HH
Research
Publications
Presentations
Current projects
I am currently keeping
busy with the following research projects:
1. As Chair of the department’s Curriculum Committee,
I am working with my colleagues to integrate language and
content across all four years of the undergraduate curriculum.
Once the departmental mission statement was finalized that
characterized the department’s interdisciplinary,
inquiry-based approach to the cultural production of the
German-speaking world, the committee has been working on
identifying and sequencing content areas for the four years
of undergraduate study. Central to the sequencing process
is aligning content foci with the language acquisitional
goals of each curricular level. An essential criterion for
determining a topic’s place within the curriculum
is where the topic’s prototypical textual manifestation
falls along a continuum reflecting
a text’s
readability and accessibility for the L2 learner. The initial
discussions of this sequencing work were completed in late
2007, and the committee devoted its attention in spring
and summer 2008 to revising the
first-year course (overview, unit goals, writing tasks, supplemental texts) to serve as a model of integrated
language study. The first-year course was
piloted during the 2008-09 academic year with further enhancements completed during summer 2009 and implemented in 2009-2010. The curriculum committee
drew on the experience of developing and implementing the
first-year course
and focused its attention during the 2009-10 academic year
on revising
the second- and third-year courses. Both courses were piloted during the 2010-11 year while at the same time discussions are continuing regarding revisions to the fourth-year courses in order
to establish an articulated, content-oriented trajectory
across
all four years of study. A more detailed chronology of this curricular project is available here. This site will be continually updated as the project progresses.
2. I have been working with Lone
Petersen,
a graduate student in the German Department at Georgetown
University, to apply
a systemic functional linguistic framework to the analysis
of longitudinal L2 German written data in order to examine
intra- and interclausal development as an aspect of an emergent
advanced L2 writing ability. We first conducted a transitivity analysis of the data and presented our findings in the three-hour symposium “Researching
advanced L2 writing: Theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues” at the 15th World Congress of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA) in Essen, Germany. A tangential project that examined the development of the use of the passive voice in these same data was presented at the 2009 annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Denver, Colorado. Most recently, I presented the results of an analysis of the thematization patterns in the learners' writing development at the 37th Congress of the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association in Vancouver, Canada in July 2010. I am currently working on an article on some of these findings.
3. Based on my interest in the intersection between L2 reading and writing, I am continuing my research into learners' textual borrowing practices within the German Studies Department's newly designed curriculum with its increased emphasis on a more text-based approach to L2 learning. During the 2010-2011 academic year I conducted a pilot study in 2nd-year German that examined the incidence, the process, and the motivation of learners' textual borrowing practices. I presented the results of that study at the 38th Congress of the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association in Lisbon, Portugal in July 2011. During the 2011-2012 academic year I will conduct a follow-up study on the same topic.
4. As the Director of the Emory College Language Center, I have been working with colleagues in foreign languages across Emory College to explore useful assessment practices for collegiate foreign language study. Aiding this effort has been the Language Center's involvement in the newly formed Consortium on Useful Assessment in Language and Humanities Education. This inter-institutional network between Notre Dame, Georgetown, Rice, and Emory aims to foster a culture of responsible and useful assessment of student learning outcomes in the humanities. As a collaborative effort, it enhances assessment practices developed by individual departments, helps to disseminate exemplary practices within the Consortium and beyond, and supports research into student learning.
January 2012