Sigrun Biesenbach-Lucas

Assistant Professor of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)

Department of Language and Foreign Studies
The American University, Washington, DC, USA

Professor Lucas received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and MAT in TESOL and Bilingual Education from Georgetown University, where she taught in the Applied Linguistics program. Her courses included Methodology of Language Teaching, ESL/EFL Materials Preparation and Second Language Materials Development, as well as English for Specific Purposes, providing a very practical component to the program. Professor Lucas also has long experience  teaching ESL and taught extensively in the EFL program at George Washington University, where she provided instruction in, among other subjects, [Technical] Grammar and Writing, Oral Communication, and Reading/Writing and Researching.

Professor Lucas' research interests have been in the area of scientific/technical writing which she examined in her dissertation "A Comparative Genre Analysis: The Research Article and Its Popularization."  She has also worked on developing authentic/original teaching materials for the development of students' sociolinguistic appropriateness and pragmatic competence. Her most recent research projects center around the use of technology, specially word-processing and e-mail, and how this helps language development in the ESL classroom. Various aspects of this research have been published.  She is planning studies on the relative effectiveness and advantages of e-mail tasks in different types of classroom settings with different types of student audiences. Professor Lucas is also co-working on a textbook project to address academic reading, writing, and researching needs of non-native students in university ESL settings. You may e-mail her at: sblucas@american.edu 


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