The 2009 Graduate School Guide to Preparing Theses and Dissertations is available at the following link:

• http://www.utoledo.edu/graduate/files/Handbook_Beta_(V35_GC_4_21_09).pdf

• http://englvm00.utad.utoledo.edu/englishnews

Advising information and general information about the Master’s Programs in teaching ESL will continue to appear here.  See the right sidebar or use the handy Search field to find what you are looking for.

The English Department’s free Basic ESL Tutorial, offered as a community service to adults in the Toledo area, will restart September 7, 2009. This non-credit class is for adults at the beginning and low-intermediate levels. For more information, or to get a full-sized version of the poster above, see the Basic ESL Tutorial link in this website’s right sidebar.

In LING 4980/5980: Sim-Gaming for Language Learning, students will learn how simulation and simulation-gaming can be used to make language learning not only engaging, but exciting, and directly relevant to real-world situations.

The course will cover not only sim-game design and use, but will also show how to select and adapt existing sim-games, including ones designed for purposes other than language learning (such as board-game style role plays, computer adventure games, and virtual environments such as Second Life). Simulation-games not only motivate students more than traditional instruction, they allow participants to actually communicate in the language they are learning. With sim-gaming, people learn how to communicate by communicating, not by hearing someone explain about it.

This class will focus both on computer and so-called “paper-and-pencil” simulation-games (the latter using documents, physical props, and so on). In-class activities will include discussion of readings, demonstration of simulation techniques (with students taking part in actual simulations), and simulation-design/use workshops. Grading will be based on class participation, written preparation for in-class work, and a course project.

The professor has been a user and designer of simulations for language learning (and teacher training) since the 1980’s. Quite a few of these have been computer-based simulations, the others, of the so-called “paper-and-pencil” variety. He has given presentations on simulation and language learning at local, state, national, and international conferences, and has published numerous articles on the subject, in periodicals such System, CAELL Journal, LACUS Forum, the SAGSET Journal, CALL, and Simulation & Gaming, as well as having published chapters in various books. He is currently a member of the editorial board of Simulation & Gaming, a journal which he has also guest-edited on a few occasions.

Click on the following link for a printable one-page PDF containing more details:

l-5980-sim-gaming-fall-09-announcement.pdf.

ENGL 5980 fulfills an options requirement for the MA in English — ESL.

Prof. Melinda Reichelt was keynote speaker at the 1st Purdue University Graduate Student Symposium on ESL Studies was held Saturday, April 4th at Purdue University. She spoke on “Ten Things I’ve Learned as an ESL Writing Program Administrator”. She directs the ESL writing program and teaches courses in TESOL, ESL writing, and linguistics. She has published her work in a range of journals, including the Journal of Second Language Writing, World Englishes, Composition Studies, and Modern Language Journal, and she has presented her work at conferences such as TESOL, CCCC’s, AAAL, and the Symposium on Second Language Writing. She is co-author with Tony Silva and Colleen Brice of Annotated Bibliography of Scholarship in Second Language Writing: 1993-1997 (1999), published by Ablex. She is currently editing, with Tony Cimasko, a collection of chapters on foreign language writing, tentatively titled Foreign Language Writing: Principles and Practices.

Prof. Melinda Reichelt reports that on Friday, March 20, a workshop hosted at UT entitled “Coding Qualitative Data in Applied Linguistics” took place. Eight MA-ESL students participated in the event (Doria, Hill, Liao, Myers,Vimuttipong, Wherley, Wolfel, and Zhou). The workshop was facilitated by UT English Professor Melinda Reichelt and Colleen Brice, Associate Professor of English, Grand Valley State University. Dr. Brice is a well-known specialist on coding qualitative data and is the author of the following chapter, which most of the workshop participants had read last semester in Linguistics 5210: Issues in ESL Writing: Brice, C. (2005). Coding data in qualitative research on L2 writing: Issues and implications (in Matsuda, P.K. and Silva, T., Eds.; Second language writing research: Perspectives on knowledge construction (pp. 159-75); Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum).

At the two-and-a-half-hour workshop, Dr. Reichelt presented an overview of procedures for coding qualitative data, and then the participants broke into two small groups. Group one, led by Dr. Brice, worked with data from Kelly Wherley’s master’s thesis research on language use and gender in Facebook. Group two, facilitated by Dr. Reichelt, worked with interview data from Lijie Zhou’s master’s thesis research on heritage language maintenance in Chinese-speaking immigrant families in Toledo. Each group read through its data set recursively in order to identify salient themes in the data on which to base the development of a coding scheme. The photo depicts Dr. Brice and Kelly Wherley discussing Wherley’s Facebook data.

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  This conference is an opportunity for research projects to be presented by all interested professionals and students of Ohio University and other academic institutions across the state. Submissions are encouraged from a range of related disciplines, including, but not limited to, Linguistics, TESOL, Language Learning, Hearing and Speech Sciences, and Psychology

Proposals are due April 1, 2009. For details, see the attached PDF: could-2009.pdf.  This is a fine venue at which to make your first professional presentation and/or to get to know other graduate students from around the state.

The English Department’s free Basic ESL Tutorial, offered as a community service to adults in the Toledo area, will restart in the first week of February.  This non-credit class is for adults at the beginning and low-intermediate levels.  For more information, or to get a full-sized version of the poster above, see the Basic ESL Tutorial link in this website’s right sidebar.