2026 Lynne Young ALDS Graduate Award Recipient Announced
Congratulations to this year’s recipient of the Lynne Young ALDS Graduate Award, Mohammad Reza Montazeri Kalhoudashti. The award was announced by long-time friend and colleague of Lynne Young, Dr. Trudy O’Brien, at the Graduate Student Symposium on Thursday, April 2.
Mohammad is a second-year PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies, and his doctoral research investigates the conditions that boost the long term retention of incidentally learned phrasal verbs among Persian EFL learners.
“Winning this award is, first and foremost, an honor,” Mohammad shares. “I have long admired Professor Young’s contributions to language and discourse analysis.”
Mohammad recently published a phenomenological study where he explored Iranian EFL teachers’ emotional well being in relation to their capacity to provide care for their students (Zhaleh & Montazeri, 2026). His latest publication examines how oral collocational competence in IELTS speaking varies across proficiency levels (Estaji & Montazeri, 2026).
“I aim to become an influential scholar in my field and to give back to the EFL context of my own community. I hope to honor Professor Young’s legacy by continuing to advance research in applied linguistics and by contributing to a more just and socially responsive EFL community.”
The Lynne Young ALDS Graduate Award was established in 2019 in memory of Dr. Lynne Young to honor her contributions to SLaLS and her community. Awarded annually on the recommendation of the Director of the School of Linguistics and Language Studies, this award recognizes academic excellence at the graduate level.