Research interests
Tom Salsbury conducts research in second language acquisition. He studies vocabulary acquisition in content areas and is collaborating with colleagues to develop better measures of lexical (vocabulary) proficiency. His data come from longitudinal studies of children and adult English language learners. His work is published in research journals such as Language Learning and Second Language Research as well as applied research journals for teachers such as English Teaching Forum and Teaching Education Journal.
Teaching/professional interests
Dr. Salsbury joined the faculty of the Washington State University College of Education in 2005. He teaches courses in the Elementary and Secondary education programs, Masters in Teaching program, the ELL Endorsement program and graduate courses in the Language and Literacy Education program. He was a classroom teacher of English as second language for 17 years.
Recent accomplishments
- Crossley, S. A., Salsbury, T., & McNamara, D. S. (in press). The development of polysemy and frequency use in English second language speakers. Language Learning.
- Egbert, J. L., & Salsbury, T. (in press). “Out of complacency and into action”: An exploration of professional development experiences in school/home literacy engagement. Teaching Education Journal, 20(9).
- Salsbury, T., Crossley, S. A., & McNamara, D. S. (in press). Psycholinguistic word information in second language oral discourse. Second Language Research.
- Crossley, S. A., Salsbury, T., & McNamara, D. S. (2009). Measuring L2 lexical growth using hypernymic relationships. Language Learning, 59(2), 307-334.
- Salsbury, T., & Crummer, C. (2008). Using teacher-developed corpora in the CBI classroom. English Teaching Forum, 46(2), 28-37.
Educational background
- Ph.D. Linguistics, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2000.
- M.A. Applied Linguistics / TESOL, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1994.
- B.A. English Literature, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1988.
