|
Dear ALIS-ers,
I am very excited to be coming onboard as chair-elect of the
Applied Linguistics Interest Section (ALIS) this year. I first started
attending TESOL conventions in 1998, shortly after completing my EdM in
applied linguistics and becoming a full-time ESL teacher in Seattle,
Washington. In the past, I served as a coeditor (with Jana Moore) of theAL Forum, our newsletter. I am now ready to become
even more involved in the work of our dynamic interest section. In this
short letter, I would like to introduce myself to the members.
I was born in a medium-sized industrial town in Russia, not too
far from Moscow. From an early age, I have had interest in languages. I
tried to learn, albeit not quite successfully, Spanish in 6th grade,
French in 9th, and German during my college years, but the “official”
foreign language taught at my school was English, and I absolutely fell
in love with it from Day 1. I read in the language voraciously as soon
as I could read in it even a little bit. In fact, it is in English that I
got to “meet” some of my favorite authors for the first time, from J.
R. R. Tolkien to Jane Austen, from John Updike to Stephen King, from
Mark Twain to Alfred Bester, and from Charles Dickens to Ursula Le Guin
(a wide array of genres and styles, I know). Upon graduation from high
school, I decided to pursue a degree in teaching English as a foreign
language, with a minor in German. And this summer, I again plunged into
language learning, taking up Spanish. It is great to step into the
learner shoes once more.
I began teaching English as a foreign language in Moscow in
1993. Although initially I was aspiring to become a translator, and
teaching was just a job, I soon realized that it was, in fact, teaching
that I was passionate about. The creativity the work required, the
satisfaction of seeing the students progress and fall in love with the
study of language as I had myself years before, the constant discovery
of both the language and the pedagogical strategies inspired me. Walking
into the classroom to a group of new students (now of linguistics
rather than ESL) every term is still my greatest pleasure and my
favorite challenge.
Another passion of mine is applied linguistics research. When
teaching ESL in Seattle in the late 90s to early 2000s, I came to
appreciate how much such research contributes to quality ESL teaching.
Excellent teachers are not only those who know how to relate to students
and to come up with a variety of fun activities, but those who have the
most up-to-date understanding of how human languages work and how
humans go about acquiring those languages, the ones who are willing and
able to engage in action research in order to explore and improve their
own practices as well as to contribute to our joint professional
knowledge.
Today, I teach linguistics and TESL courses at California State
Polytechnic University at Pomona. In each course, I hope to inspire
future ESL teacher-researchers, and in each course, a few students catch
the ESL teaching bug. It’s great to see our profession growing and new
generations discovering the joy and intellectual rigor of linguistic
research and language teaching.
My own research interests lie in the analysis of classroom
discourse, especially with respect to language ideologies and in the
investigation of academic literacy development among Generation 1.5
bilinguals.
As the ALIS chair-elect, I am really looking forward to
learning from David Olsher, our current chair, about the best practices
in leading the interest section. I look forward to sharing ideas about
research and language teaching with all of you and to being inspired by
your ideas and feedback. The upcoming TESOL international convention in
Seattle, Washington, from 21–24 March 2017, is shaping up, and I hope to
provide details about our academic session in the next
newsletter.
Looking forward to meeting you all in Seattle,
Olga Griswold |
