Busy Writing My Thesis

I just noticed it has been a while since I blogged. I'm not blogging with my students this semester. I thought I'd take a break from blogging with my students while I focus on finishing my PhD Thesis. It's starting to get close now! I just recently did a presentation on some of my PhD research at the BC TEAL Conference in Vancouver at the beginning of May. As always, BC TEAL was a great conference, and I went to some really amazing presentations. I'm always impressed!

My presentation was entitled: Taking Stock of the Depth of NNES Undergraduate Vocabulary. Here is the abstract of my presentation from the program book:

Part of a doctoral research project on non-native English speaking (NNES) university students and the relationship between lexical richness and academic success, this report focuses on the vocabulary errors that persist in NNES undergraduate writing for students who have fulfilled university English language proficiency requirements. Word use is analyzed in both native English (NS) and NNES writing samples from the archives of an effective writing test at a western Canadian university. This report looks at the results of the marking process and analyses the vocabulary errors made by students in the areas of meaning, appropriacy, derivation, form, omission, and style. Preliminary results show that while NS students do make word use errors, NNES students make almost three times more word errors in their essays and the errors differ in kind and seriousness. The word errors made by NNES students affect the readability of their essays, and ultimately the final marks. Participants in this session will leave with a clearer picture of the lexical errors that persist in NNES writing at the undergraduate level. The implications of the report?s findings for the teaching and assessing of NNES students who are bound for higher education are also explored.

Also, here is a link to my presentation slides - enjoy!

http://people.ucalgary.ca/~sdouglas/SRD%20BCTEAL%202010.pdf