🎉 Way to go to this week’s Author Spotlight, Matt Coss! In this SPR issue, Coss reviews Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom (Henshaw and Hawkins 2022). The review author raises the issue of the divide which often exists between research and practice in the field of language teaching, and points to the book as a disruptive discussion and tool to shift the focus of how this divide is often approached. Coss points out how the authors strategically synthesize various perspectives which exist among the the teaching and research of language through coexisting in a symbiosis. The author effectively summarizes the book’s main points, provides a roadmap for what the audience can expect when reading it, and animates any researcher or teacher to read the book and perhaps to “meet in the middle and move forward together” (Coss 106). Excellent work, Matt!

📖 Read the full review.

Matt Coss is a PhD student interested in additional language (AL) educational innovation and evaluation. This includes instructed second language development and language teaching, assessment, language teacher education, and program design and evaluation, as well as the interface(s) of research and AL pedagogy. Prior to MSU, Matt taught Chinese and Spanish for 11 years in a variety of K-16 contexts. Matt also worked at the National Foreign Language Center on the STARTALK project. Matt earned his BA in Hispanic Linguistics and Asian Studies from UNC Chapel Hill and his MA in SLA from the University of Maryland College Park Follow Matt on Twitter @mattlaoshi!