World-Acclaimed Applied Linguist Helps Pioneer Online Education

Dr. Rod Ellis is a world-acclaimed British applied linguist and thought leader in the field of second language acquisition. In the late 1990s, Dr. Ellis joined renowned applied linguists Dr. David Nunan and Dr. Ruth Wajrnyb at Anaheim University where they helped pioneer the field of online education. A former professor at Temple University in both Japan and the U.S., Dr. Ellis serves as a distinguished professor in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics at the University of Auckland and as a senior professor in the Graduate School of Education at Anaheim University, where he has held the roles of department chair, dean of the Graduate School of Education and VP of academic affairs. He has taught in numerous positions in England, Japan, the U.S., Zambia and New Zealand. TJ caught up with Dr. Ellis at the American Association for Applied Linguistics 2015 conference in Toronto, Canada.

TJ: What do you think was the breakthrough in your career that took you from language teacher to acclaimed applied linguist?
ELLIS: It was a progression because I started off as a language teacher in Zambia, but then I began to work as a teacher educator in a college for secondary school teachers. So that moved me from being a teacher to being a teacher educator. It inevitably meant that I started to read more about language teaching, research on language teaching. The next move was when I went back to England and I did an M.Ed. degree with someone called Gordon Wells, who was working on a child language acquisition project, and that got me hugely interested in research. From there I went on to do a Ph.D. and did my own research. Gradually, there has been a progression from teacher to teacher educator to researcher, but I have never stopped being a teacher educator.

TJ: Since the late 1990s, you have been teaching in the online M.A. in TESOL degree program at Anaheim University, where you recently developed the world’s first online Doctor of Education in TESOL degree program. Tell us about that.
ELLIS: Anaheim University was really the first university to try to set up as an online university delivering high-quality courses, primarily at the graduate level: the M.A. TESOL program and the other programs which have followed in other disciplinary areas. So one thing that was really rewarding for me was to be there, more or less, at the beginning and to help Anaheim develop and grow, develop its curriculum, become better organized, adapt to new technologies when they became available. And as someone who is not a technological wizard. . . it helped me to develop some of my own technological skills. It introduced me to online teaching, which is very di erent from face-to-face teaching, so I learned a lot, and that’s the most rewarding thing — that it wasn’t just me providing a service to AU, it was AU providing a service to me, to enable me to become familiar with what is obviously the future: the delivery of highly effective online courses. Over the course of working for Anaheim University, I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve worked with David Nunan, Ruth Wajnryb, Kathi Bailey, and more recently with Hayo Reinders, and working with all of them has really been a pleasure. We’re looking at people who are, to my mind, high-class professionals, people who are first class in their own fields, people who are very, very good teachers. So, it’s been a privilege to work with them.

The complete article is available in Issue #277. Click here to order from Amazon.