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- Category: TESOL Faculty
Assistant Professor: TESOL
Dr. Vivian Bussinguer-Khavari is a TESOL Assistant Professor in the Anaheim University Graduate School of Education. Originally from Brasilia, Brazil, she was raised bilingually, acquiring both Portuguese and English simultaneously, while attending an international school from age 3 to 18. Upon high school completion, she was granted a full scholarship by the Japanese government, offered directly by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. She took up the challenge of studying in a brand-new environment and pursued higher education in Japan. After studying the Japanese language for one year at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, she was admitted into Kobe University, where she remained for both the undergraduate and graduate programs, completing her bachelor's degree in Communication Studies, and eventually her master's and doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics. From a very young age, she has experienced multicultural and multilingual settings and has built an interest and passion for both multiculturalism and multilingualism. She has conducted research in the field of Heritage Language Education (HLE), studying Nikkei-Brazilian immigrant families in Japan, investigating their school-aged children's linguistic development in the L1 (Portuguese) and the L2 (Japanese), as well as the parents' attitudes towards their children's language learning. Other than HLE, her research interests include TESOL, intercultural communication, Performance-Assisted Learning (PAL), Performance in Education (PIE), and immigrant language education. She is an active member of the Japan Association for Language Teachers (JALT), having been the coordinator for their Speech, Drama and Debate (SD&D) Special Interest Group (SIG), now renamed to the Performance in Education (PIE) SIG, for four years and currently serving as their program chair. She continues to reside in Japan, where she has been teaching at the university level for the past decade, and is currently an associate professor at Kwansei Gakuin University as well as a lecturer at Kobe University.
- Details
- Category: TESOL Faculty
Associate Professor: TESOL
Dr. Casey Keck is a TESOL Associate Professor in the Anaheim University Graduate School of Education and Associate Professor of Linguistics and Associate Chair of the English Department at Boise State University. She has over 20 years of experience teaching English as a second language to immigrants, refugees, and international students. She holds an MA in TESL and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University. Her research focuses on best practices in teaching English to adults in both community and university contexts, and her book, Pedagogical Grammar, is used in graduate teacher-training programs throughout the world. Her areas of expertise include corpus linguistics, second language acquisition, TESOL teacher education, and language program evaluation. Casey has provided technical assistance to nonprofits that focus on immigrant and refugee inclusion, including Welcoming America, the Idaho Office for Refugees, and LDS Charities. At Boise State, she coordinates Project SHINE, a service-learning initiative in which university students assist elder refugees in their efforts to obtain citizenship. Casey is a member of Boise’s Neighbors United Adult Education Task Force and the BSU-Jannus Refugee Collaboration Team. In 2016, she received the Exceptional Partnership Award from Boise State Service-Learning, for her long-standing partnerships with local ESL programs.
- Details
- Category: TESOL Faculty
Associate Professor: TESOL
Dr. Talia Isaacs is a TESOL Associate Professor in the Anaheim University Graduate School of Education. She holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Education from McGill University and serves as Associate Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London. She has designed and taught a wide range of courses in applied linguistics and TESOL at four UK and Canadian universities, including in language testing, aural/oral communication, TESOL pedagogy and curriculum, second language acquisition, and research methods. Her work on assessing second language speech (particularly pronunciation) has been shaped by her language teaching and learning experience and background in voice performance, particularly taking diction courses for opera singers. She has a strong track record of leading research and consultancy projects on language and communication and often serves in an assessment advisory capacity, most recently as a core expert group member for the OECD's PISA 2025 foreign language assessment questionnaire, and as a member of the TOEFL Committee of Examiners (ETS, 2020-24). With growing research interests in computer-mediated assessment and language for specific and academic purposes, she is increasingly active in the UK clinical trials methodology community, injecting a social sciences dimension into a complex, interdisciplinary research area. Her research is methodologically eclectic and mostly resides within the mixed methods paradigm.