Research Grant to fund DSU Language immersion study
While DSU’s natural sciences faculty have successfully attracted a good number of research grants over the years, recently a DSU applied linguistics faculty member in the Department of English and Foreign Languages has broken that trend by earning significant funding support to study dual language immersion.
Dr. Brody Bluemel, assistant professor of applied linguistics and the director of the DSU English Language Institute, has been awarded a three-year $246,600 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for his research project entitled “Instructional practices, proficiency assessment and language development in dual-language immersion classrooms: A longitudinal study.”
The project will work specifically with bilingual immersion programs throughout Delaware to document learning practices, as well as research content vs. language development. “It will also ultimately produce an open access research corpus of bilingual classroom instruction,” Dr. Bluemel said.
Since the then-Gov. Jack Markell launched his “World Language Expansion Initiative” in 2016, the number of dual-language immersion programs in Delaware has grown significantly. Currently, 12 of the state’s public school districts are now offering dual-language immersion programs that begin in Kindergarten. The programs are all Chinese-English or Spanish-English, through which the students spend half of each day learning in one language and the other part of the day learning in the other.
As the principal investigator for the grant, Dr. Bluemel is collaborating with colleagues from Penn State University, Dr. Kevin McManus (co-PI) and Dr. Jim Lantolf, consultant.
Dr. Bluemel is also the director of a new master’s degree program – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages/Bilingual Education – which is connected to his research work. For more info on this master’s degree program, click on the below link:
https://cahss.desu.edu/departments/english-foreign-languages/tesol-bilingual-education-ma
For more info on the English Language Institute, click on the below link: