Hanh Nguyen, Ph.D., (middle) with colleagues at the international conference on Interactional Competences and Practices in a Second Language, University of Southern Denmark.
This summer, Hanh Nguyen, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Linguistics, TESOL Program, Department of English and Applied Linguistics, College of Liberal Arts, traveled to Europe to give two presentations and two panel discussions.
At the international conference on Interactional Competences and Practices in a Second Language, held at the University of Southern Denmark on June 7, 2024, Nguyen gave a plenary speech on "Interactional Affordances for L2 Competence Development in Workplace Interaction." Her talk centers around the question, "What is it about social interaction that makes competence development possible?" and draws on data from a multi-year research project on workplace learning by hotel staff members in Vietnam. The study that forms the basis of Nguyen's plenary presentation is reported in a co-authored book that is currently in press with Routledge.
At the International Research Workshop on "Analyzing and developing interactional competences in work and training contexts: A longitudinal perspective" at the
University of Geneva, Switzerland, on June 11, 2024, Nguyen gave a presentation on "Transitionality and Consequentiality in Interactional Competence Development: A Longitudinal Conversation Analysis of Hotel Guest-Escorting Walks." Nguyen's research intersects with research projects by members of the Switzerland-based research group projects on developing interactional competence at workplaces, and she is collaborating with the group on an edited volume to be published by Springer.
In addition to the two presentations, Nguyen was also an invited discussant on two panels, "Linguistic structures, grammaticalization, and the development of L2 interactional competence" at the international conference on Thinking, Doing, and Learning on June 5, 2024 and "Training for Interactional Competence Development in Professional Settings" at the international conference on Interactional Competences and Practices in a Second Language on June 6, 2024.