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Teachers College, Columbia University

Announcements

William Snyder named Interim Director of TC-Tokyo, TESOL & Applied Linquistics

Dr. Snyder completed a BA in Linguistics and Russian Language and Literature at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT, USA) in 1983 and a PhD in Linguistics (Specialization in Second Language Acquisition) at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA) in 1995. Following a one- year appointment in the English Department at the University of IllinoisñChicago, Bill spent almost twelve years abroad, teaching in English and Teacher Education Programs in Korea (Korea University and Hanyang University), Turkey (Bilkent University), and Armenia (American University of Armenia). He also spent two years previously teaching English at the Herzen State Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad in the then Soviet Union. Since August 2008, Bill has worked as a lecturer in the TESOL and Applied Linguistics Programs at TC, where he has taught Second Language Acquisition and a specialized Reading Practicum.
 
Bill considers the most valuable of his teaching experiences to be the six years he spent working in the MA TEFL Program at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. This unique program brought together university-level English teachers from all regions of Turkey and surrounding countries to complete a one-year-long intensive MA curriculum, including a research thesis. Bill maintains that supervising 4 to 7 MA theses each year at Bilkent taught him a great deal about research methods and academic writing. This background served him well during a one-year leave to work as a Senior English Language Fellow for the US State Department, where he worked with various universities in Turkey to help strengthen the curricula in their preparatory English programs. This work has also served him well at TC, where he has served as second reader on two dissertation committees and one dissertation proposal committee in Second Language Assessment this past fall and will serve as second reader on a number of dissertation committees in Spring 2009.

Billís current research interests focus mainly on applying Flow and Self-Determination Theories to questions of language teacher motivation and learner engagement in tasks. He has recently published on these topics in ELT Journal and has written a chapter in the second edition of Joy Egbert and Elizabeth Hanson-Smithís CALL Environments. 

He regularly speaks at TESOL and is scheduled to make three presentations at the upcoming International TESOL convention. One presentation will report on research looking at foreign English teachers in Korea on their perceived level of satisfaction/ dissatisfaction in their work place. Also, he will be jointly presenting work on: (1) NNESTsí perceptions of English language teaching as Good Work, and (2) the development of a program for Korean university professors to help them teach their courses in English more effectively.