Dear SLAT major and minor students,

Would you like to be a more productive writer? If you are working on an intensive writing project like a dissertation, journal article, course paper, or grant proposal, and you would like to increase your writing productivity in a safe and friendly space, consider joining the SLAT Writing Room this Spring 2025!

Each focused two-hour session is set up to have unstructured writing time with short breaks, followed by a short discussion aimed at helping you improve your writing productivity. This is an informal way to create accountability, meet a few SLAT friends, and get some writing done. 

The sessions will be on Zoom every Friday morning, from 9:30 am – 11:30 am (Arizona time). The first session will take place on Friday, January 31st, and the sessions will continue until April 25th. The recurring Zoom link for the sessions is: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86065761632

No advance registration necessary – just show up and work on your writing goals! 

Please reach out to Kate (kateshea@arizona.edu) or Angus (leydic@arizona.edu) with any questions.

Dear SLAT major and minor students,

Would you like to be a more productive writer? If you are working on an intensive writing project like a dissertation, journal article, course paper, or grant proposal, and you would like to increase your writing productivity in a safe and friendly space, consider joining the SLAT Writing Room this Spring 2025!

Each focused two-hour session is set up to have unstructured writing time with short breaks, followed by a short discussion aimed at helping you improve your writing productivity. This is an informal way to create accountability, meet a few SLAT friends, and get some writing done. 

The sessions will be on Zoom every Friday morning, from 9:30 am – 11:30 am (Arizona time). The first session will take place on Friday, January 31st, and the sessions will continue until April 25th. The recurring Zoom link for the sessions is: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86065761632

No advance registration necessary – just show up and work on your writing goals! 

Please reach out to Kate (kateshea@arizona.edu) or Angus (leydic@arizona.edu) with any questions.

Dear SLAT major and minor students,

Would you like to be a more productive writer? If you are working on an intensive writing project like a dissertation, journal article, course paper, or grant proposal, and you would like to increase your writing productivity in a safe and friendly space, consider joining the SLAT Writing Room this Spring 2025!

Each focused two-hour session is set up to have unstructured writing time with short breaks, followed by a short discussion aimed at helping you improve your writing productivity. This is an informal way to create accountability, meet a few SLAT friends, and get some writing done. 

The sessions will be on Zoom every Friday morning, from 9:30 am – 11:30 am (Arizona time). The first session will take place on Friday, January 31st, and the sessions will continue until April 25th. The recurring Zoom link for the sessions is: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86065761632

No advance registration necessary – just show up and work on your writing goals! 

Please reach out to Kate (kateshea@arizona.edu) or Angus (leydic@arizona.edu) with any questions.

Dear SLAT major and minor students,

Would you like to be a more productive writer? If you are working on an intensive writing project like a dissertation, journal article, course paper, or grant proposal, and you would like to increase your writing productivity in a safe and friendly space, consider joining the SLAT Writing Room this Spring 2025!

Each focused two-hour session is set up to have unstructured writing time with short breaks, followed by a short discussion aimed at helping you improve your writing productivity. This is an informal way to create accountability, meet a few SLAT friends, and get some writing done. 

The sessions will be on Zoom every Friday morning, from 9:30 am – 11:30 am (Arizona time). The first session will take place on Friday, January 31st, and the sessions will continue until April 25th. The recurring Zoom link for the sessions is: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86065761632

No advance registration necessary – just show up and work on your writing goals! 

Please reach out to Kate (kateshea@arizona.edu) or Angus (leydic@arizona.edu) with any questions.

Dissertation Committee: Dr. Hayriye Kayi-Aydar (Chair), Dr. Suzanne Panferov Reese, Dr. Chris Tardy, Dr. Nick Ferdinandt

Dissertation Title: Engaging students in an English-medium STEM classroom: Positioning learners through teacher-directed questioning 

Locations: In person - Harvill 211; Zoom location - https://arizona.zoom.us/j/6155058290?omn=84591856486 (password: EMI)

Abstract: Rapid changes in international education globally have led to growth in transnational partnerships between institutions around the world (Altbach et al.,, 2019; Knight, 2016). These partnerships often employ English as the medium of instruction (EMI) as a marketable recruitment tool (De Costa et al., 2022) with varying program structure (e.g., McKinley et al., 2021), stakeholder input, and quality assurance measures (McBurnie, 2008). Of special interest is how instructors are(n’t) prepared to shift their language of instruction or begin teaching students for whom English is an additional language. While language teacher agency has a growing body of research (Kayi-Aydar et al., 2019), less is known about content instructors’ agentic actions in transnational EMI classroom contexts. To address this gap, this dissertation describes a 6-month longitudinal, critical, ethnographic case study conducted in a transnational higher education partnership between a U.S. and Chinese institution providing English-medium instruction. Participants included 2 STEM instructors and over 100 students. The instructors’ discursive positioning and instructional choices were analyzed in recorded classroom observations, and their observed agentic choices were retroactively discussed in semi-structured interviews.  The findings highlight that in-class interactions prompted through teacher-directed questions were minimal and nearly all rhetorical, limiting students' opportunities for language practice and instructors’ in-class, formative assessment. Students were generally positioned as unwilling interlocutorsbut agentic individuals who should question instructors and the program. In contrast, students’ written interviews highlighted the many challenges of comprehending content delivered in an EMI context. This reflects a growing awareness in EMI research (Galloway et al., 2021; Macaro et al., 2018) that changing the language of instruction does not necessarily support simultaneous content and language acquisition.  However, language acquisition remains one of the main reasons students consider participating in EMI programs and a “benefit” under which they are recruited. As such, the study concludes with suggestions and implications for supporting content teachers and English language learners in content-focused courses.

Dissertation Title: Exploring Multilingual Genre Knowledge Development in a College First-Year Writing (FYW) Course

Dissertation Committee: Dr. Christine Tardy (Chair), Dr. Suzanne Panferov Reese, Dr. Julieta Fernandez, Dr. Guillaume Gentil (External Member - Carleton University)

Dissertation Abstract: Learning to write at universities requires learning to write across diverse genres. For the growing number of multilingual students in higher education, learning to write across academic genres also requires learning to write across languages, as they may be familiar with genres in their home language but not in English. Though there is theoretical support for instruction facilitating the process of learning new genres across languages, few studies have offered empirical insight into such instruction. To bridge the gap, this classroom-based study explores how multilingual writers apply their genre knowledge in the process of writing across both genres and languages. The study examines the learning potential of English as an additional language (EAL) writing instruction that engages students in writing across languages and genres at a US university, which aims to enhance students’ multilingual genre knowledge development. Multiple data sources are collected, such as students’ screen recordings and video-based interviews. Data are analyzed through iterative thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2012) and informed by theories of genre and writing development (e.g., Tardy et al., 2020). Findings of this study contribute to a theoretical understanding of multilingual genre knowledge and offer pedagogical implications for writing instructors on the potential affordances and challenges in implementing an assignment of cross-genre, cross-language writing as described in this study.

Location: This will be a hybrid defense. To attend in person, the defense will be in Harvill 211. To attend on Zoom, the link is https://arizona.zoom.us/my/cmtardy