SLALS PhD Student Wins Best Student Paper at Language Assessment Conference

Congratulations to Youssef Bouaddi, a PhD student in Applied Linguistics at Carleton University, who received first place for Best Student Paper at the 2026 Fall Conference of the Canadian Association of Language Assessment (CALA), held September 25–26 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The award recognized his paper, “From Listening Comprehension to Mediation: Experimenting with Multilingual Assessment in a Secondary ESL Classroom.” His SSHRC-funded research examines fairness and inclusion in language assessment, more specifically how the latter can recognize multilingual learners’ full linguistic, cultural and semiotic repertoires rather than compare their language use to a monolingual ideal.

“This was my first paper presentation at a conference of CALA’s scale, and I am happy to have received this recognition,” Youssef said. “It has given me even more confidence to pursue my research and share it with others. I am excited for what comes next.” He also sends out a big thank you to his supervisors, Angel Arias and Guillaume Gentil, for their help and feedback during the data collection phase.