com) with Erin's fellow EL Fellow from Algeria, Margot Harris. As with any business, Erin and Estelle have had a slow but steady start and are now beginning to pick up the pace.
In 2020, they started a podcast (Don't Take the Coral Inside and Other Cultural Curiosities) as a place to share conversations about their cultural and educational experiences. It was slow to start, and as the year progressed, they failed to really get it off the ground. Neither of them are easily deterred once an idea forms in their heads. So, this year under the auspices of Third Spaces, they have revitalized that project and started publishing monthly.
In other areas, the two alumni have been working on assessment rating, professional development coaching internationally, and just recently received an invitation to submit a grant proposal for a regional grant with the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Resources partner program. In the coming year, they hope to increase the number of projects they are undertaking to be able to provide their pool of educators ongoing opportunities beyond the intermittent teaching they can find.
They share all this as they have only started this fledgling organization, with the hopes that we can support and encourage the ideas and dreams of other MA TESOL students. They write, “We owe a great deal of gratitude to the department and especially Dr. Kim Brown who not only gave us the opportunity to expand our intercultural competence while creating critical incidents in Understanding the International Experience, but also inspired the name of our organization. We are eternally grateful for the experiences that we received in the MA TESOL program that allowed us to branch out and share what we learned in new ways.”
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Linda Bonder receives OR TESOL award for her work in Community Education
Congratulations to Linda Bonder (MA TESOL, 2016) on receiving the 2021 Excellence in Teaching in the Changing Classroom award from ORTESOL for her work in Community Education. Linda is the board president for the Beaverton Literacy Council (BLC). When the pandemic forced all classes online, Linda reworked the BLC’s course offerings, opened the classes to ELLs across the metro area, and taught her colleagues and volunteers about best practices for teaching with online platforms such as Zoom. Our practicum students have been teaching through Beaverton Literacy Council throughout the pandemic and we are grateful to Linda for making that possible.
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Back to campus
Two of our new grad students, Asad and Brandy, headed off to the library stacks to search for the reference volume The World's Major Languages by Bernard Comrie.
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Welcome to a new wild and wonderful academic year! As the university is finding its feet with face-to-face, remote, and “attend anywhere” courses, I’m finding my feet as new department chair. Those of us who are teaching in-person are enjoying the connections come with seeing students’ expressions (above their masks) and body language, as well as the things we learn in the side conversations during breaks. (I’ve been told I must watch Futurama.)
I’d like to express my appreciation for all students who continued their programs during remote-only instruction. In this newsletter, you can learn more about two students from our group of excellent second year M.A. students who did all of their first-year coursework via Zoom: Truc Dinh (Nattinger Recipient) and Damkerng Mungthanya. You can also read about some of the amazing work some of our graduates have been doing.
One exciting piece of department news is that Alissa Hartig and Jack Barber (Chemistry) received a $300,000 grant to study active learning and disciplinary language. Congratulations to them both!
Finally, we’re going back to in-person “First Friday” get-togethers all who are interested in saving the world through applied linguistics or just geeking out about language. Our long-time location, Hot Lips Pizza, unfortunately did not make it through the pandemic and we are trying out new venues. Contact the department at linginfo@pdx.edu if you’d like to come and aren’t already on the listserv. We meet on the first Friday of the month from 4:30-5:30 or later.
We’d love to know what our friends and graduates are doing. Feel free to drop me an email (santelmannl@pdx.edu) with news or inquiries. We hope that you all are still staying healthy and adapting to the ever-changing pandemic circumstances.
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Alissa Hartig and Jack Barbera, (Chemistry Faculty) awarded NSF grant
Active learning (AL) strategies have been at the center of national calls for the adoption of evidence-based instructional practices to transform education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. While there is strong evidence to support the effectiveness of such strategies overall, in practice student outcomes vary widely, with AL pedagogies sometimes having no measurable effect. Thus, it is critical to understand what makes AL strategies effective in some cases but not in others. This project examines a central component of a wide range of AL approaches: the use of small-group discussions. The project investigates students’ engagement in group work, the factors that influence this engagement, and the relationship between students’ engagement in discussions during group work and their understanding of course material. Findings from the project will help inform the implementation of AL strategies that rely on group work.
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Upcoming Virtual Undergraduate and TESL Certificate Information Sessions- Friday, November 5th 12-1 pm
- Friday, December 3rd 12-1 pm
Email linginfo@pdx.edu to R.S.V.P. if you'd like to attend a session and we'll provide the Zoom address!
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2022/2023 MA TESOL Admissions
Applications to the program are open for the 2022/2023 academic year The priority deadline is February 1st. Applications received beyond that date will be reviewed as space in the program allows.
Attend a virtual M.A. TESOL info session! RSVP to linginfo@pdx.edu and we'll email you a link to the Zoom session. Upcoming date:
Friday,
November 12th
1 p.m.
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More department news
Read more news from the Applied Linguistics department here.
All department newsletters can be found archived on the department's website.
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