VANCOUVER – Professor Gisela Ernst-Slavit, who teaches at WSU Vancouver, has been named the Floyd and Judy Huie-Rogers Faculty Fellow in Diversity by the WSU College of Education.
Ernst-Slavit will use her two-year, $20,000 fellowship to build upon her recent research into the ways that teachers’ language use affects content-area learning for fourth- and fifth-grade students – especially English language learners, students in poverty and minority students.
Teachers’ reliance on casual language in classes such as math and science may hinder students’ ability to understand textbooks, which often are written using academic English, Ernst-Slavit said. In addition, if students can’t use academic English they won’t perform well on standardized tests and assessments.
For more information on Professor Ernst-Slavit, see her faculty profile.