Jim Ranalli has won the 2012 Christopher Brumfit Award for oustanding PhD thesis in the field of second language acquisition and/or foreign/second language teaching and learning. The annual award, organized by the journal Language Teaching and sponsored by Cambridge University Press, commemorates the work of a renowned applied linguist and entitles the winner to a £500 voucher for books published by Cambridge University Press.
Ranalli completed his PhD in ISU’s Applied Linguistics and Technology program in August 2012 under the supervision of Carol Chapelle and Volker Hegelheimer. His dissertation, titled The VVT Project: A web-based platform for strategy instruction and research into the self-regulated learning of L2 vocabulary, was selected from among 44 international submissions by an external panel of judges based on its significance to the field, originality and creativity, and quality of presentation. Ranalli continues his research into the intersection of language learning, technology, and self-regulation as a postdoc in the English Department, where he also teaches courses in linguistics and composition.