I am currently keeping busy with the following research projects:
1. Within the undergraduate curriculum in the German Studies Department at Emory I have been working on systemic functional linguistic approaches to both teaching and analyzing L2 German writing. Initial work consisted of a longitudinal case study of three learners who completed three consecutive levels within the curriculum with particular focus on their intra- and inter-clausal development as an aspect of an emergent advanced L2 writing ability. An article on this case study appeared in 2021 in the journal System.
2. Because of my growing interest in approaches to experiential learning in the L2 classroom combined with my involvement in Emory's summer program in Vienna, Austria, I have become interested in the development of a pedagogical framework for second language teaching in the linguistic landscape. Twice now students have conducted field-based research on the linguistic landscape of the city with a particular eye toward how Vienna’s multiculturalism is manifested (or not) in publicly displayed language. Not only have these projects helped students gain a new perspective into the city’s multicultural and multilingual landscape, but they also have had to grapple with fundamental questions about applied linguistics research methodology. Two articles on this topic, one in English in an edited volume and one in German in Der Deutschunterricht, have appeared in print, and I am co-editing two separate volumes on the topic of language learning in the linguistic landscape with David Malinowski (San Jose State University) and Sébastien Dubreil (Carnegie Mellon University). One of the volumes appeared with Springer in 2020, and the other was published in 2023 as an open educational resource with Springer.
3. My research into linguistic landscapes has also focused more recently on the public manifestation of multilingualism in greater Atlanta and has resulted in two small-scale projects. The first is an effort called Languages Across Metro Atlanta (LAMA) that aims to work with Emory undergraduate Linguistics students to begin documenting multilingual language use across metro Atlanta. The first results on that effort can be found on the project's website. The second project is a collaboration with the Atlanta Community Food Bank and the Center for Urban Language Teaching and Research (CULTR), a federally funding Language Resource Center at Georgia State University, to identify non-English speaking communities suffering from food insecurity in the 29-county service area of the Food Bank and to assist the Food Bank in developing language-specific measures for food-insecure populations in greater Atlanta.
4. A fourth project grew out of a collaboration with Glenn Levine (UC-Irvine) that aimed to better understand the experiences of international students in collegiate foreign language classes in the United States. Based on initial findings from a pilot study conducted in spring 2016, we carried out a case study of international students and documented their experiences as a German language learner in the U.S. In addition to their interaction with the pedagogy and instructional materials, we also focused on understanding how their exposure to this new language interacted with other languages at their disposal in terms of their own identity. Initial findings were presented at the 2018 annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Chicago, and I am now conducting a nexus analysis of one international learner's progression through the first-year German curriculum. Initial findings were presented at the AILA World Congress in July 2023 with plans for publication to follow thereafter.
Fall 2023
1. Within the undergraduate curriculum in the German Studies Department at Emory I have been working on systemic functional linguistic approaches to both teaching and analyzing L2 German writing. Initial work consisted of a longitudinal case study of three learners who completed three consecutive levels within the curriculum with particular focus on their intra- and inter-clausal development as an aspect of an emergent advanced L2 writing ability. An article on this case study appeared in 2021 in the journal System.
2. Because of my growing interest in approaches to experiential learning in the L2 classroom combined with my involvement in Emory's summer program in Vienna, Austria, I have become interested in the development of a pedagogical framework for second language teaching in the linguistic landscape. Twice now students have conducted field-based research on the linguistic landscape of the city with a particular eye toward how Vienna’s multiculturalism is manifested (or not) in publicly displayed language. Not only have these projects helped students gain a new perspective into the city’s multicultural and multilingual landscape, but they also have had to grapple with fundamental questions about applied linguistics research methodology. Two articles on this topic, one in English in an edited volume and one in German in Der Deutschunterricht, have appeared in print, and I am co-editing two separate volumes on the topic of language learning in the linguistic landscape with David Malinowski (San Jose State University) and Sébastien Dubreil (Carnegie Mellon University). One of the volumes appeared with Springer in 2020, and the other was published in 2023 as an open educational resource with Springer.
3. My research into linguistic landscapes has also focused more recently on the public manifestation of multilingualism in greater Atlanta and has resulted in two small-scale projects. The first is an effort called Languages Across Metro Atlanta (LAMA) that aims to work with Emory undergraduate Linguistics students to begin documenting multilingual language use across metro Atlanta. The first results on that effort can be found on the project's website. The second project is a collaboration with the Atlanta Community Food Bank and the Center for Urban Language Teaching and Research (CULTR), a federally funding Language Resource Center at Georgia State University, to identify non-English speaking communities suffering from food insecurity in the 29-county service area of the Food Bank and to assist the Food Bank in developing language-specific measures for food-insecure populations in greater Atlanta.
4. A fourth project grew out of a collaboration with Glenn Levine (UC-Irvine) that aimed to better understand the experiences of international students in collegiate foreign language classes in the United States. Based on initial findings from a pilot study conducted in spring 2016, we carried out a case study of international students and documented their experiences as a German language learner in the U.S. In addition to their interaction with the pedagogy and instructional materials, we also focused on understanding how their exposure to this new language interacted with other languages at their disposal in terms of their own identity. Initial findings were presented at the 2018 annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Chicago, and I am now conducting a nexus analysis of one international learner's progression through the first-year German curriculum. Initial findings were presented at the AILA World Congress in July 2023 with plans for publication to follow thereafter.
Fall 2023
