Teacher Research

During my Master's work in Foreign Language Teaching at Michigan State, I engaged with research in new and exciting ways that I had not earlier in my career. Through exploring and analyzing literature in second language acquisition, foreign language teaching, and intercultural studies, I was able to make deeper connections between research and classroom practice. Moreover, I engaged in some research myself. Besides my experiential module which examined student perspectives of Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) testing, I wrote a research proposal for analysis of the use of discourse markers in an upper-level Italian class, and conducted an intercultural investigation with an Italian-speaking informant.

Goetschius_FLT860_ResearchReport_SS20 FINAL.docx

Explicit instruction of discourse markers: research proposal

In the FLT 860 Foreign Language Acquisition course, I reviewed the literature on the use and instruction of discourse markers (DMs) in the FL classroom, and designed a research project which examined the types of DMs used in my classroom and how explicit instruction of them impacts their use.

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Goetschius_FLT815_InvestigationProject_Final.docx

intercultural investigation

In the FLT 860 Culture course, I investigated the experiences of an Italian informant who has lived and worked in four different countries. I examined how this informant viewed the different cultures he has encountered, and then I identified examples of his evolving intercultural competence.