Office 3.16
Helen Wodehouse Building,
35 Berkeley Square,
Clifton
BS8 1JA
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+44 (0) 117 331 4312
talia.isaacs@bristol.ac.uk
Second language speaking and listening; Pronunciation assessment and instruction; Rating scales and rater processes; Mixed methods research; Form-focused instruction; Language for Specific and Academic Purposes; Cross-cultural communication
Talia Isaacs joined staff at the University of Bristol in 2011 after completing her PhD in Second Language Education at McGill University in Canada. Her research centres on second language (L2) aural/oral assessment (particularly of pronunciation and fluency), with a focus on the development and validation rating scales, the alignment between rater perceptions and L2 speech productions, and oral communication breakdowns and strategies in workplace and academic settings. A burgeoning interest within this area is in the conversational discourse between doctors and patients and links to stakeholder perceptions and health outcomes.
Talia co-coordinates the Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Research, provides partial administrative cover for Learning Inquiry (Deputy Director of thematic group for a colleague on research leave), and serves as a faculty representative on Senate. Her research has attracted funding from the European Commission on identifying the linguistic factors that promote comprehensible speech, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada on the validation of an L2 speaking scale for formative assessment purposes, and from the British Council on distinguishing between different levels of the IELTS pronunciation scale. Talia is a recipient of the Canadian Modern Language Review Best Graduate Student Paper Award and the IELTS Master’s Award for the “most significant contribution to the field of language testing.” She is currently spearheading the development of a state-of-the-art L2 speech laboratory (external advisor: IAS Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor Ron Thomson) to build momentum in the emerging area of L2 speech perception/production research at the University of Bristol.
Although her research has primarily interfaced L2 pronunciation with assessment, Talia is known for the breadth of her research interests and experience. Her published papers span the topics of endangered languages, communicative drills, musical ability, and L2 vowel production, for example. Most recently, she has examined the language needs and interactions of engineers in technical settings and has participated in projects on health care access for linguistic minorities and policy effects of the OECD's PISA test.
Talia is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Language Assessment Quarterly, a founding member of the Canadian Association of Language Assessment, and currently serves on the International Language Testing Association Nominating Committee. She has acted as a peer-reviewer and rapporteur for Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research grants, evaluated applications for internal doctoral scholarships, and regularly reviews for journals in applied linguistics, educational assessment, and phonetics. She has recent or forthcoming publications in high impact journals, including Applied Psycholinguistics, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Health Communication, Language Assessment Quarterly, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition.
2013 - Workshop for staff on academic integrity in higher education and interpreting Turnitin reports (with Siobhan Pegler), University of Bristol.
2013 - Workshop on why mixed methods is still a "paradigm in the rough" in applied linguistics research and talk on modelling comprehensibility in rating scales, Lancaster University.
2012 - Click here to view a Canadian press release about a co-authored research article with Pavel Trofimovich on "Disentangling accent from comprehensibility" that recently appeared in the high impact journal, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. The story was reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Montreal Gazette, and the Ottawa Citizen. Click here to listen to a French language interview streamed on Radio Canada International.
2012 - Invited presentation to an audience of mostly exam board staff as part of the Cambridge Assessment seminar series: "How do examiners reach judgements?" Click here to access podcasts of a post-talk interview and the entire seminar.
2011 - Invited presentation at the Univesity of Copenhagen and discussion with the test certification team on the validation of a high-stakes institutionally-developed English speaking proficiency test for university lecturers.
Talia has developed curriculum for and is coordinator of two new units on offer for the first time in 2012: Second Language Pronunciation and Fluency (to Doctor of Education students) and Questionnaire Design and Analysis (to Master's and Doctor of Philosophy students as part of the ESRC-funded South West Doctoral Training Centre). She additionally contributes to the instruction of graduate-level units in the areas of language assessment, second language acquisition, and pedagogy and curriculum.
Talia supervises PhD, EdD, and MSc students with overlapping research interests in applied linguistics and educational assessment. She is actively involved in training graduate student Research Assistants in all aspects of the research process through her externally funded projects.
View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system
Dr Isaacs currently teaches 6 courses:
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