Teaching and capacity building
I am currently Programme Leader for the MA TESOL Pre-service programme at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London and also teach on the MA TESOL and MA Linguistics programmes. I designed and delivered the module, Language Testing and Assessment, offered for the first time in 2017 at the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics and additionally contribute to the MA dissertation module with an interactional session on mixed methods research in the social and behavioral sciences. I also work with English Language Centres on the alignment of language assessments (e.g., exit tests) with curricular goals and intended learning outcomes. Beyond my university teaching, I regularly serve in an advisory capacity and conduct workshops on varied topics nationally and internationally to different stakeholder groups. Selected topics that I lead include assessing speaking, fluency and pronunciation teaching/learning/assessment, mixed methods research, marking systems, formative assessment, academic integrity, and rater moderation in higher education.
During my time at the University of Bristol (2011-16), I led for the below modules, the first three of which I designed:
Lais de Oliveira Borges. Beyond the Critical Period Hypothesis: Examining the affective dimensions of phonological performance within Brazilian L2 learning contexts. PhD supported by a UCL Graduate Research Scholarship.
Judith Fairbairn. Rater decision-making when marking writing responses. PhD supported by the British Council.
Johnathan Jones. Vowel perception in second language learners of English.
Kate Kelly. Comparative judgement and the limits of cognition. PhD supported by Assessment & Qualifications Alliance (AQA).
Recently supervised doctoral students, University of Bristol (2012-16)
Alumni
A Young Park (PhD Bristol, 2015): A comparison of the effects of extensive and intensive reading approaches on the reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge and attitudes of Korean secondary EFL learners.
Park, A. Y., Isaacs, T., & Woodfield, H. (in press). A comparison of the effect of extensive and intensive reading approaches on the vocabulary development of Korean secondary EFL learners. Applied Linguistics Review. Advance access article published in 2017. [Link]
Helen Tan (EdD Bristol, 2016): The effects of planning time and test-taking strategies in Taiwanese EFL learners’ speaking performance on the TOEFL iBT integrated task.
Chisa Matsukawa(PhD Bristol, 2017): Politeness in British English and Japanese: A contrastive study of invitation sequences from a pragmatic-discursive approach.
Hassan Qutub (EdD Bristol, 2017): Arab EFL teachers’ degree of foreign accent: Peer- and self-perceptions of accented speech and views of pronunciation corrective feedback. Funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Former Bristol MSc TESOL student, Hyunjin Kim, received the 2015 Caroline Clapham IELTS Masters Award, presented annually to the Master's-level dissertation in English "which makes the most significant contribution to the field of language testing." This is the first time that a former recipient of the award (Isaacs, 2007) has supervised a student winner. The IELTS Partners sponsored Hyunjin's trip to the Language Testing Research Colloquium in Palermo, Italy in June, 2016, where she received the award and a £1000 prize. Our forthcoming paper is based on Hyunjin's work:
Kim, H., & Isaacs, T. (accepted). Teachers’ voices in the decision to discontinue a public examination reform: Washback effects and implications for utilizing tests as levers for change. In D. Xerri & P. Vella Briffa (Eds.), Teacher involvement in high stakes language testing. Berlin: Springer.
Talia & Hyunjin Kim, LTRC 2016
Talia Isaacs, PhD