Ana Pellicer-Sánchez’s research on multimodal input for language learning acknowledged

Dr Ana Pellicer-Sánchez‘s research team have recently published in the journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition on a study in which they recorded young learners’ eye movements while reading a multimedia story on its own as well as when they were reading while listening. Through doing this, the team investigated ‘looking patterns’ and their relationship with comprehension using a multiple-choice test.

Ana explained, “Findings of the study provide further evidence for the positive role of images in reading comprehension. It also shows the benefits of using eye-tracking to investigate the relationship between processing patterns and comprehension.”

Find further links for this research as it was reported in UCL Institute of Education news.

Yi Wang awarded an Outstanding Self-Financed Student Award by the China Scholarship Council

PhD student Yi Wang, supervised by Li Wei and Andrea Revesz, has been awarded an Outstanding Self-Financed Student Award by the China Scholarship Council. 36 Chinese doctoral students in UK universities have received the award this year. The awarding ceremony is going to be on Wednesday 10th June, online. But Yi has been chosen as one of two representatives to attend the ceremony in person at the Chinese embassy and will be receiving the award from the Chinese ambassador. 

Yi’s PhD is on: Cognitive restructuring in the multilingual mind: motion event construal in Cantonese-English-Japanese multilingual speakers.

She has also been awarded an ESRC post-doctoral fellowship (one of six) through the UBEL DTP and will be working on her new project from January 2021 (see announcement on 28 April).

Page Wheeler (MA TESOL) wins British Council ELT Masters Dissertation Award

Page Wheeler (MA TESOL In-Service) has won the British Council ELT Master’s Award with her dissertation: “The Effect of Vowel Accuracy, Visual Speech, and Iconic Gesture on Intelligibility,” supervised by Dr Kazuya Saito.

Interfacing the existing literature in L2 pronunciation and psycholinguistics, Page took an exploratory approach towards examining how L2 speech intelligibility can be affected not only by phonological errors, but also by visual and gestural information.

Of note, this is one of the first empirical studies that has shown that not only language but also gesture matters for successful L2 communication, providing a LOT of pedagogical implications.

Congratulations, Page!

Yi Wang awarded our first successful ESRC Post Doctoral Fellowship

Yi Wang (currently completing her PhD under the supervision of Li Wei and Andrea Revesz) has been awarded an ESRC Post Doctoral Fellowship. She will be working on a project entitled “The Dynamics of Language and Thought in the Multilingual Mind: Effects of Language Learning”, with Andrea as her mentor.

This is the first ESRC post doc fellowship success in the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics – congratulations to Yi Wang!

New book: “Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts” by Zsofia Demjen

Congratulations to Zsofia for the publication of her latest book Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts with Bloomsbury Academic. Zsofia did a virtual launch via Twitter – a chapter-by-chapter summary can be found on her Twitter feed and more information can be found on the publisher’s website.

PhD students Rommy Anabalon Schaaf and Javiera Sandoval awarded a Researcher-led Initiative Award for their “Ethnographic Writing Lab”

About the researcher-led initiative 
Now in its third year, the Researcher-led Initiative awards offer funding for early stage research and teaching staff and postgraduate research students.  

About the project. The name of the project is “(auto)ethnographic writing lab”, principal investigator Rommy Anabalon Schaaf (Alfonso Del Percio and John O’Regan, supervisors) and co-investigator Javiera Sandoval (Sue Walters, supervisor) were awarded £1,000. The proposal aims to establish an (auto)ethnographic writing lab to inspire and work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment. By bringing together doctoral students from across UCL, the lab seeks to think, generate, cultivate alternative forms of doing research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences which allow us to collect, understand and talk about data and theories of the stories we produce to (re)imagine the world we inhabit. 
Specifically, the lab will be divided into a 3-day workshop and four monthly meetings to share our work and experiences during 2020.
For the three-day workshop we will invite academics and students from Anthropology, Education, Sociolinguistics, Arts and related fields to trace and discuss the historic, political and social conditions under which our work as researchers is produced. We will also discuss the writing regimes which constraints our work and possible strategies to “go beyond” them. Finally, we will revise different texts and objects that have been produced to expand the boundaries of (auto)ethnographic research and which may become source of inspiration for our work as scholars. 
During the monthly meetings we will discuss each other’s work, reflect on our practices as (auto)ethnographers and hopefully, increase further academic collaboration. 

Alfonso Del Percio talks about perceptions of language and inequalities on BBC Radio 4

The code switching conundrum – Referring to his research on unemployed people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, Dr Alfonso Del Percio discusses whether taking a Western, “rational and white” view of language learning further entrenches class and power structures.

Two of our PhD students have won the Language Learning Dissertation Grant

Danni Shi and Yeonwoo Jung are both PhD students in Applied Linguistics supervised by Professor Andrea Révész. The Language Learning Dissertation Grant Program, from the renowned journal ‘Language Learning’, supports doctoral candidates’ dissertation research in language sciences. Danni and Yeonwoo will receive up to $2,000 to cover expenses connected with the research component of the dissertation. Read more about their research on the UCL homepage. Congratulations to Danni and Yeonwoo!

Language Policy’s new editor-in-chief is our own Miguel Pérez-Milans

As of this week, Dr Miguel Pérez-Milans is the new Editor-in-Chief for the journal Language Policy together with Prof. Kate Menken from The City University of New York. The updated editorial information can be found on the journal’s website: 
https://www.springer.com/journal/10993/editors. Congratulations, Miguel!

MA TESOL Pre-Service grad thanks Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic-Smith after getting position as high school English teacher in Shenzhen, China

MA TESOL Pre-Service (2017-2018) graduate, Yicong, who took the module ‘Working with Bilingual / Multilingual Learners in International Schools Settings’ has recently secured an English teaching position, thanks to what she learned in the module, which is led by Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic-Smith.

Yicong recently wrote to Dina: “This course helped me a lot. When I sought jobs, I talked a lot about how international schools work. Many school headmasters praised me because of this. And luckily, next year I will become a high school English teacher in Shenzhen, China.” Congratulations, from all of us in the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, Yicong!