Teresa P. Pica

Teresa P. Pica (26 September 1945 – 15 November 2011), also known as Tere Pica, was Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, a post she held from 1983 until her death in 2011.[1] Her areas of expertise included second language acquisition, language curriculum design, approaches to classroom practice, and classroom discourse analysis. Pica was well known for her pioneering work in task-based language learning and published widely in established international journals in the field of English as a foreign or second language and applied linguistics.

Early Years

Before entering the field of TESOL, Dr. Pica was a speech and language pathologist. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in three years, graduating in 1982.[2] In 1983, she took over the position of her advisor, Michael Long, who left Penn in 1982.[3]

Teaching

Dr. Pica's passion in life was teaching and advising students. She was known for never taking summers or sabbatical years off and for always teaching multiple sections of two core courses in the TESOL MSEd program: "EDUC 527: Approaches to Teaching English and Other Modern Languages" and "EDUC 670: Second Language Acquisition". By doing this, she taught thousands of TESOL Master's degree seekers from all over the world over her 30-year tenure at Penn GSE.

As a dissertation adviser over a period of 25 years, Dr. Pica supervised more than 50 doctoral dissertations at Penn and at universities abroad. Some of her best-known advisees include her first two doctoral students,[4] Jessica Williams (1987)[5] and Catherine Doughty (1988),[6] as well as Richard Young,[7] Valerie Jakar,[8] Joanna Labov,[9] and Shannon Sauro.[10] Tere's last doctoral student to complete was Elizabeth Scheyder (dissertation defended 10/26/11, degree awarded 2012).[11][12]

References

  1. ↑ "Teresa P. Pica, In Memoriam". Penn GSE. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved November 18, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Teresa P. Pica". Penn GSE. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
  3. ↑ Hornberger, Nancy H. (Fall 2001). "Educational Linguistics as a Field: A View from Penn’s Program on the Occasion of its 25th Anniversary" (PDF). Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, V. 17. University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. p. 2. Retrieved November 19, 2011.
  4. ↑ "Video of Memorial Service for Tere Pica, timestamp 16:15". PennGSE Video.
  5. ↑ Williams, Jessica. "Production principles in non-native institutionalized varieties of english". ProQuest. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
  6. ↑ Doughty, Catherine J. S. "The effect of instruction on the acquisition of relativization in English as a second language". ProQuest. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
  7. ↑ Young, Richard Frederick. "Variation in interlanguage morphology: (s) plural-marking in the speech of Chinese learners of English". ProQuest. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
  8. ↑ Jakar, Valerie S. "A society contained, a culture maintained: An ethnography of second language acquisition in informal education". ProQuest.
  9. ↑ Labov, Joanna L. "The roles of distinctive and redundant features in the production of the short A and E vowel contrast by L1 German speakers of English". ProQuest. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
  10. ↑ Sauro, Shannon. "A comparative study of recasts and metalinguistic feedback through computer mediated communication on the development of L2 knowledge and production accuracy". ProQuest. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
  11. ↑ "Video of Memorial Service for Tere Pica, timestamp 18:45". PennGSE Video.
  12. ↑ Scheyder, Elizabeth C. "The impact of recordings on student achievement in critical language courses". Retrieved 13 August 2012.

External links


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