Annual Grad Student Symposium Moves Online
If you’re wondering what action adventure games, air traffic control, and saying no in customer service have in common, you clearly weren’t at the first virtual grad student symposium held 26 March, 2021 in BrightSpace.
The event opened with a welcome message from School Director, Dr. David Wood, and the presentation of the annual Lynne Young Award to this year’s recipient, Osama Elbeyaly. Many thanks to Dr. Trudy O’Brien for presenting the award and much heartfelt gratitude to Lynne’s daughter Laura for joining us online to be part of the presentation ceremony.
Initial speeches were then followed a series of insightful and diverse research presentations (with Q&A) by students in our MA and PhD programs. Session titles included:
- “The Day after an #AmberAlert Day”: An analysis of discursive constructions of the Canadian wireless emergency broadcast system (Kathryn Carreau)
- Uncharted territory: A lexical profile of action-adventure video games (Jean Charlebois)
- Contexts and constructs: Implications for the testing of listening in pilots’ communication with air traffic controllers (Angela Carolina de Moraes)
- “Let’s Talk about Your Lesson”: Genre Analysis of Teacher Trainers’ Feedback in an EFL Context (Osama Elbeyaly)
- “I can’t because…”: Strategies in forming the speech act of refusals of native English speakers and non-native English speakers in entry level customer service positions in Canada (Neil Lapierre)
- Losing rage: Cross-cultural critical discourse analysis and archiving desecration of the Quebec flag (Nico Mjones)
- Increasing employability through Essential Skills Online: An evaluation of a workplace literacy tool (Claire Reynolds)
And, of course, kudos to event organizers Alicia Melatti, Ashleigh Feltmate, Tarah Lemours, and Codie Fortin Lalonde, your elected SALaDS (Society of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies) representatives for such an engaging and well-run afternoon.