2025 CERCLL Faculty Research Fellows

Congratulations to the recipients of two 2025 CERCLL Faculty Research Fellowships! Dr. Yousra Abourehab received one award, and the other went to Dr. Sandiway Fong with Dr. Liudmila Klimanova.

Many thanks to the ten University of Arizona faculty members who reviewed the proposals submitted for this competition!

  • Yousra Abourehab, Assistant Professor of Practice in International Studies in Education and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching; Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies, College of Education:

Multilingual Peace Education and Global Competence Across Disciplines

This project enhances global competence through developing and teaching multilingual modules about peace education as a global topic in three languages: Arabic, Spanish, and Russian. Focusing on peace education, the project first develops five modules about global conflicts and their histories, education during conflicts, comparing peace initiatives in different contexts, cultural exchange and peace building, and the effectiveness of non-violent movements. Content in these modules will focus on multiple world regions. As students navigate the readings, they will engage in peace-making activities from global perspectives. Second, these modules and activities will be taught in English (for students in Global Studies, Teacher Education and Global Education) and translated and taught in three languages of choice: Arabic, Spanish, and Russian. The project deliverables will be self-contained modules and lesson plans around these modules and an open-source website for educators. The project sows the seed for two manuscripts on teaching peace across languages.

  • Sandiway Fong, Associate Professor; Department of Linguistics, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and
  • Liudmila Klimanova, Associate Professor of Russian, and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching; Department of Russian and Slavic Studies, College of Humanities:
Shelley Staples Headshot

LLM-Powered Voice Chatbots for ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews: Assessing the Feasibility of AI-Driven Automated Language Assessment

Recent rapid advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have created new possibilities for using voice-based dialogue systems in second language (L2) learning and assessment. This project is designed to evaluate the feasibility of adapting a voice-based AI chatbot to simulate an oral proficiency interview (OPI) and assign an appropriate ACTFL proficiency rating. Leveraging the standardized structure of the OPI and its focus on eliciting spontaneous, unrehearsed speech, the study investigates whether LLMs can be fine-tuned or custominstructed to assess L2 oral proficiency in a concrete language (e.g., Russian). The AI-powered OPI interviewer, AI Oralynx, will be tested with L2 learners and compared against traditional human-administered OPIs using standard rating protocols. The study addresses three core questions: the feasibility of AI-administered OPIs, their comparability to human-conducted interviews, and learner perceptions of AI-driven assessment. By exploring structural, lexical, and discourse-level indicators in oral production, this project seeks to advance the integration of generative AI technologies into high-stakes language assessment while identifying the methodological challenges associated with such integration.