John Levis

Associate Professor of English as a Second Language/Applied Linguistics
Program Chair, Interdiscipinary Program in Linguistics
Director of Graduate Education
Organizer, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference
TESL/Applied Linguistics, Department of English, Iowa State University
Campus Box 1201, Ames, IA 50011-1201
Office: Ross Hall, Room 337
Phone: 515-294-7524 * Fax: 515-294-6814

CURRICULUM VITAE

Courses Currently Taught

ENGL 420 (The History of the English Language), TR, 12:40-2, MacKay 135
ENGL 518 (Teaching English as a Second Language Methods and Materials), R 6-9, Ross 129

Office Hours - Fall 2011

T 2-3, R 4:00-5:00 and by appointment

My research interests

I am finishing a pronunciation text book for University of Michigan Press with Greta Muller Levis, and am discovering just how many pieces it takes to create a usable textbook. I am also working on a book on the role of pronunciation in a communicative approach to langauage teaching. In addition, I am in the midst of several research studies related to judgments of speech intelligibility and word frequency. I am the organizer of the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference at Iowa State. Online proceedings are linked below. Finally, I am co-editing (with Murray Munro of Simon Fraser University) the Phonetics and Phonology section of a new Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2012.

Some recent publications

Learning to talk about language in an online linguistics course (2011)

Proceedings of the 2nd Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (held Sept. 2010)

Proceedings of the 1st Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (held Sept. 2009)

Rebuilding a professional space for pronunciation. (2010)

Authentic speech and teaching sentence focus. (2010).

Minimal pairs in spoken corpora: Implications for pronunciation assessment and teaching (2008)

The following paper appeared in 2007 in Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, a journal published by Cambridge University Press

Computer technology in teaching and researching pronunciation

The following paper appeared November 2007 in Language Awareness, a journal published by Multilingual Matters

Phonological awareness and speech comprehensibility: An exploratory study

Courses Taught and Teaching Interests

We are developing many of our courses to be taught online. This past summer, I taught Introduction to Linguistic Analysis (ENGL 511) fully online for the second time (no, it was not easier), and this fall, we have TESL Methods and Materials (ENGL 518) available. In the spring, ENGL 525 (Methods of Teaching Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation) will also go online.

ENGL 99S (Academic Speaking and Pronunciation)
ENGL 101D (Academic Writing II)
WLC/LING 119 (Introduction to World Languages)
ENGL/LING 219 (Introduction to Linguistics)
ENGL 489 (Special Topics: American English Dialects)
ENGL 511 (Introduction to Linguistic Analysis)
ENGL 514 (Introduction to Sociolinguistics)
ENGL 518 (TESL Methods and Materials)
ENGL 525 (Methods for Teaching ESL Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation)
HON 322 (English Dialects of North America)
ENGL 630 (Technology and the teaching of pronunciation and oral skills)