MALL student Georgia Coats leads group to Spain

Georgia Coats, a student in the MALL (Master of Arts in Language Learning) program, had an amazingly successful 2015-2016 academic year.

She was awarded a Graduate Professional Scholarship to complete all but one course toward her degree. She developed a project that resulted in conference presentations at the Michigan World Languages Association and the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (CSCTFL).

Coats received funding for her conference travel through a WSU Humanities Center travel grant. In an exciting culmination to that work, she published her first article titled "Analyzing Song Lyrics as an Authentic Language Learning Opportunity" in the CSCTFL conference proceedings.

To round out this impressive year, in May 2016 Coats led seven adults from her church to Málaga, Spain, where they worked on improvement projects at a retreat center. In a first-class example of the training provided in the MALL program, she prepared the group for their trip with information about Spanish and Arab cultures and with exposure to the language to enable the group to enjoy their time in Spain as well as make the most of their efforts at the retreat center.