Futility cannot be found in Dr. Dennis Godfrey’s lexicon. Godfrey, who has been a member of the West Chester University faculty for 19 years, received his doctorate degree in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. This particular concentration has nevertheless fueled a career of in-depth “discourse analysis” in addition to an even further focus on the education and development of English as a second language. Although Godfrey has not recently written any articles for publications, he continues to give presentations at different academic conferences. Some of these conferences include The International TESOL conference and the Regional Penn-TESOL East conference. In addition, he speaks at workshops on average twice a year with an audience ranging from college professors to secondary education teachers.
In the past, Godfrey has worked on several research projects covering language acquisition and teaching English as a second language. One of these collaborative efforts included him and one of his colleagues from Drexel University, researching the dynamic of the process of acquiring/honing second language assessment.
According to Godfrey, a notable inhibition to continuing research work is time. A four-course teaching load can truly limit “how much time you have in serious scholarly work,” Godfrey said.
Despite this, Godfrey, while teaching two graduate courses and two sections of Introduction to Linguistics for undergraduates, has managed to get his hands a very timely piece of research. Currently, he is working on presidential debates in conjunction with computer analysis.
The objectives for this type of research, according to Godfrey, include to “try applying a computer analysis to actual texts,” in addition to “look at the language of political promises and commitments.
This idea of analyzing language strongly parallels to Godfrey’s reason on why young minds (the collegiate audience) should study Linguistics.
“Young people can benefit by being able to understand the language used to manipulate them,” Godfrey said.
Studying language also, according to Godfrey, “prepares people to do analytical thinking in daily life.”
Ultimately, Godfrey stakes a strong interest in preparing teachers to teach their students about language dynamics. Nonetheless, Godfrey cultivates this interest by “doing as much reading as possible” on the subject of second languages.
In light of Godfrey’s linguistic career as a scholar, educator and researcher, he maintains that “being able to understand and enjoy language is a valuable thing for anyone.
This author could certainly have benefited from Dr. Godfrey’s instruction on how to use language skillfully.