Welcome to my web site!

I am an associate professor in the English Department at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, USA.  I teach in the undergraduate and graduate programs in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL).

My research investigates the acquisition and development of second language reading and writing skills.  My research in second language reading has focused on the role of metalinguistic awareness (particularly morphological awareness) in second language reading, and on lexical inferencing and incidental vocabulary acquisition.  I am also interested in how second language readers make use of reading skills developed in their first language (i.e., cross-linguistic transfer).

My second area of research is second language writing, in which I investigate the development of academic and disciplinary writing abilities.  In particular, I’m interested in how second language writers learn to write discipline-specific genres, and how instruction can be implemented that helps second language writers better understand the expectations of their discipline.  Much of my research in this area uses tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics.

On this web site you can find information about me, my teaching, and my research. Welcome!