Research Interests
My research interests are varied, a direct result from the many different students I have worked with over the past twenty years who have often raised some curiosity in me. My daily interactions with the young adults I taught in Miami sparked my interest in heritage language learning and more specifically, Generation 1.5 students and their use of language to negotiate identity. As so many studies on adolescent language have traditionally been based on monolingual, English-speaking youth (see Danesi, 2003; Espejo, 2003; Milner, 2004; Orvin, 1995) and were focused on the ways youth employed their unique style of language to create their identities and interact with those around them, I took it upon myself to learn as much as possible about my immigrant, non-English speaking students and their experiences related to forming and expressing their identities.
I discovered numerous researchers (Bailey, 2000; Goldstein, 1997; Harklau, 2000, Huang et al., 2007; McHattoon et al., 2007; Rampton, 1995, 2000; Tseng & Fuligni, 2000) who focused their interest on multilingual and multicultural youth, especially those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants. These adolescents, who comprise a rapidly growing segment of the general, global population, often struggle to balance the languages and cultures of two worlds as they “face complex issues of adaptation involving both their culture of origin and the culture of the new country” (Berry, 1997; Rumbaut, 1994: as cited
in Phinney et al., 2001, p. 135). I felt it was my responsibility as an instructor of these students to learn more about how they view themselves, their experiences as students in the American school system and who they were ultimately becoming in order to better serve them. This eventually led me to explore, as part of my comprehensive exams, the topic of the roles of both L1 and L2 in the lives of minority and marginalized immigrant adolescents as they negotiate their identities at home with their families, in school with their teachers and peers, and in their communities. By examining the language choices of Latino, Asian, and African immigrant youth in various situations, I identified patterns of how, when and why youth preserve or shun their L1 linguistic and ethnic identity as they attempt to assimilate into the dominant L2 language and culture. This is an area I would like to pursue in the future by conducting face-to-face surveys and administering questionnaires to qualified participants.
As expository writing is my favorite subject to teach, a second area of interest and the one on which I am currently writing my dissertation is peer error correction in IEP writing courses. In order to maximize the benefits of peer review in the writing classroom, as well as reduce social interferences, I chose to abandon face-to-face interactions entirely and rely solely on anonymous electronic-peer review using track changes and inserting comments via MSWord. Armstrong & Paulson (2008, p. 401) believed “electronic activities might encourage more holistic (and more thoughtful) feedback.” More importantly, numerous researchers (Bornstein, 1993; Bostock, 2000; Liu et al., 2001; Valacich, Dennis, & Nunamaker, 1992; Zhao, 1998) have suggested that anonymity “provokes more critical feedback because reviewers are relieved from the social pressure and enabled to express themselves freely without considering interpersonal factors” (as cited in Lu & Bol, 2007, p. 102). Furthermore, various studies (Hartman et al., 1991; Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986; Kelm, 1996; Mabrito, 1991; Siegel et al., 1986) revealed that “electronic communication expands the boundaries of classrooms, enables students to communicate anywhere at any time, and discourages the emergence of dominant participants typical in face-to-face communications, and thus promotes more and equal participation among group members” (as cited in Lu & Bol, 2007, p. 103). As a result, my dissertation examines two aspects of the relationship between EFL student attitude towards peer review, based on a Likert
questionnaire, and performance of the task. One is the number and types of questions/comments (based on Liu & Sadler, 2000) and corrections (based on Min, 2006) a student makes to a peer's essay in anonymous electronic-peer review, while the other examines the number and types of revisions a student incorporates into his/her original essay after receiving feedback from an unknown peer.
Finally, prior to enrolling in a doctoral program, I began research, simply out of curiosity, on second language acquisition by adults in natural environments. I was torn between advocates of environmentalist theories who believe one’s experiences and
surroundings are the forces driving language acquisition, and nativists who accept language abilities as being innate. Most linguists passionately endorse one collection or the other, but as a foreign language classroom instructor and a second language learner myself, I believe that mastering a second language as an adult involves aspects from both schools of thought. As a result, I researched numerous cases of successful adult second language acquisition in natural environments where no classroom instruction or formal studying occurred. Though most success stories involved highly positive environments, I was able to interview a former prisoner of war and some persons previously incarcerated in foreign prisons to show that although most research supports the notion that language acquisition requires positive, low anxiety situations, and a low affective filter (see Krashen), there are cases where foreign languages have been acquired under conditions of extreme duress, a subject which has rarely, if ever, been explored. This is an area in which I would like to conduct longitudinal research by taking teams of bilingual educators to various prisons around the world to assess the oral/aural fluency of persons currently incarcerated. Unfortunately, this may be impossible due to human subjects’ regulations and the obvious ethical issues involved. Nevertheless, it could result in some worthy findings about language acquisition outside the classroom.
Please contact me at [email protected] for the complete list of references mentioned above or if you would like to read any of the papers in their entirety.
My research interests are varied, a direct result from the many different students I have worked with over the past twenty years who have often raised some curiosity in me. My daily interactions with the young adults I taught in Miami sparked my interest in heritage language learning and more specifically, Generation 1.5 students and their use of language to negotiate identity. As so many studies on adolescent language have traditionally been based on monolingual, English-speaking youth (see Danesi, 2003; Espejo, 2003; Milner, 2004; Orvin, 1995) and were focused on the ways youth employed their unique style of language to create their identities and interact with those around them, I took it upon myself to learn as much as possible about my immigrant, non-English speaking students and their experiences related to forming and expressing their identities.
I discovered numerous researchers (Bailey, 2000; Goldstein, 1997; Harklau, 2000, Huang et al., 2007; McHattoon et al., 2007; Rampton, 1995, 2000; Tseng & Fuligni, 2000) who focused their interest on multilingual and multicultural youth, especially those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants. These adolescents, who comprise a rapidly growing segment of the general, global population, often struggle to balance the languages and cultures of two worlds as they “face complex issues of adaptation involving both their culture of origin and the culture of the new country” (Berry, 1997; Rumbaut, 1994: as cited
in Phinney et al., 2001, p. 135). I felt it was my responsibility as an instructor of these students to learn more about how they view themselves, their experiences as students in the American school system and who they were ultimately becoming in order to better serve them. This eventually led me to explore, as part of my comprehensive exams, the topic of the roles of both L1 and L2 in the lives of minority and marginalized immigrant adolescents as they negotiate their identities at home with their families, in school with their teachers and peers, and in their communities. By examining the language choices of Latino, Asian, and African immigrant youth in various situations, I identified patterns of how, when and why youth preserve or shun their L1 linguistic and ethnic identity as they attempt to assimilate into the dominant L2 language and culture. This is an area I would like to pursue in the future by conducting face-to-face surveys and administering questionnaires to qualified participants.
As expository writing is my favorite subject to teach, a second area of interest and the one on which I am currently writing my dissertation is peer error correction in IEP writing courses. In order to maximize the benefits of peer review in the writing classroom, as well as reduce social interferences, I chose to abandon face-to-face interactions entirely and rely solely on anonymous electronic-peer review using track changes and inserting comments via MSWord. Armstrong & Paulson (2008, p. 401) believed “electronic activities might encourage more holistic (and more thoughtful) feedback.” More importantly, numerous researchers (Bornstein, 1993; Bostock, 2000; Liu et al., 2001; Valacich, Dennis, & Nunamaker, 1992; Zhao, 1998) have suggested that anonymity “provokes more critical feedback because reviewers are relieved from the social pressure and enabled to express themselves freely without considering interpersonal factors” (as cited in Lu & Bol, 2007, p. 102). Furthermore, various studies (Hartman et al., 1991; Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986; Kelm, 1996; Mabrito, 1991; Siegel et al., 1986) revealed that “electronic communication expands the boundaries of classrooms, enables students to communicate anywhere at any time, and discourages the emergence of dominant participants typical in face-to-face communications, and thus promotes more and equal participation among group members” (as cited in Lu & Bol, 2007, p. 103). As a result, my dissertation examines two aspects of the relationship between EFL student attitude towards peer review, based on a Likert
questionnaire, and performance of the task. One is the number and types of questions/comments (based on Liu & Sadler, 2000) and corrections (based on Min, 2006) a student makes to a peer's essay in anonymous electronic-peer review, while the other examines the number and types of revisions a student incorporates into his/her original essay after receiving feedback from an unknown peer.
Finally, prior to enrolling in a doctoral program, I began research, simply out of curiosity, on second language acquisition by adults in natural environments. I was torn between advocates of environmentalist theories who believe one’s experiences and
surroundings are the forces driving language acquisition, and nativists who accept language abilities as being innate. Most linguists passionately endorse one collection or the other, but as a foreign language classroom instructor and a second language learner myself, I believe that mastering a second language as an adult involves aspects from both schools of thought. As a result, I researched numerous cases of successful adult second language acquisition in natural environments where no classroom instruction or formal studying occurred. Though most success stories involved highly positive environments, I was able to interview a former prisoner of war and some persons previously incarcerated in foreign prisons to show that although most research supports the notion that language acquisition requires positive, low anxiety situations, and a low affective filter (see Krashen), there are cases where foreign languages have been acquired under conditions of extreme duress, a subject which has rarely, if ever, been explored. This is an area in which I would like to conduct longitudinal research by taking teams of bilingual educators to various prisons around the world to assess the oral/aural fluency of persons currently incarcerated. Unfortunately, this may be impossible due to human subjects’ regulations and the obvious ethical issues involved. Nevertheless, it could result in some worthy findings about language acquisition outside the classroom.
Please contact me at [email protected] for the complete list of references mentioned above or if you would like to read any of the papers in their entirety.