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Tuesday, August 5, was a very important day for us! Five of our MA TESOL students faced the ultimate test. For one year, they had researched, read, explored, and wrote on a singular topic. These students worked very hard to explore the answers to their chosen research questions. They collected, analysed, and reported their findings. On Tuesday, each student stood alone in front of a panel of experts to describe and defend their research.

And one by one, each student successfully demonstrated their deep knowledge and clear understanding of their topics! After all the stress, APPLAUSE! Every single student successfully completed their thesis research with high marks.

Here is a brief description of each project.

Taylor teaches English and Spanish to middle schoolers in a dual language program in the USA. Taylor’s practical, classroom research explored how his students engaged with different activities that promoted oral engagement. Taylors thesis title was “Effective Student to Student Talk Strategies in an American Middle School Dual Language Immersion Program.”

Adam is passionate about Ukrainian children who are indefinitely living in the USA. As these children attend schools, Adam discovered how the schools communicated with their parents and supported these newcomer children. Adam’s thesis title was “The Dynamics of Communication Between Staff at an American Public Elementary School and Parents of Ukrainian Refugee Students.”

In her context of Klaipeda, Juste understands that language teachers are encouraged to be life-long learners by attending workshops on pedagogy. However, Justa also knew that teachers express differing opinions about professional development seminars. Juste distributed a survey and interviewed language teachers to discover “Motivations and Barriers to Professional Development and Career Advancement among EFL Teachers in Klaipeda, Lithuania.”

Alexandria is an adventuresome teacher! She teaches English at a university in Morocco, far way from her home in the USA. When she arrived, Alexandria noticed differences in the expectations for classroom behaviour of the students and the teachers in Moroccan classrooms. She set out to discover the answers to her questions about culture in EFL classrooms. Alexandria’s thesis title was “EFL students’ and teachers’ behavioural expectations in the Moroccan tertiary EFL classroom.”

Luiza partnered with her advisor to explore how fluency activities might give teachers some ideas of how second language learners’ writing changes over a semester. She used a weekly fluency activity to explore how students writing became more complex, more accurate, and more fluent over 14 weeks. Luisa’s thesis title was “Investigating the development of Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency in timed fluency writing activities.”

We are extremely pleased (and not surprised) at our students’ excellent research.

Author: Robin Gingerich, Ph.D., English Department Chair at LCC International University.