On September 13th ANLC faculty member Walkie Charles defended his University of Alaska Fairbanks PhD dissertation entitled Dynamic Assessment in a Yugtun L2 Intermediate Adult Classroom. The defense was attended by a standing-room-only crowd of more than 50 people. Charles became the second student in the Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) program to complete a doctoral degree.
Charles' work examines the role of mediation in language teaching, providing insights on how to improve Yup'ik language instruction for a new generation of language learners. Though focused on classroom instruction at UAF, the thesis clearly has implications for instruction in other Native languages and in other teaching and learning contexts.
Walkie currently teaches Yup'ik language at UAF and is the author of many publications about Yup'ik language instruction, including "Qaneryaramta Egmiucia: Continuing Our Language" in the March 2005 issue of Anthropology & Education Quarterly.