SLWIS Newsletter - February 2022 (Plain Text Version)
|
||||
|
In this issue: |
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS ANGELA HAKIM Angela Hakim, King's College London, UK
Elena: Where are you from, and what are you studying? Angela: I grew up in Oklahoma where I pursued a bachelor’s degree in politics and Russian language and literature. After living in and teaching English as a foreign language in Russia and Mexico, I returned to Missouri to pursue a master’s degree in education with a graduate certificate in TESOL. Following the M.Ed., I began to teach academic English in an intensive English language program in St. Louis, Missouri. Since then, I’ve worked in three university intensive English language programs teaching second language writing. I have recently completed a second master’s degree in applied linguistics at King’s College London and begun my Ph.D. in applied linguistics at King’s College London, where my research focuses on the implementation of university-wide academic literacy provision implemented in discipline-specific, credit-bearing English for academic purposes (EAP) courses in a university in Beirut, Lebanon. Elena: What topics in second language writing research excite you right now? Angela: I continue to be excited about multilingual university students’ academic literacy development, discipline-specific approaches to teaching writing, genre-based pedagogy and course design, and academic language and literacy support in English medium instruction (EMI) contexts. Scholarship in each of these areas informs my research and practice teaching writing in English for Academic Purposes courses in an EMI university. My research and practice focus on implementing collaborative, disciple-specific academic literacy teaching in EAP courses, which utilize a genre-informed approach to teaching writing for students in STEM majors. Elena: Could you share one way that research informs your teaching and/or vice versa? Angela: The most significant shift in my own teaching over the past three years has resulted from coursework and reading of research focused on discipline specificity and genre-based pedagogy in teaching second language writing and EAP (e.g., Hyland, 2008; Hyland, 2018; Wingate, 2015). This body of research has informed my own course and syllabus design, materials development, and instruction. One example of this is in the development of classroom materials specific to students’ assessed genres in their discipline courses, as Tribble and Wingate (2013) and Wingate (2015) describe. Elena: What have you learned in your graduate courses that, in your opinion, will lead you to accomplishing your professional goals? Angela: After completing my Ph.D., I hope to continue to teach and research second language writing, focusing my research in particular on discipline-specific EAP, genre-based pedagogy and writing in the disciplines. My graduate education has introduced me to key features of EAP including needs analysis and materials development, discipline specificity, and collaborative pedagogies, allowing me to reach beyond process approaches to teaching writing. It has also helped me to develop research-informed pedagogical practices and tools critical to teaching EAP and second language writing in universities. These include genre analysis and genre-based pedagogy as well as corpus analysis and corpus tools for the classroom. Developing awareness of and skills toward each of these will help me in my teaching and research in the future. References Hyland, K. (2018). Sympathy for the devil? A defense of EAP. Language Teaching, 51(3), 383-399. Hyland, K. (2008). Genre and academic writing in the disciplines. Language Teaching, 41(4), 543-562. Tribble, C., & Wingate, U. (2013). From text to corpus. A genre-based approach to academic literacy instruction. System, 41(2), 307-321. Wingate, U. (2015). Academic literacy and student diversity: The case for inclusive practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Angela Hakim is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Linguistics at King’s College London. Her doctoral research focuses on genre-based, discipline-specific approaches to teaching academic literacy in the English medium instruction context. Angela has taught second language writing and English for academic purposes for over ten years in the U.S., U.K. and Lebanon. |
|||