Elena: Where are you from, and what are you studying?

Elif: I was born and raised in Kocaeli, a city located in the southwest of Turkey. I received my undergraduate degree from the English Language Teaching department of Istanbul University in 2011. Right after my graduation, I moved to Ankara to work as a language instructor in an Intensive English program at Gazi University. It was a wonderful experience to work with young adults and to help them improve their language skills. However, I still felt that there was a lot to learn, and it was important to keep up with recent scholarship to meet the needs of my students. Thus, in 2013, I started my MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) program at Bilkent University, Ankara. It was quite refreshing to be back in school again. Focusing on reflective practice in language teacher education for my master's thesis, I graduated from the program in Spring 2015. In Fall 2015, I moved to Tucson to pursue my doctorate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) Program as a Fulbright Scholar. Currently, I am in my fourth year, primarily focusing on sociocultural dimensions of L2 learning, with a secondary focus on the instructional dimensions of L2 learning. Moreover, I am also conducting my dissertation project on academic discourse socialization in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, specifically in engineering research teams.

Elena: What topics in second language writing research excite you right now?

Elif: I am particularly interested in the research on academic literacy socialization. First, this particular research field defines “literacies” as social practice (Lea & Street, 1998) and draws attention to the socially situated nature of writing and text production (Johns, 1997). It emphasizes that discipline-specific ways of writing are shaped by culture(s), power dynamics, and institutional practices. For that reason, learning to participate in disciplinary discourses might be challenging for novice writers regardless of their linguistic backgrounds.

Moreover, not every international or domestic student has the opportunity to take courses on academic writing in their majors. Research in the field demonstrates that students might either socialize or be socialized into academic writing through interaction with their peers and/or professors implicitly or explicitly or they might resist participating in the valued practices. I am particularly interested in this learning process that takes place outside of the classroom and the factors which might either foster or prevent students’ socialization into academic discourse, specifically academic writing, and how, if at all, the connection between oral and written practices might inform students about their academic writing.

I also am interested in teacher education in digital platforms to examine the role of collaborative online interaction in professional and academic development. Since my MA degree, I have also been collaborating with Dr. Deniz Ortaçtepe (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey) on reflective practice to see how in-service English language teachers’ past and present teaching experiences might shape and inform their future practice.

Elena: Could you share one way that research informs your teaching and/or vice versa?

Elif: The main purpose of my master’s degree was to improve my teaching with the help of existing scholarship. I was learning new techniques and strategies and transferring those to practice to see if they really worked in an actual EFL classroom. When I did not have good outcomes, I checked the literature again and consulted my senior colleagues to benefit more from their teaching experience. In that respect, I think teaching and research are highly interconnected components, and they do inform and build on each other constantly.

Looking back, I can say that I have followed the same steps in the second language writing classes I teach. When I first started teaching first-year writing at the University of Arizona, I faced two main struggles. First, it was very challenging to appeal to the needs of students who are coming from diverse backgrounds and majoring in multiple areas but trying to improve their writing skills in the same classroom. Second, I felt the need to show the connection between the first-year writing and students’ future academic writing practices. To overcome these two, I did benefit from research on academic literacies as well as my experienced colleagues. I developed projects in which students identified the most frequent genres that occurred in their majors by talking to their advisors, collected sample papers from their experienced peers, who were mostly in their junior or senior years, and then examined the academic language in those papers by interviewing their authors and analyzing specific linguistic items.

Elena: What have you learned in your graduate courses that, in your opinion, will lead you to accomplishing your professional goals?

Elif: My coursework has been a crucial component of my academic trajectory. SLAT is an interdisciplinary program that is associated with multiple colleges and departments. Thus, I was able to choose my classes from a wide range of courses and complete my primary and secondary foci.

I plan to pursue my academic career as a teacher and a transdisciplinary researcher specializing in language teacher education and in second language writing through the lens of academic socialization. Since the beginning of my doctorate degree, I have been very fortunate to take courses from renowned scholars of second language writing who introduced me to the field. With the help of these courses, I have gained expertise in teaching writing, specifically providing writing instruction for multilingual students. Moreover, I have taken multiple courses on research methods (e.g., statistical methods in education, qualitative research methods, and ethnographic discourse analysis), which have been integral to engaging in multiple research projects including my dissertation and improving myself as a scholar.

References

Johns, A. (1997). Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lea, M., & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157-172.

Elif Burhan-Horasanlı is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program of the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on second language writing, academic discourse socialization, and reflective practice.

Elena Shvidko is an assistant professor at Utah State University. Her research interests include multimodal interaction in language teaching/learning, interpersonal aspects of teaching, second language writing, and teacher professional development.