EUROSLA - the European Second Language Association

 

The Clarion online

Issue 8, 2011

Editor Christina Lindqvist

 

 

 

 

Presentations of new (and old) members of Eurosla Executive Committe

edited by Christina Lindqvist

The new committee was elected in Stockholm in 2011 to serve until 2013. Read more about the committee members below.

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President

Florence Myles, University of Essex


What are your research interests?
Second language acquisition theory; the development of morphosyntax in French L2, especially with a generative and/or processing focus; the role of Universal Grammar and of language-specific features; the role of age in SLA; naturalistic vs. classroom L2 development; the role of formulaic language; learning strategies and attitudes among young classroom foreign language learners. 


Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
University of Sheffield, UK

- Where have you worked since?
University of Southampton, UK, Newcastle University, UK.

 - Where do you work now?
University of Essex, UK.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Research, teaching and administration.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since 1992!

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
Steer the ship competently, with the help of a great team!

Link to Florence's personal web site:

http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/staff/profile.aspx?ID=2332

 

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Vice-President

Martin Howard, University College Cork

 

What are your research interests?
Acquisition of French, (Socio)linguistic Variation, Tense-Aspect, Study Abroad, Advanced Learner.


Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
University College Dublin.

- Where have you worked since?
University College Cork.

- Where do you work now?
University College Cork.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Lecturer in French / Director of the Applied Linguistics Programme / Erasmus Coordinator.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
14 years.


What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
I would like to see Eurosla become a more multilingual organization, especially in relation to its annual conference where English seems to dominate. There is also a lot of potential to enhance interaction among members such as in the form of Eurosla activities and events between the conferences.

Link to Martin's personal web site:

http://publish.ucc.ie/researchprofiles/A015/mhoward

 

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Vice-President

Camilla Bardel, Stockholm University

 

What are your research interests?
Third language acquisition, vocabulary and syntax.


Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
Lund university, Lund, Sweden.

- Where have you worked since?
Lund and Stockholm university.

- Where do you work now?
Stockholm university.

 What are your main tasks at your present work?
Research, PhD supervising, administration.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since 1997.


What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
I would like to continue the discussions with Benjamin’s about the issue of greater availability of the YEARBOOK.

Link to Camilla's personal web site:
http://www.isd.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=9252&a=91358

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Secretary

Danijela Trenkic, University of York


What are your research interests?
I do research on how adults comprehend, produce and learn new languages. Some of the projects I’m currently involved in include L2 vocabulary learning using the errorless learning paradigm (with Meesha Warmington), processing of English articles by native and non-native speakers using the visual word eyetracking paradigm (with Jelena Mirkovic and Gerry Altmann), and exploring competition between articles and plural marking in L2 production (with Gavin Austin and Nattama Pongpairoj). I am also interested in L2 listening, especially the role of bi-modal input in L2 speech segmentation.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
The University of Cambridge.

- Where have you worked since?
Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, The University of Portsmouth, The University of York.

- Where do you work now?
Centre for Language Learning Research, Department of Education, University of York, UK.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
I’ve developed and taught modules in Psycholinguistics, Pragmatics, and Second Language Research. I supervise undergraduate, MA and PhD students in the broad area of second language learning and education. I’m involved in the department’s administration as Programme Leader for MA in Education and serve as Chair of the Board of Examiners. And I do research, sometimes (see above). 

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since Lund 1999.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue? 
I would like to see the interdisciplinarity of the association further encouraged and cultivated, especially by increasing its visibility, presence and appeal in the research circles focused on early and late bilingualism.

Link to Danijela's personal web site:
http://www.york.ac.uk/education/our-staff/academic/danijela-trenkic/

 

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Treasurer

Folkert Kuiken, University of Amsterdam

 

What are your research interests?
Result-oriented research; task-based language teaching; interaction and collaborative learning; Focus on Form; the relationship between communicative adequacy and linguistic complexity; the construct of functional adequacy in L2.

Tell us about your career:
 - Where did you get your PhD?
University of Amsterdam.

- Where have you worked since?
Free University, Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam.

- Where do you work now?
University of Amsterdam.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Research and teaching. Coordinator of the Master Dutch as a Second Language.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since the start in 1991 in Salzburg.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
Guarantee that Eurosla is a financially sound organization (which is quite a challenge in a time of economic recession).

Link to Folkert's personal web site:
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/f.kuiken/

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Ordinary Member

Anna Ewert, Adam Mickiewicz University

 

What are your research interests?
Currently I am interested in bilingualism and cognition. My interests centre around how the knowledge of another language interacts with conceptual representations and general cognitive processes in second language users. I also did some work on the effect of the second language on the first.


Tell us about your career:
My career is typical of many researchers in the part of Europe I come from. I did my PhD in Poznań, at Adam Mickiewicz University, and I have worked there since. My current position is in the School of English at AMU. The school is currently transforming into a faculty, so we are probably going to be the first Faculty of English in Europe and perhaps globally. I work in the Department of English Language Acquisition. My duties include teaching and research. I lecture on second language acquisition and bilingualism, supervise PhD and MA students. I have one research project under way, financed by the National Science Centre, focusing on language and cognition in bilinguals. And my most important task at the moment is organizing the 2012 EuroSLA conference in Poznań.


For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since 2007.


What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
First of all, as a newly elected member of the EC, I simply hope to serve the community well. I think that, as second language researchers, we can contribute not only to second language research, but we can also make our own contribution to knowledge. This is why we have chosen Expanding discipline boundaries as a theme for the next EuroSLA conference. There is room in SLA research for topics that have always been in the mainstream of SLA research, but we should also look at what our colleagues in related fields of research are doing and how we could together contribute to expanding human knowledge.

On a more pragmatic and slightly personal note: I had my first paper accepted at the EuroSLA conference in Dublin many years ago. I did not attend because I could simply not afford it. Things have changed since Poland joined the EU and now every year there is a small group of SLA researchers from Poland attending EuroSLA conferences, and this group includes PhD students. I think that the association has been doing great work in supporting young researchers and I would like to keep it up.

Link to Anna's personal web sites:

http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/fa/Ewert_Anna

http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/~eanna/

 

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Ordinary Member

Monika Schmid, University of Groningen

 

What are your research interests?
I am interested in changes to the L1 as a consequence of becoming bilingual, in particular in the context of L1 attrition. This includes a holistic view of bilingualism which does not assume the L1 to be stable and unchangeable but dynamic and adaptive to the changing demands of bilingual processing. In particular, I am interested in the effects of age at onset on these processes.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
My PhD was awarded by the Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf in 2000.

- Where have you worked since?
From 2000 to 2007, I worked at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

- Where do you work now?
Since 2007 I have held a position at the University of Groningen.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
I am the Principal Investigator in two large-scale research projects on bilingual development, including neurolinguistic aspects. I am also the chair of the English Language and Linguistics section.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
I first attended the Eurosla conference in 2003 in Edinburgh, and have been at all but one of the conferences since.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
A large part of my work has been directed at making language attrition studies more visible within the context of bilingual development and SLA, and I hope to be able to achieve this within the Eurosla context.

Links to Monika's personal web sites:
http://www.rug.nl/staff/m.s.schmid/index
http://www.let.rug.nl/languageattrition/

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Ordinary Member

Alex Housen, Free University Brussels

 

What are your research interests?
Second Language Acquisition: cognitive mechanisms (e.g. noticing, attention and awareness), development of L2 grammar (esp. verb morphology) and L2 lexicon (esp. multiword units), models and dimensions of L2 proficiency (esp. Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency), role and effects of contextual variables on SLA, role and effects of individual differences (e.g. motivation, extraversion) on SLA, role and effects of instruction on SLA, conceptual and methodological issues in SLA research;

Multilingualism and multilingual education;

Cognitive linguistics;

Corpus linguistics.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
MA Applied Linguistics, UCLA (1987), PhD Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (1995).

- Where have you worked since?
1996-2002: research fellow of the National Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium.

- Where do you work now? 
Department of Language and Literature, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Teaching (9 courses on English Language and Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Multilingualism, SLA);

Research (cf. above);

Administrative tasks (e.g. Head of Department 2006-2010, International Liaison Coordinator of the Faculty of Arts, etcetera etcetera);

Services to the community (e.g. consultancy, membership steering committees and expert panels for ministries, etc.).

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since 1991. I've missed only two EUROSLA Conferences so far (Sophia, Basel).

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
Foster multilingual practices within the EUROSLA community (e.g. presentations and publications in other languages than English. We've got to practice what we preach!);

Explore the possibility of organising (annual, bi-annual) EUROSLA summer schools for young L2 researchers;

Explore the desirability and possibility of an international peer-reviewed (online) EUROSLA journal.

Link to personal web site: Under construction, I'm afraid (been on my To Do-list for 10 years. Apparently the university made one for me but I haven't visited it myself (also on my To Do-list). If any member of the EUROSLA community has visited it, and thinks it's any good, please let me know). 

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Co-opted member

Jean-Marc Dewaele, Birkbeck College, London (outgoing president)

 

What are your research interests?
Individual differences in SLA and multilingualism; personality and multilingualism; multilingualism and emotion.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
Free University of Brussels in 1993.

- Where have you worked since?
Birkbeck College, University of London.

- Where do you work now?
Same place.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Supervision of 13 PhD students and 10 MA students, teaching at BA and MA level, research, administration, external examining of PhDs and reviewing of papers and book manuscripts.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since the first conference in Salzburg in 1991, where I presented my very first academic paper.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
I would like to help maintain the excellent atmosphere within the committee and the commitment to excellence in our publications and conferences. 

Link to Jean-Marc's personal web site:
www.bbk.ac.uk/linguistics/our-staff/jean-marc-dewaele

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Ex officio member

Gabriele Pallotti, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia (editor of the Eurosla Monographs series)

 

What are your research interests?
My main line of research has to to with the socio-interactional dimensions of SLA. Although I've been trained in conversation analysis and the ethnography of communication, I am increasingly bending towards more quantitative, positivistic approaches to interaction. In general, I am concerned with issues of constrct definition and operationalization as I think that theories, approaches and research as a whole are useless if they are not grounded in clear and explicit constructs.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
I got my PhD in Semiotics from the University of Bologna, studying the acquisition of L2 Italian by a five-year old Moroccann girl, Fatma. My supervisor was Umberto Eco, who knew virtually nothing about SLA and Applied Linguistics, but taught me to see things critically and from many different angles, never reducing knowledge to a 'school'.  

- Where have you worked since?
I worked a few years in Bologna as adjunct professor, then I became associate professor in Sassari (2001-2005).

- Where do you work now?
At the university of Modena and Reggio Emilia, in the Reggio Emilia campus, college of Education.

What are your main tasks at your present work?

Apart from a reasonable load of teaching and administration, I am currently involved in three research projects. One is funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and aims at building a web-based platform for teaching and researching pragmatics in L2 Italian. The other, also funded by the Ministry of Education, is a continuation of my previous projects on pragmatic development of adolescent learners of Italian, leading to a unique longitudinal corpus collected over four years and with participants performing a variety of communicative tasks. The third is a European project coordinated by Paul Seedhouse (Newcastle) for the realization of a digital kitchen interacting with L2 learners to teach them how to cook in various languages.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since 1996.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
I am an enthusiastic advocate of open-access publications. This is why I edit the Eurosla Monographs, a series that is freely available to the scientific community while maintaining the highest qualitative standards through peer reviewing and careful editing. I am happy that future editions of the Eurosla Yearbook will be freely available as pre-prints on our website and I am going to continue my battle so that previous editions will be accessible to everyone as well.

Link to Gabriele's personal web site:

Well, a www.gabrielepallotti.it address does exist, but I've uploaded a few pages several years ago and never updated it again. I'm really rubbish, I should work on it at least a few hours a year, but I just don't have the time and motivation. I only use this website for sharing data cited in some of my publications.

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Ex officio member

Leah Roberts, University of York (editor of the Eurosla Yearbook)

 

What are your research interests?
Real-time comprehension of syntax and discourse phenomena; bilingual processing; cross-linguistic influences; earliest stages of SLA.

Tell us about your career:
- Where did you get your PhD?
University of Essex.

- Where have you worked since?
University of Essex; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

- Where do you work now?
University of York.

What are your main tasks at your present work?
Trying to get research funding; teaching; running a research centre; editing.


For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
 
9 years.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
Open access for the yearbook.

Link to Leah's personal web site: not yet up and running

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Ex officio member
Christina Lindqvist, Uppsala University (web site editor and editor of The Clarion)


What are your research interests?
The acquisition of French as a third language, cross-linguistic influence and vocabulary acquisition.


Tell us about your career
:
- Where did you get your PhD?
I got my PhD at Stockholm University in 2006.


- Where have you worked since?

I worked at Stockholm University from 2006 to 2011.

- Where do you work now?
From 2011 I work at Uppsala University, The Department of Modern Languages, as a research fellow.


What are your main tasks at your present work?
I mainly do research and teach French grammar and linuguistics.

For how long have you been a Eurosla member?
Since the Basel conference in 2002.

What would you like to achieve as a member in the executive committee? Are there any specific issues that you would like to pursue?
Like many of the other committee members, I would also like to work for open access for the Eurosla Yearbook.


Link to Christina's personal web site: the web site is still under construction...
http://www.moderna.uu.se/christinalindqvist/

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