APPLIED LINGUISTICS AT UCLA

The faculty of the department of Applied Linguistics & TESL along with colleagues from other departments, such as Anthropology, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Education, Linguistics, Neuroanatomy, Psychology, and Sociology, participate in the Doctoral Program in Applied Linguistics. The Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics & TESL, Prof. Lyle Bachman, heads the faculty advisory committee that shapes the doctoral program. Applied Linguistics & TESL staff provide the administrative functions for the Ph.D. program. Ms. Srey R. Ngov, the Graduate Student Advisor, is responsible for academic counseling of graduate students, coordinating graduate admissions, and processing graduate student support awards. Srey is available to answer your questions and provide the help that you need.

The faculty members who participate in the Doctoral Program in Applied Linguistics represent a wide range of expertise and experience in language-related research. Their guidance and collaboration with students result in substantial research findings in the areas of specialization within the program, and their participation reinforces the interdisciplinary nature of applied linguistic research. Graduates of the program pursue academic and professional careers at the highest level of service and inquiry.

The goal of the Ph.D. program in Applied Linguistics is to prepare students to investigate language-related problems and issues in the everyday world. We believe this can best be achieved by providing each student with a broad background of knowledge about the nature of language and language use as situated in social, discursive, and interactional contexts, along with the skills needed for teaching and conducting research at the university level. The program is designed to foster the mentorship relationship between students and faculty, as each student is assigned a faculty mentor with whom they work throughout the program. At UCLA, we provide mentorship in three general areas of research focus that we believe are integral to a thorough understanding of the field of Applied Linguistics: Language Acquisition, Language Assessment, and Discourse Analysis. Ph.D. students are encouraged to study themes within these areas of research focus from a variety of perspectives. 

Research Areas in Applied Linguistics

Language Acquisition--Research in language acquisition seeks to (1) describe interlanguage systems; (2) examine underlying cognitive mechanisms that could account for these systems; (3) examine the social, affective, and neurobiological factors that influence second language development; and (4) explore the effect of instruction on the process. Additional areas of inquiry include (a) comparisons between native and nonnative linguistic systems and how speakers use them in natural discourse, and (b) explanations for variable success in second language acquisition in terms of the neural underpinnings of language as well as the neural basis for perception, attention, memory, and emotion.

One of the great strengths of the Doctoral Program is its interdisciplinary organization. The faculty who work in the area of language acquisition have varying interests and expertise. As a result students have the opportunity to learn about many of the different facets of language acquisition: the social and cultural factors which lead to socialization into particular language/cultural communities; the acquisition of grammar (including morphosyntax, phonetics and phonology, semantics) and discourse processes; and the neurobiological underpinnings of language acquisition.

While the faculty focus on different aspects of acquisition, we share a commitment to crosslinguistic research and to the study of language acquisition in diverse populations. We share an interest in understanding the language particular and universal dimensions of language, as well as the complex relationships between mind, brain, language, and society.

Language Assessment--Language assessment is concerned with the empirical investigation of theoretical issues on the one hand, and with providing useful tools for assessment in applied linguistics on the other. Language assessment research has as its goals the formulation and empirical investigation of theories of language assessment performance and assessment use, and the empirical investigation of the ways in which performance on language assessments is related to communicative language use in its widest sense. Language assessment research is also concerned with investigating issues related to the validity of score-based interpretations and the fairness of the uses that are made of language assessment results. This involves both theoretical formulations for linking validity and fairness, and the empirical investigation of these formulations in practical assessments.

The goal of instruction and mentoring in the research area of language assessment is to engage students in thinking about and conducting research that is of current interest to the field, and in addressing the practical real-world needs for language assessment, such as undergraduate students entering foreign language programs, international students entering universities, and elementary and secondary school students whose limited language proficiency may adversely affect their performance on standardized tests of academic achievement. In the process of conducting this research, the aim is for students to acquire the knowledge, skills and research tools--both quantitative and qualitative--that will enable them to become productive scholar/researchers who will continue to enrich our basic understanding of language ability and its assessment, and to contribute to the development of useful language assessments for real world application.

Discourse Analysis--Discourse Analysis is concerned with how language users produce and interpret language in context. Discourse analysts research the linguistic structures of speech acts, conversational sequences, speech activities, oral and literature registers, and stance (among other constructs) and seek to relate these constructs to social and cultural norms, preferences and expectations. The field articulates how lexico-grammar and discourse systematically vary across social situations and at the same time help to define those situations. Discourse analysis may be carried out as an end in itself or as a tool contributing to research in language acquisition or language assessment.

The distinctive accent of this research area is its integration of Functional Grammar and Discourse Analysis with complementary perspectives on culture and social interaction. Students in this research area analyze language use in ordinary circumstances across diverse settings. Participating faculty are drawn from Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, and Sociology, along with participation from other programs as relevant. A hallmark of Discourse Analysis is its capacity to situate language- related problems in their discursive contexts in the everyday world. Whether the issue is how to acquire a second language or how to understand multilingualism, literacy, language and culture maintenance and change, cross-cultural miscommunication, or any of the array of issues in applied linguistics, this track prepares students to probe them as discursively constituted phenomena.

The methodological emphasis of this research area combines traditional ethnographic field work with detailed analysis of video and audio recorded data. The thematic concerns pursued range across contexts such as the workplace, schools, medical offices, service encounters, religious institutions, domestic and recreational settings, etc. They range across languages as diverse as Finnish, German, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Navajo, Thai, English, Papiamento, Swedish, African American English, Chicano dialects of English and Spanish, Dominican Spanish, Ladino, and American and New Zealand Sign Languages. They range across modalities, including speech, writing and manual languages, and across activities, from scientific discussions and presentations to counseling sessions (both professional and peer), from telephone conversations to political argumentation, from medical diagnoses to television commercials, and from writing tutorials to language assessment interviews.

The Discourse Analysis research area examines oral and written language practices across settings and communities around the world. Two analytic foci are 1) the relation of grammar to text/context and 2) the organization of discourse sequences, activities, and genres. In addition to analyzing how language structure is sensitive to semantic and pragmatic principles, research and teaching in this track emphasizes how grammar and discourse are integral to social and psychological competence across the life span. In this endeavor, we collaborate with the acquisition and assessment tracks (e.g. brain and discourse, language acquisition and socialization, assessment of written discourse, classroom pedagogy and authentic discourse practices).

Additional Areas of Research focus--In addition to the three Research Areas mentioned above, student research resulting in completed or ongoing dissertations has focused on areas such as classroom language instruction, language maintenance, language obsolescence, language policy, computational linguistics, phonetics and phonology, syntax, bilingual education, bilingualism, computers in pedagogy, lexicography, literacy, and pedagogy for infrequently taught languages.