School of Historical and European Studies
Spanish Program (with Portuguese and Catalan)
Dr Ana Maria Ducasse
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Lecturer & Program Coordinator
Room: Humanities 3 224
Tel:(61 3) 9479 2437
Fax: (61 3) 9479 1453
Email: A.Ducasse@latrobe.edu.au
Qualifications:
BA(Hons) Monash, DipEd Monash, MA Melb. |
I graduated from Monash University and then gained experience in teaching Spanish, Italian and English as a Second Language. This kindled my interest in Second Language Acquisition, in particular spoken language. Teaching Spanish background speakers sparked my interest in advanced learners and the treatment of culture and identity in the language curriculum.
After teaching in Spain for a year, my work in ESL led me to a Masters Degree in Applied Linguistics in which my research focus was language testing and language program evaluation. My long association with IELTS as an assessor paralleled my interest in language testing which has become a major research focus.
My recent research projects include the investigation of oral language assessment for Spanish language beginners, an exploration of the assessments made by teachers of interaction in non-native Spanish speaker discourse and the development of a rating scale for beginner oral interaction.
Research Projects
- Distributive Leadership Project (DLP): Faculty Scholar 'Toeing the line on graduate attributes'. - A project that targets the improvement of assessment practices by stimulating
reflection, by domain experts, and results in action across a faculty.
Download the Report.
- Improving Student Learning Experience (ISLE) project: peer collaboration.
- Student perspectives on language and culture teaching in the Australian education system
Research Publications
Selected recent publications
- Ducasse, A & Brown, A 2009 Assessing paired orals: Raters’ orientation to interaction. In L. Taylor & G. Wigglesworth (Eds) Pair work in learning and assessment contexts. Special Issue on Paired Interaction, Language Testing, 26 (3) 423-443
- Ducasse, A. 2009 Raters as scale makers for an L2Spanish speaking test: Using paired test discourse to develop a rating scale for communication interaction; In A. Brown & K. Hill (Eds) Tasks and Criteria in Performance Assessment (1-22) Frankfurt: Peter Lang
- Ducasse, A. 2008 "La evaluación de la interacción en pruebas orales en parejas: un baremo empírico basado en el discurso de nivel inicial." ALFAL XV conference proceedings CdROM ISBN 978-9974-8002-6-7.
- Ducasse, A 2007 ‘How do candidates view interaction in a paired oral’. In Gitsaki, C. ( Ed.), Language and languages : Global and Local tensions’. (pp. 184 – 200). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Conference Presentations
HERDSA Darwin 2009 ‘ The student experience’
Ducasse, Toeing the line: mapping graduate attributes on to assessment in the Humanities& Social Sciences.
Grants
- 2009 Spanish cultural cooperation grant
- 2009 IDP Australia grant collaborating with Dr Annie Brown on The role of interactive communication in IELTS speaking and its impact on candidates’ preparedness for study or training contexts.
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