Dr Odette Vassallo is a Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Malta where she teaches Stylistics, English in Context, Language and the Literary Mind, Learner Corpora, Semantics and Pragmatics. She has teaching and researching interest in Applied Linguistics.
She read for her undergraduate degree at the University of Malta, followed by a P.G.C.E. in English. Her interest in the interface of Language and Literature led to her M.A. at the University of Nottingham, U.K. After completing the degree, she went on to read for her Ph.D, also in Nottingham.
Before joining the University of Malta's Department of English, Dr Vassallo had a career at the University Junior College where she was teaching and researching in the field of the interface of Language and Literature. This focus is reflected in her Ph.D research in which she looks at an interdisciplinary approach to reading and interpretation, drawing upon stylistics, pedagogy and second language acquisition.
Corpus of Learner English in Malta (CLEM) – this project's focus is to build a corpus of Learner English, which will allow for research connected with areas such as learner English, SLA, bilingualism, textual analysis and more.
TELT Corpus
The project focuses on building a corpus of written and spoken data collected from the Test for English Language Teachers (TELT) examination. Part of the English Language Teaching Council's (ELT Council) remit is to promote as well as conduct research with the aim of enhancing language awareness in the local EFL industry. This project, funded by the EFL Council, aims to investigate language used by students aspiring to follow a TEFL Cert. course.