Corinne Mathieu, an MA/Ph.D. student in Second Language Education has been awarded the Graduate School Summer Research Internship Grant for summer 2016. 

Congratulations on your Graduate School Summer Research Internship Grant. Tell me a little about what you’ll be doing.
I’ll be working with an organization called add.a.lingua, a social impact education organization based in Holland, MI. They work with school districts to develop immersion programs. I’m helping them develop assessments on students’ language proficiency. With the internship grant, I’ll also be doing the study of my own, interviewing middle school immersion teachers to find out more about the materials they use in their classrooms.

How did you become interested in the field of Second Language Education?
Spanish was always my favorite class. I became very interested in linguistics and how languages are learned during my undergraduate education. But, I didn’t realize I wanted to be a teacher at that point.  I had wanted to be a bilingual librarian, initially. I went to the Peruvian Amazon during a summer break in college. I saw people who spoke indigenous language learning Spanish and English and was very interested in how they learned languages. Then, a job to teach English at a Quaker boarding school in Ohio came up and I decided to take it and put off my graduate studies for awhile. That’s when I became interested in teaching.

What do you hope to do after finishing your Ph.D. in Second Language Education?
I’m hoping to work in curriculum development with content-based instruction in immersion and foreign language programs. I don’t know if I want to be an education specialist or consultant with a school district. It’s just my first year in the program. I am very interested in how materials can reinforce positive pedagogy versus. one textbook for all.

How has your experience in the Ph.D. program in Second Language Education shaped your views on teaching?
After learning more about teaching in the program, there is definitely a lot I wish I could’ve done differently, but it’s also confirmed that I was on the right track in terms of content-based instruction. It’s very easy to get in one pattern as a teacher, but there are so many more nuances to teaching languages.

Read more about the Second Language Education program.