Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL at GSU

10/13/2026

We’re excited to share that So-Young Lim represented the LCL Lab’s Assessment Group at the NCME-AIME (National Council of Measurement and Education - AI in Measurement and Education) 2026 conference in Pittsburgh last week! Together with Dr. Hongli Li from the Department of Educational Policy Studies, So-Young presented a paper (co-authored with Che-Han Chen, Chiho Young-Johnson, Kevin Fan, and Dr. Yali Fang) entitled “LLM-Human Agreement in AES: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using TOEFL11,” exploring how closely large language models align with human raters in automated essay scoring.
Congratulations to the team on sharing their research with the broader educational measurement community!

10/06/2026

Our department was very well represented at this year’s Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) in Montreal, Canada this past weekend. Check out the great pictures our SLRF attendees shared with us! Congratulations to all presenters— and to the SLRF 2027 co-chairs (PhD students Sak Lee, Dayoung Joo, So-Young Lim, Sha Li) for winning the bid to host the next event in this series! 📣📣📣 Yes, we’re bringing SLRF to GSU in fall 2027!!

09/25/2026

Dr. YouJin Kim was honored last night at GSU’s Celebrating Faculty Excellence event, receiving the Alumni Distinguished Professor award. Congratulations to Dr. Kim!

09/24/2026

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 2026 East Coast Organization of Language Testers (ECOLT)! ECOLT will be held in person on Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Georgia State University. This year's theme is Language Assessment, Learning, and Local Context. The plenary speaker is Dr. Xun Yan, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who will deliver a talk titled "Assessment that belongs: The role of local assessment in language programs."

We're also excited to offer two pre-conference workshops on Friday, November 6, 2026:

- Ungrading: Principles, practices, and prospects for language teaching and assessment (9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.), led by Dr. Dmitri Detwyler (Georgia State University)

- The Tidyverse Workflow for Descriptive Statistics and Data Visualization in R (1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.), led by Dr. Daniel Dixon (Georgia State University) and Dr. Tülay Dixon (Oxford College of Emory University)

Registration for ECOLT 2026 REGISTER HERE

09/22/2026

Check out the great feature on our MA student (and AL BA graduate) Nasra Qasim! Way to go, Nasra!!

Applied Linguistics scholar Nasra Farah Qasim (B.A. ’25) is taking her language learning skills abroad as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Turkey! The opprtunity marks an important milestone in her academic journey as she works towards a long-term career in English language learning and International Education. Read more: https://t.gsu.edu/4yRDRb0

09/18/2026

We are excited to share that AL PhD candidate Soyeon Sim has been selected as one of three 2026 Mango Dissertation Award recipients – the first time for a GSU student to be selected for this award! The award will support Soyeon’s data collection for her project “Human and AI interlocutors in L2 spoken interaction: A corpus-based study of phraseological and interactional competence.” Huge congratulations, Soyeon!


https://www.mangolanguages.com/research/dissertation-awards

09/18/2026

Congratulations to Eunseo Park (Applied Linguistics MA student) who has been awarded the Chungwoon Church Dream Scholarship!

This scholarship provides financial support to students from Korea studying abroad who have a clear vision for their field and aim to make meaningful contributions to the world.

Congrats, Eunseo!

09/16/2026

Congratulations to Applied Linguistics Ph.D. student Dayoung Joo and Dr. Stephanie Lindemann on their new publication in TESOL Quarterly titled "Neoliberalism, Standard Language Ideology, and Native-Speakerism in South Korean K-12 English Education Policy".

Congrats, Dayoung and Dr. Lindemann!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tesq.70229

09/11/2026

Congratulations to ALESL Ph.D. alumna Dr. Mehrnoush Karimi and her colleagues on their new publication in System titled "Manipulating task order by cognitive task complexity: Associations with feedback-seeking behavior and L2 writing quality"!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0346251X2600179X?dgcid=author

09/10/2026

We are happy to share that Applied Linguistics & ESL Ph.D. student Dianah Kitiabi won the "Best Student Presentation Award" at the 18th Annual Kenya Scholars and Studies Association (KESSA) Conference held in Orlando, FL!

Congratulations, Dianah!