meet our FACULTY
Judith Liskin-Gasparro
Co-Director of FLARE
Associate Professor
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
FLARE
Website: here
I regularly teach SLA Research and Theory II, one of my favorite courses, because I work with FLARE students as they carry out and write up their major first-year research project. I recently taught Topics in SLA: Speaking, and I plan to develop some new courses for the program as well. I also regularly teach the Foreign Language Teaching Methods course for new TAs in Spanish and Portuguese, which is a constant source of insights about language teaching.
As co-director of FLARE, I know all of our students from the time of their first contact with us until they graduate (and beyond). There is nothing more rewarding than working with students over a period of four or five years as they move through our program and become experts in their field and skilled researchers. I particularly enjoy seeing the variety of student research projects at the FLARE Poster Session, held at the end of each semester.
FLARE attracts excellent students with a wide range of languages and diverse research interests. We specialize in helping students find and develop those interests, and we take pride in producing young scholars who are making their marks on the profession in many ways.
Books (selected, since 2000)
2009 | Mosaicos: Spanish as a World Language. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall (with Elizabeth Guzmán, and Paloma Lapuerta).
2004, 2008 | Identidades: Exploraciones e interconexiones. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall (with Matilde O. Castells, Elizabeth Guzmán, and Paloma Lapuerta).
2001 | The communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle (with Terry L. Ballman and Paul Mandell).
Sue Otto
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Spanish & Portuguese
International Programs/FLARE
Website: here
I teach Multimedia and Second Language Acquisition (164:211) each year and have also directed individual work for the Practicum in CALL Software Development (164: 212), Readings in Second Language Acquisition (164:301), and Special Projects in SLA (164:302).
I revel in the interdisciplinarity and diversity of FLARE. It is wonderful to collaborate with faculty from multiple departments and to work with graduate students who have many different language backgrounds and career interests. Because I teach a required course (Multimedia & SLA course), I have the pleasure of getting to know all the students personally, which makes me feel very connected to the program. And nothing reflects our diverse and congenial community like the FLARE potlucks—nobody does it better!
Selected Publications
Graham Davies, Sue E. K. Otto, and Bernd Rüschoff. (Forthcoming). "Historical perspectives on CALL." Chapter 2 in Contemporary Computer-Assisted Language Learning, eds. Michael Thomas, Hayo Reinders, and Mark Warschauer. London: Continuum.
Sue E. K. Otto. (2012). "Can computers teach languages faster and better?" pp. 162-166 in The 5 Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages, 2nd Edition, eds. E. M. Rickerson and Barry Hilton. London: Equinox, 2012
Sue K. Otto and James P. Pusack. (2009). “CALL Authoring Issues.” CALL Focus Issue 2009: Technology in the Service of Language Learning: Update on Trends and Issues. Modern Language Journal, 93, pp. 784-801.
Stephen M. Alessi
Associate Professor
Psychological and Quantitative Foundations Department
FLARE
Website: here
Although I'm more of a language learner than a language teacher, I enjoy traveling and working with students from all over the world. I've done teaching in six continents (all except Antarctica) and have worked with students from all of them. I'm in the educational psychology program in the College of Education and my teaching and research area is educational technology. My two main courses of interest to FLARE students are Web-Based Learning (07P:215) and Designing Educational Multimedia (07P:208). My research interests include learning with simulations, facilitating interaction in web-based courses, and human interface design.
Recent Publications
Kopainsky, B., Pedercini, M., Davidsen, P.I., & Alessi, S.M. (2010). A blend of planning and learning: Simplifying a simulation model of national development. Simulation & Gaming, 41(5), 641-662.
Alessi, S.M. (2009). Modeling a system and teaching a system: Enhancing what students learn from modeling. In P. Blumschein, W. Hung, D. Jonassen, & J. Strobel (Eds.), Model-based approaches to learning: Using systems models and simulations to improve understanding and problem solving in complex domains. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Alessi, S. & Dwyer, A. (2008). Vocabulary assistance before and during reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 20(2), 246-263.
Hlas, A.C., Schuh, K.L., & Alessi, S.M. (2008). Native and non-native speakers in online and face-to-face discussion: Leveling the playing field. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 36(4), 37-373.
Jill N. Beckman
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Linguistics Department
FLARE
Website: here
Recent Publications
To appear (J. Beckman, P. Helgason, B. McMurray and C. Ringen) "Rate Effects on Swedish VOT: Evidence for Phonological Overspecification," Journal of Phonetics.
2009 (J. Beckman, M. Jessen and C. Ringen) "German Fricatives: Coda Devoicing or Positional Faithfulness?" Phonology 26 (2009), pp. 231-268. ©Cambridge University Press.
William D. Davies
Professor and DEO
Linguistics Department
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
2010. W. Davies. A Grammar of the Madurese Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
2010. W. Davies. “Up to D[eb]ate on Raising and Control, Part 1: Properties and Analyses of the Constructions,” Language and Linguistics Compass 4: 390-400. (with Susannah Kirby and Stanley Dubinsky)
2010. W. Davies. “Up to D[eb]ate on Raising and Control, Part 2: The Empirical Range of the Constructions and Research on their Acquisition,” Language and Linguistics Compass 4: 401:416. (with Susannah Kirby and Stanley Dubinsky)
2009. W. Davies. "Movement and Locality in Sundanese wh-questions," Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association. (with Eri Kurniawan)
Sarah M. B. Fagan
Professor
German Department
FLARE
Website: here
Recent Publications
Fagan, S. (2009). German: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fagan, S. (2004) “Du bist dran!” Die Unterrichtspraxis 41.1 (2008):87.
Richard R. Hurtig
Professor/ Starch Facuty Fellow
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
FLARE
Website: here
Recent Publications
Mueller, V. & Hurtig, R. (2010) Technology-Enhanced Shared Reading with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: the Role of a Fluent Signing Narrator. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15 (1): 72-101.
Hurtig, R. & Downey, D. (2009) Augmentative and Alternative Communication in Acute and Critical Care Settings. Plural Publishing Inc., San Diego, California
Bentler, R., Wu, Y-H., Kettel, J., Hurtig, R. (2008). Digital Noise Reduction: Outcomes from field and lab studies. International Journal of Audiology, 47(8): 447-460.
Chuanren Ke - 柯传仁
Professor
Department of Asian Languages and Literature
FLARE
Director, the Confucius Institute at the University of Iowa
Website: here
Recent Publications
Chuanren Ke & Audrey Li. (2011). Chinese as a foreign language in the US. Journal of Chinese Linguistics. 39:1: 177-238.
Dai Chen & Chuanren Ke. (2010). From Form-Focused to Task-Based CFL Instruction. Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications. ISBN 978-0-87415-366-8
Chuanren Ke, Chen-hui Tsai, Lin Gu, & Yi-Tzu Huang. (2009). Teaching Chinese as a second language: Listening acquisition and instruction. Peking University Press, ISBN: 9787301152355
Paula M. Kempchinsky
Associate Professor
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
FLARE
Website: here
Recent Books
Slabakova, R., Rothman, J., Kempchinsky, P., Gavruseva, Elena. (2008). Proceedings from GASLA (Generative Studies in Language Acquisition) 9. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Kempchinsky, Paula & Slabakova, Roumyana. (2005). Aspectual Inquiries. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kristine L. Muñoz
Professor
Department of Communication Studies
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Fitch, K. (2008) La conversación de contacto en parejas románticas de larga duración. (Small talk in long term romantic couples) Oralia, 11, pp.191-206.
Valde, K., & Fitch, K. (2004) Desire and sacrifice: Cultural and relational aspects of designated driver talk. Western Journal of Communication, 68, 121-150.
Lia Plakans
Assistant Professor
Department of Teaching & Learning, Foreign Language / ESL Education Program.
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Yang, H.C. & Plakans, L. (in press). Second language writers’ strategy use and performance on an integrated reading-listening-writing task. TESOL Quarterly.
Plakans, L. (in press, 2011). Writing integrated items. Handbook of Language Testing. Editors: Glenn Fulcher & Fred Davidson. Routledge.
Plakans, L. (in press, 2011). Assessment of integrated skills. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Series Editor: Carol Chapelle. Wiley-Blackwell.
Leslie Lisbeth Schrier
Associate Professor
Chair of Foreign Language and ESL Education Director of Secondary Teacher Education
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Everson, M. E. and Schrier, L. L. (2010) The Iowa Critical Language Program: A Case Study in Developing Instruction in the Less Commonly Taught Languages. The Ohio State University: National East Asian Languages Resource Center.
Schrier, L. L. (2010) Should there be an App for us? Observations from an Editor's first year. Modern Language Journal, 94, 4,640-644.
Schrier, L.L. (2009) The overwhelmed generation and foreign language teacher preparation: Developing strategies to work with the mental health challenges of preservice teachers. Foreign Language Annals. Vol.41.N0.2 pp.254-282.
Kathy L. Schuh
Associate Professor
College of Education
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Hlas, A. C., Schuh, K. L., & Alessi, S. M. (2007/2008) Native and non-native speakers in online and face-to-face discussions: Leveling the playing field. Manuscript submitted to the Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 36(4), 337-375.
Schuh, K. L. (2007). Idiosyncratic knowledge connections as affordances for knowledge construction. Semiotica, 164(1/4), 173-195.
Schuh, K. L. & Farrell, C. A. (2006). Student effort, media preference, and writing quality when using print and electronic resources in expository writing. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 35(1), 61-81.
Carol Severino
Associate Professor
Department of Rhetoric
FLARE
Website: here
I’m the director of the Writing Center in the English-Philosophy Building, a great resource for FLARE students. We can help you with your writing projects and with your letters of application. It’s also the place where tutoring conversations with second language writers foster second language acquisition. You might also be interested in becoming a writing center tutor yourself by taking Teaching in a Writing Center, which I teach every fall. You might also be interested in doing research in the writing center on language learning and writing development, including the ways tutors scaffold these processes.
Every two years I teach Topics in Second Language Acquisition: Writing for FLARE, a course that not only teaches you to do research on writing processes and texts, but makes you a more aware first and second language writer and a more informed and confident teacher of first or second language writing.
As for research, I am interested in all second and foreign language writing, not only ESL writing. Currently, I study lexical development as it applies to writing and as it affects and complicates second language writing processes. I am also interested in tutoring dynamics and how they affect writing and revision.
I like working with FLARE’s linguistically astute, internationally minded, hardworking graduate students. It’s a pleasure to be their teacher or committee member because they are always willing to go the extra mile in their research and writing. I also like the fact that FLARE is a community in which people care about one another’s ideas and research, but more important, they care about one another.
Selected Publications
Severino, C. Empowering L2 Tutoring: A Case Study of an L2 Writer’s Vocabulary Learning,” forthcoming in Writing Center Journal, Spring, 2011. With Elizabeth Deifell.
Severino, C. “Teaching Writing in Ecuador: Falsos Amigos, Primos Hermanos, y Humitas con Café.” Writing on the Edge Fall, 2010, 27-36.
Severino, C. “Second Language Writers Inventing Identities through Creative Work and Performance,” in Reinventing Identities in Second Language Writing edited by Michelle Cox, Christina Ortmeir-Hooper, Jay Jordan and Gwen Schwartz, Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2010. 174-194 (2010). With Matthew Gilchrist and Emma Rainey.
Christine E. Shea
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Shea, C., Curtin, S. (2010). Discovering the relationship between context and allophones in a second language: Evidence for distribution-based learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 110-133.
Shea, C., Curtin, S. (accepted, to appear in 2011, Second Language Research) Context and the Production of Second Language Allophones.
Helen H. Shen
Associate Professor
Department of Asian Languages and Literatures
FLARE
Website: here
Selected Publications
Helen H. Shen (2010). Imagery and verbal coding approaches in Chinese vocabulary instruction. Language Teaching Research,14, 485-499
Helen H. Shen & Chen-Hui Tsai (2010). A Web-Based Extensive Reading Program and its Assessment System. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 45 (2) 19-47.
Helen H. Shen (2009) Size and Strength: Written vocabulary acquisition among advanced learners. Chinese Teaching in the World, 23, 74-85.
Roumyana Slabakova
Professor
Department of Linguistics
FLARE
Website: here
Roumyana Slabakova is an associate professor of linguistics and a FLARE core faculty member. She teaches classes in syntax, the structure of languages like English and Slavic, generative second language acquisition and linguistic pragmatics. She specializes in the second language acquisition of meaning, and her overarching research question focuses on the psychological representation of meaning in the brain and how second language learners compute the meaning of sentences and discourse. More specifically, she has worked on the acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect, interpretation of nominal phrases, and scalar implicatures. Her future projects will look at the acquisition of temporal meanings and the interaction of quantifier meanings. She is on the editorial board of Second Language Research and the Journal of Slavic Linguistics. Her native language is Bulgarian.
Selected Publications
2011 Rothman, J. & Slabakova, R. “The mind-context divide: Language acquisition at the linguisticinterfaces”, Lingua 121:568–576.
2011 Slabakova, R. & Ivanov, I. “A more careful look at the syntax-discourse interface”, Lingua 121: 637–651.
2010 Slabakova, R. “Scalar implicatures in second language acquisition”, Lingua 120: 2444–2462.
Pamela M. Wesely
Assistant Professor
College of Education
FLARE
Website: here
Selected publications
Wesely, P. M. (2011). Teddlie, Charles, & Abbas Tashakkori. Foundations of Mixed Methods Research: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Modern Language Journal, 95, 152-153.
Wesely, P. M. (2010). Language learning motivation in early adolescents: Using mixed methods research to explore contradiction. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 4, 295-312.
Wesely, P. M. (2010). Student attrition from traditional and immersion foreign language programs. Language and Linguistics Compass, 4/9, 804-817.
