Together with colleagues at the University of Alabama, I am developing self-local-curriculum-based assessments in Spanish, French, Italian, and German. We are experimenting with these assessments as (1) evidence of course-based progress monitoring and achievement in our lower division language programs; (2) sites of positive affect development and realistic expectation-setting; and (3) possibly as placement test tools. 

Caitlyn Pineault, Beckie Bray-Rankin, and I have been collaborating on a study of different types of vocabulary quizzing in high school French classes--looking at whether testing students on vocabulary words cumulatively results in more long-term learning than testing one time. (This effect has been demonstrated in other areas of education and with adult English learners in applied linguistics already.)

Caitlyn Pineault and I are investigating how applied linguistics researchers and world language teachers experience new-to-them professional spaces. In 2026 and 2027, we will be facilitating and studying a "trading spaces" experience where applied linguists go to the ACTFL Convention for the first time and world language teachers attend the AAAL conference for the first time. We hope this study will lead us to creating more hospitalble spaces and experiences for people interested in "bridging" research and practice. 

This work is funded by an ACTFL Research Priorities grant.

Candela Sevilla and I are currently investigating how the University of Alabama's peer institutions in the SEC manage the placement of heritage learners of Spanish. We are analyzing public documents and plan to conduct interviews. We also plan to expand the scope to include "academic" peer institutions and possibly additional languages.

Hyun-Bin Hwang and I are systematically analyzing the pedagogical implications provided in different applied linguistics journals to see exactly how helpful they are (or aren't) to language teachers and other stakeholders. We are currently writing two articles to report our findings in this project. We have published two papers (Coss & Hwang, 2024; Hwang & Coss, 2025) in this research program.

Carlo Cinaglia, Ann Violin-Wigent, and I are working on a series of projects to document language students' development in many skill areas, and to explore whether raising students' awareness of this development will impact their decision to continue language study beyond required coursework.