Willamette River
Linguistics
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Keli Yerian

Distinguished Teaching Professor, Senior Lecturer II
Director, Language Teaching Studies MA Program, Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Certificate
Language Teaching Studies, Linguistics
yerian@uoregon.edu
Phone: 541-346-4302
Office: 167 Straub Hall, 1290 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1290
Office Hours: Wed 11:-1 (in-person Straub 167 or Zoom)
Research Interests: language teacher education, pedagogy, curriculum development, program development, gesture studies, interactional discourse analysis
Website: https://lts.uoregon.edu/faculty/keli-d-yerian
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Statement

Keli D. Yerian (PhD, MS Linguistics, Georgetown University) is the Director of the Language Teaching Studies (LTS) Master of Arts Program and Director of the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) undergraduate certificate program. She has been a teacher and teacher educator in Linguistics and Language Teacher Education for over 25 years. Her research interests are in language and interaction, most specifically in the use of gesture in both L1 and L2 speakers, as well as language teacher education, including the professional development of future language teachers. She has taught ESL/EFL in the US, Europe, and Africa, and has extensive experience teaching in both undergraduate and graduate university programs. Before joining the University of Oregon faculty in 2007, she taught graduate level courses and ran workshops for both students and teachers-in-training at Stanford University.Recent publications:

  • Yerian, K. & Tellier, M. (2024). Learning to embody the teacher. In Brown, A. & Eskildsen, S. (Eds.), Multimodality and multilingual interaction across epistomologies. Routledge.
  • Yerian, K., Baldwin, J., & Yiamkis, C. (2024). A multicompetence approach to awakening dormant languages. In Amaral, L. & Pérez Báez, G. (Eds.), Living Languages. ScholarWords@UMass.
  • Tellier, M. & Yerian, K. (2023). How to study pedagogical gesture in naturalistic settings. In G. Stam & K. Urbanski (Eds.), Gesture and multimodality in second language acquisition: A research guide. Routledge.
  • Bert, M. Pivot, B, & Yerian, K. (2019). Désir de langue, subjetivité, rapport au savoir : le cas de la revitalization des langues très en danger. Selected Proceedings of the International DipraLang Congress 2019, Montpellier, France.
  • Tellier, M., & Yerian, K. (2019). Mettre du corps à l'ouvrage: Travailler sur la mise en scène du jeune enseignant en formation universitaire. Les Cahiers de l'APLIUT, 37(2).
  • Yerian, K., T. Pashby, A. Mikhaylova, & M. Kato (2018). Native and Non-Native Teacher Candidate Perceptions of Professional Language Development in a TESOL MA Program.
  • Yerian, K. (2013). The Communicative Body in Women’s Self-Defense Courses. In Katz, M., Moving Ideas: Multimodal Learning in Communities and Schools. New York, Peter Lang.

Selected presentations:

  • "Gesture in the plurilingual classroom" with Harinder Khalsa. American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Houston, TX. 2024.
  • "Gesture and plurilingual practices in a World Language Classroom". International Association of Applied Lingusitics (AILA). Lyon, France. 2023.
  • "A multicompetence approach to awakening dormant languages" with Jarrid Baldwin and Connor Yiamkis. Linguistics Society of America (LSA), Washington, DC. 2022.
  • “Increasing gesture transparency in teacher candidates’ lexical explanations”. American Council of Foreign Language Teachers (ACTFL), Washington, DC. 2019.
  • “Supporting ‘foreground gesture’ development in Language Teacher Education: Gesture use in lexical description games before and after embodiment workshops”. International Conference on Language Teacher Education, Minneapolis, MN. 2019. 
  • “What pedagogical gesture teaches us about how social context influences gesture production”. International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS), Capetown, South Africa. 2018.
  • “Spontaneous multimodal alignment and intervention between teachers in co-teaching tasks” with Marion Tellier. Georgetown University Roundtable (GURT), Washington, DC. 2018.
  • Microteaching for Classroom Management: Impromptu Challenge Workshop" with Laura Holland. TESOL, Seattle, WA. 2017. 
  • "The Performative Ring: Semi-conventionalized Gesture as a Resource for Constructing Social Stance and Identity." ISGS (International Society for Gesture Studies), Paris, France, 2016.
  • "Getting a Job: Interactive Online Materials for Language Teacher Graduates." American Council of Foreign Language Teachers (ACTFL) Convention, San Diego, California, 2016.
  • “Non-Native (and Native) Speakers’ Attitudes toward their own Language Development within a Language Teaching MA Program” with Trish Pashby and Anna Mikhaylova. AAAL, Portland, OR, 2014.
  • “Learners can Teach Pronunciation Too: Building Autonomy through Peer Instruction”. TESOL, Portland, OR, 2014.

Courses taught:

  • LING 440/540 Linguistic Principles and 2nd Language Learning, LT 436/535 Design for Language Learning, LT 436/536 Language Teaching Planning, LT 548 Curriculum and Materials Development, LT 608 Workshops, LT 610 Seminar: Pedagogical Grammar & Vocabulary, LT 611 Master's Project, LING 491/591 Sociolinguistics, LING 144 Learning How to Learn Languages.