Josh Paiz , a student and graduate teaching assistant in the MA in English with Concentration in ESL, has been extremely busy this semester with professional activities. He presented “Effects of Idea Generation in the L1 for an L2 Writing Task” at the 3rd Annual University of Toledo Graduate Student Symposium/1st Annual Midwest Graduate Research Symposium. Toledo, Ohio, March 20th, 2010. He was awarded an Honorable Mention for outstanding oral presentation. He has also presented “Using YouTube in the ESL writing classroom: a new tool for instruction and discussions” as a guest speaker at the American Language Institute’s Faculty Day (February 12, 2010); “Examining the effects of L1 use during the invention stage of writing in the ESL classroom (a Pilot Study)”, a paper given at the Academic Literacies Symposium (Indiana, Pennsylvania, February 27-28, 2010); “‘Language Death’ an Explosive Dysphemism” (at the 2010 Pre-Summer’s Lecture Colloquium. Toledo, Ohio, March 17th, 2010); and “Examining students’ use of their L1 during idea generation in a free-writing activity (Pilot Study)” at the Purdue University’s Graduate Student Symposium on ESL Research (West Lafayette, Indiana, April 4th, 2010).