Spotlight on Student Research: Celebrating Research Excellence in SLaLS
As another term winds down and students wrap up their final exams, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the incredible research output of undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies (SLaLS).
It has been a busy year for SLaLS students, with many attending and presenting at conferences near and far. Graduate students Katie Boehm and Raj Bhandari, for instance, recently returned from Denver, Colorado, where they presented their research at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2025 Conference. They were joined by Interim Director Geoff Pinchbeck, who presented on behalf of PhD student Mastoor Al Kaboody, and alum Samira Mammadova (MA ALDS/23), who presented her MA thesis research.
Here in SLaLS, we wrapped up another winter term with the annual graduate student symposium and honours thesis conference, where we learned more about the student research taking shape in the School.
Students Shine at Annual Graduate Student Symposium
On April 4, the graduate students’ Society for Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies (SALaDS) hosted their 20th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in St. Patrick’s Building. The event brought students and faculty together for an interactive poster session showcasing undergraduate and graduate student research.
MA students Mar Pauls and Hanna Harper hosted this year’s event, with Mar delivering opening remarks as the 2024-2025 President of SALaDS.
Dr. Trudy O’Brien joined us again this year to announce the recipient of the Lynne Young ALDS Graduate Award, Mar Pauls.
The award, which recognizes academic excellence at the graduate level, was established in memory of Young to honour her many contributions to SLaLS and her community.
Read more in “2025 Lynne Young ALDS Graduate Award Recipient Announced.”
Before introducing the keynote speaker, the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Research Essay Award was announced. Recent graduate Jessa Hudson (MA ALDS/24) received the award for her essay, titled “Research in ADHD Second Language Acquisition: Instructional Practices for ADHD L2 Learners.”
After a keynote presentation by Professor Brian Strong, guests were invited to explore the student research projects.
Topics ranged from the history of Kwa’kwala documentation and language ideological debates in French-Language press to linguistic performativity in tabletop role-playing games and AI-assisted research writing by Chinese doctoral students. Students shared research on second language vocabulary learning, phrasal verb preferences, corrective feedback in advanced EFL classrooms, and the impact of spacing and input modality on learning figurative phrasal verbs.
Additionally, students shared studies on ethical art in Youtube video essays, the portrayal of masculinity in queer women’s discourse, and POLITICO’s coverage of Catalan as a language of the European Union. Other topics included multimodality and learning disabilities in writing, plurilingualism and language assessment, and the introduction of language documentation to EFL learners.
“This is one of the most valuable and enjoyable events of the academic year,” Pinchbeck shares. “Graduate students across our MA and PhD cohorts present and learn about each other’s research, and they get to mingle with each other as well as current and former faculty.”
“The event is all student organized and it has a really positive vibe.”
Undergraduate Students Shine at Showcase and Honours Thesis Conference
The student research events continued on April 9 with Teaching and Learning Services’ (TLS) annual SaPP and I-CUREUS Showcase event in the Future Learning Lab.
Addison Jalbert, who is wrapping up the final year of a BA combined honours program, shared her experience with the Students as Partners Program (SaPP) at the annual Showcase. Jalbert collaborated with Professor Brian Strong to incorporate podcasts in ALDS 4305, Teaching English Language: Methodology I, and helped develop two podcasting assignments and grading rubrics for the course.
“This was a valuable opportunity to learn more about the process of developing educational materials,” Jalbert shares.
Holly Zayachkowski, an upper-year linguistics student, also shared her experience with the Students as Partners Program at the Showcase. Partnered with Professor Tamara Sorenson Duncan, Zayachkowski helped rework the dyslexia unit content for the LING/ALDS 3604 course, Communication Differences and Disabilities II, last summer.
“Upon recognizing the over-representation of a medical model framework in the dyslexia unit of LING/ALDS 3604, the content was reworked to provide a holistic account of dyslexia that is sensitive to discrepancies in lived experiences,” Zayachkowski shares.
“I really appreciated this opportunity to practice my research skills and develop lecture material, assignments, and discussion questions that foster student engagement, inquisition, and continual consideration of neurodiversity as socially experienced.”
On April 10, Undergraduate Advisor Karen Jesney hosted the annual Honours Thesis Conference in St. Patrick’s Building.
“This year’s conference showed the wide range of topics that our students study and highlighted the great quality of research they are capable of,” Jesney shares.
Students shared their research on a number of interesting topics ranging from methods in second language vocabulary learning to grammaticalization in Singapore English through a Distributed Morphology (DM) perspective. They shared their investigations of AI versus human accent perception, Voice Onset Time (VOT) improvements of Spanish stop consonants by English learners of Spanish, and rater effects in Academic ESL writing assessments.
“Congratulations to everyone on their hard work!”
This year, the research events will conclude with the Fourth Annual Linguistics Graduate Student Conference on April 30.
“This conference is a great opportunity to connect and learn about graduate student research in SLaLS,” Graduate Supervisor Tamara Sorenson Duncan shares. “Our talented linguistics graduate students will present talks showcasing their ongoing research.”
The conference will feature nine talks on a variety of fascinating topics ranging from language documentation to phonetic imitation.
“It’s wonderful to see our students sharing their ongoing research projects,” says Graduate Administrator Rachel Kashul.
“I had a chance to attend all of the research events over the course of April and was really impressed by the work that our students shared,” notes Kimberley Seguin, Undergraduate and Administrative Assistant for the School.
“SLaLS students continue to amaze us with their research. Their projects showcase their dedication and commitment to research excellence here at Carleton.”
Students interested in pursuing undergraduate or graduate research opportunities are encouraged to speak with the Undergraduate Advisor or the Graduate Supervisor. Get started by contacting SLALSUndergraduate@carleton.ca for undergraduate inquiries, and SLALSGraduate@carleton.ca for graduate inquiries.