The University of Toledo’s Department of English Language and Literature hosted the 2011 Conference of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS / ALCÉU XXXVIII), August 9-12. Support for printing of the conference Meeting Handbook and for the reception at Phoenicia Cuisine was provided by the College of Languages, Literature, and Social Sciences. All conference sessions were held in the Field House.
The LACUS Program Chair is the Department’s own Doug Coleman, who this year also served as Local Organizer. He was assisted in local arrangements by two recent graduates of the MA in English — Concentration in ESL: Josh Paiz and Kasumi Yamazaki.
UT-affiliated presenters at LACUS XXXVIII included the following.
- Muye Sun (MA in English — ESL) and Kurtis Bubalo (Master of Liberal Studies): “More effective input based on SLA theory and knowledge of the brain”
- Yifei Xin (MA in English — ESL): “Is the Natural Approach really natural?”
- Nathan Ziegler (MA in English — ESL graduate, now in the UT Ph.D. program in Educational Psychology): “Understanding epistemological beliefs in a second language learning context”
- Douglas W. Coleman (Prof. of English): “The ethical consequences of the everyday construct of ‘language’”
- Joshua Paiz (MA in English — ESL graduate, now entering a Ph.D. program at Purdue): “Sim-games in SLA: A very ‘real’ solution to a very ‘abstract’ problem”
- Ryan Wright (MA in English — ESL): “Heteronormativity conquers all: LGBTQI students’ search for identity in the second language learning classroom”
- Kasumi Yamazaki (MA in English — ESL graduate, now in the UT Ph.D. program in Curriculum and Instruction): “Improving orthographical errors in Kanji: Integrating calligraphy methods into the JFL classoom”
- Kurtis Bubalo (Master of Liberal Studies): “Do bilinguals have an advantage? A review of bilingual advantage and metalinguistic awareness”
- Ronald Zallocco (MA in English — ESL): Issues with minority languages in Italy
- Kamal Belmihoub (MA in English — ESL): Sociolinguistic profile of Algeria
In addition, presenters hailed from various parts of the US and Canada, the Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Belarus, and Saudi Arabia. For the first time at a LACUS conference, thanks to the excellent audio-visual facilities in the Field House, a few presenters spoke via video link.
Two UT students, Kamal Belmihoub and Kasumi Yamazaki, won LACUS Presidential Commendations for their papers.
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