About Katherine O. Aston

After receiving her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1958, Katherine O. Aston was hired to teach in the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the program of English as a Second Language. She became director of the program in 1959.

She accomplished much during her long academic career. She was one of the founding members of the international professional organization, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in the mid-1960s. She instituted the MA in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) at UIUC in 1966,  and created one of the first Minors in TESL in the country, which met the academic and practical requirements for teaching ESL in the public schools of Illinois. She also established off-campus internships in Puerto Rico (1968-75) and Iran (1970-78), and was the director of the latter program in the mid-1970s.

The Katharine O. Aston Award for Outstanding Masters Thesis was established in her honor.

 

About this Award

This is an award given to a graduating MATESL student who has completed a thesis project that shows excellence in research design, data analysis, and clarity of writing. The award is decided by the majority of MATESL faculty.  

Plaque for Katherine O. Aston Award

Award Recipients

Year Recipient Thesis
2002 Benjamin Willey Examining a "Communication Strategy" from a conversation analytic perspective : eliciting help from native speakers inside and outside of word search sequence
2003 Euhnee Eunice Jang In search of folk fairness in language
2005 Altamir Roberto M. Amorim An investigation of teachers' reactions to an in-service teacher education program based on reflection and action research
2006 Chiao-Ling (Lily) Chen  Cross-cultural collaboration via message board for cultural understanding and language learning
2008 Julieta Fernandez  The organization of one-on-one instant messaging between native speakers of English
2009 Soo Hyon Kim Noticeability of feedback: The effects of noticing in reformulation of second language writing
2010 Lisa Gabris English opens doors: A portal to forgotten EFL teachers
2011 Shawn Fitzpatrick Using task-based elicitation to measure effectiveness of counterfactual conditional instruction
2013 Kyung Eun Min How grammar matters in NNS academic writing: the relationship between verb tense and aspect usage patterns and L2 writing proficiency in academic discourse
2014 Robert (Stephen) Hill Scientific laws and causality in the philosophy of second language acquisition: A neo-Aristotelian approach
2015 Kathleen (Kat) Kolumban Parent and teacher perspectives on Congolese students in the American education system
2015 Julie Kierski A needs-analysis for international art students: Talk in critiques
2016 Xiaowan Zhang

The relationship between test takers' performance on the TEM4 and their knowledge of the released test specifications
2017 Mien-Jen Wu  L1 influence on English word meaning inference
2020 Arzu Avci CAF across proficiency levels and profiles: An investigation of ESL student writings in an English placement test 
2021 Mengjia Zeng  The influence of lexical features on human rater's judgement of essay performance on local English Placement Test
2021 Sarah Morrow Loanword and onset consonant cluster perception by L1 Korean/L2 English speakers
2022 Adetutu (Tutu) Fabusoro Home bilingual and cultural literacy practices of Yoruba heritage speakers towards identity maintenance in the Midwest United States 
2023 William Leroux  Language teaching anxiety among university level language teachers
2024 Rosana Gomez-Cayapu