Aurora Tsai, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Modern Languages, was awarded the title of Best Presentation from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the 2018 Georgia Tech Postdoctoral Research Symposium. The Ivan Allen College sponsored $1,500 in travel funding to Tsai for her presentation, which was titled “Language and Identity for Mixed-Race and Mixed-Heritage Individuals.”

Tsai’s research interests revolve around finding ways to simultaneously support and assess second language reading-to-learn skills. Reading-to-learn entails learning new material through critically engaging with text content. For example, engaging with content might involve evaluating, classifying, and comparing information from the text with what they already know, and applying what they learn to new situations. In particular, Tsai is interested in the role of prior knowledge in supporting Japanese learners’ higher order thinking as they engage with texts on critical issues in Japanese culture.

Click here to read a full list of the awardees. The School of Modern Languages is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.