Contact
| Dept: | English |
| Email: | jlevis@iastate.edu |
| Office: | 337 Ross 527 Farm House Ln. Ames IA 50011-1054 |
| Phone: | 515-294-7524 |
Bio
Courses I am Teaching:
Fall 2018:
ENGL 530: Technology and Oral Communication ENGL 319X: Dialects in American Literature: African American EnglishSpring 2019:
LING 371: Phonetics and PhonologyENGL 320X: Conlangs: The Art of Language Construction
Degrees:
Ph.D., Educational Psychology/Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.A.T., Teaching English as a Second Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.A., English Literature, University of Wyoming
B.S,. Business Administration/Marketing, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Research Areas:
My specialty is research on second language pronunciation. This specialty has led me to explore a wide variety of topics, including teaching pronunciation, the use of technology in teaching, accent conversion techniques for teaching and learning pronunciation, intonation, and examining what makes accented speech intelligible. I started the annual Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference (psllt.org), the first annual specialized conference for L2 pronunciation. I’m also the founding editor for the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, published by John Benjamins publishing.
About My Teaching:
I have been teaching ESL for 30 years, mostly at the university level. For 25 years I have worked with teachers, teaching them, supervising them and presenting workshops on how to teach. My goals in teaching have always been to help students learn to think beyond the information in the textbook, and to consider ways to make the information relevant to their own knowledge.
How I Came to Teach What I Teach:
I found out about teaching ESL while studying for a second bachelor’s degree in English literature. I had thought I would become a high school teacher, but ESL teaching grabbed my imagination. Within ESL, I fell in love with pronunciation teaching and learning.
Recent Publications:
Books
Levis, J. (2018). Intelligibility, oral communication, and the teaching of pronunciation. Cambridge University Press.
Levis, J., & Munro, M., Eds. (2017). Pronunciation: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (4 volumes). Taylor and Francis.
Reed, M., & Levis, J., Eds. (2015) The Handbook of English Pronunciation. Boston: Wiley Blackwell.Levis, J. (2017). The Journal of Second Language Pronunciation – Evaluation and directions. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 3(2), 156-163. [editorial]
Articles and Chapters
O'Brien, M. G., Derwing, T. M., Cucchiarini, C., Hardison, D., Mixdorff, H., Thomoson, H., Levis, J., Munro, M., Foote, J., & Muller Levis, G. (2018). Directions for the future of technology in pronunciation research and teaching. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 4(2), 182-206.
Levis, J. (2018). Technology and the intelligibility-based classroom. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 4(2), 259-78.
Levis, J. (2018). Technology and second language pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 4(2), 173-81. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2018). Precision and imprecision in second language pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 4(1), 1-10. [editorial]
Zhao, G., Sonsaat, S., Silpachai, A., Lucic, I., Chukharev-Hudilainen, E., Levis, J., & Gutierrez-Osuna, R. (2018). L2 ARCTIC: A non-native English speech corpus. Proceedings of Interspeech (Hyderabad, India). https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1227&context=engl_pubs
Zhao, G., Sonsaat, S., Levis, J., Chukharev-Hudilainen, E., & Gutierrez-Osuna, R. (2018). Accent conversion using phonetic posteriorgrams. Proceedings of International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Calgary, Alberta. https://psi.engr.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/zhao2018icassp.pdf
Levis, J., & McCrocklin, S. (2018). Effective and reflective teaching of pronunciation. In M. Zeraatpishe, A. Favani & H. R. Kargozari & M. Azarnoosh (Eds.), Issues in syllabus design (pp. 77-89). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Levis, J., & Muller Levis, G. (2018). Teaching high-value pronunciation features: Contrastive stress for intermediate learners. CATESOL Journal, 30(1), 139-160
Levis, J. & Wu, A. (2018) Research into practice and practice into research: Introduction to the special issue. CATESOL Journal, 30(1), 1-12.
Levis, J. & Silpachai, A. (2018). Prominence and information structure in pronunciation teaching materials. In J. Levis (Ed.). Proceedings of the 9th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 216-230). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Qian, M., Chukharev-Hudalainen, E., & Levis, J. (2018). A system for adaptive high-variability segmental-perceptual training: implementation, effectiveness, and transfer. Language Learning and Technology, 22(1), 69-96.
Levis, J. & Suvorov, R. (2018). Automatic Speech Recognition. Entry in the Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
Levis, J., & Zhou, Z. (2017). Accent. Entry in the NNEST/NEST section, The TESOL Encyclopedia of English language teaching. Boston: Wiley Blackwell.
Levis, J., Sonsaat, S., & Link, S. (2017). Students’ beliefs towards native and nonnative pronunciation teachers. In J. de Dios Martínez Agudo (Ed.), Native and non-native teachers in English language teaching (pp. 205-237). Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Levis, J., & Sonsaat, S. (2017). Pronunciation teaching in the early CLT era. In O. Kang, R. Thomson & J. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English pronunciation, (pp. 267-283). Routledge.
Lima, E., & Levis, J. (2017). Improving the comprehensibility of ITAs through an online pronunciation tutor. In J. Murphy (Ed.), Teaching the pronunciation of ESL: Focus on whole courses. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Levis, J. (2017). The Journal of Second Language Pronunciation – Evaluation and directions. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 3(2), 156-163. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2017). Evidence-based pronunciation teaching: A pedagogy for the future. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 3(1), 1-8. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2016). Accent in second language pronunciation research and teaching. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 2(2), 153-159. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2016). Research into practice: How research appears in pronunciation teaching materials. Language Teaching, 49(3), 1-15.
Levis, J., Link, S., Sonsaat, S., & Barriuso, T. (2016). Native and nonnative teachers of L2 pronunciation: Effects on learner performance. TESOL Quarterly, 50(4), 894-931.
Levis, J. (2016). The interaction of research and pedagogy. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 2(1), 1-7. [editorial]
Martin, C., Borges, V., & Levis, J. (2016). The design of an instrument to evaluate software for EFL/ESL pronunciation teaching. Ilha do Desterro, 69(1), 141-160. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2016v69n1p141
Muller Levis, G., & Levis, J. (2016). Intonation bridging activities: Meaningful practice for final intonation. In J. Levis, H. Le, I. Lucic, E. Simpson, & S. Vo, Eds. (2015). Proceedings of the 7th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 229-236). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Levis, J. (2015). Pronunciation trends across journal and the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 1(2), 129-134. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2015). The Journal of Second Language Pronunciation: An essential step toward a disciplinary identity. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 1(1), 1-10. [editorial]
Levis, J. (2015). Learners’ views of social issues in pronunciation learning. Journal of Academic Language and Learning, 9(1), A42-55. Accessible at http://journal.aall.org.au/index.php/jall/article/view/367/218