Chapter 4. Case Study and Ethnography

I’m Carol Severino ( I go by Carol), a professor in the Rhetoric Dept. and the Writing Center Director. This is my 29^th year at Iowa!  I speak English as an L1 (first language) and Spanish as an L2 (second language), and Italian as a distant L3. I have also studied Quichua (an indigenous language in Ecuador) and taken a short course in Confucius Program Community Chinese, but I can’t speak either language.

I like to write non-fiction, mainly essays about travel and family.  I write academically in English, mainly articles, chapters, reviews, proposals, comments on student papers, and of course, endless emails!

I've written some stories, both fiction and non-fiction, in Spanish creative writing courses I’ve taken  at Iowa. In the Italian courses I've taken here, we've done many imaginative and fun writing exercises. In Quichua, the only original piece I've written was a short speech for my son and daughter in law's engagement ceremony in Ecuador. With the help of my Chinese tutor and Google Translate, I once wrote 100 words about my family's walk to the lake with our dog.

I have a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Composition and Rhetoric and a Master’s in Linguistics-TESOL.  I used to teach different levels of Composition and ESL Writing as well as ESL conversation and grammar at different colleges and programs in Chicago. At Iowa, after a few years of teaching Rhetoric, I now mostly teach tutor-training courses for the writing center I direct and tutor in. I also teach travel writing and this SLA-writing course.

My current research interests have to do with exploring second language writing development. I’m in the process revising an article that our writing center research team did on international student writers’ perceptions of the rhetorical and linguistic components of their English writing development. Over break, I co-wrote with a FLARE student/Spanish Writing Center tutor a book chapter on SLA theories and writing center research.