Tanita Saenkhum
Tanita Saenkhum
Associate Professor, Director of ESL
Second Language Writing, Composition, TESOL
Tanita Saenkhum joined the Department of English in Fall 2012. She received her Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics from Arizona State University. Her research program addresses issues related to second language writing, including assessment, placement, and writing teacher education and professional development. She is currently researching English writing education in Thailand. Tanita is the author of Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses and co-editor of EFL Writing Teacher Education and Professional Development: Voices from Under-Represented Contexts. Her work has also appeared in Journal of Second Language Writing, L2 Journal, and Race Ethnicity and Education and several edited collections.
Tanita teaches courses in second language writing, issues in writing assessment, writing program administration, teaching English as a Second/Foreign language methods, second language acquisition, and pedagogical grammar for ESL teachers. She works closely with graduate students who are interested in second language writing and coordinates the undergraduate TESOL certificate. She was Director of ESL from 2013 through 2019.
Education
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- Ph.D. Arizona State University
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- M.A. Southern Illinois University Carbondale
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- M.A. Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
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- B.A. Chiang Mai University, Thailand
Specialties
Honors
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- Outstanding Graduate Research Mentor Award, Graduate Student Senate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Spring 2024
- Recipient of the Chancellor’s Grant for Faculty Research, The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development (ORIED), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Fall 2023-Spring 2024
- Best Faculty Mentor (In the Classroom), Graduate Students in English, Department of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Spring 2017
- Winner of the John C. Hodges Excellence in Teaching Award of Assistant Professors, Department of English, University of Tennessee, Fall 2016-Spring 2017
Publications
Books
- EFL Writing Teacher Education and Professional Development: Voices from Under-represented Contexts. Multilingual Matters, 2024. (co-edited with Estela Ene, Betsy Gilliland, Sarah Henderson Lee, and Lisya Seloni)
- Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses. Utah State UP, 2016.
Articles
- “To grade is not to grade?: Exploring ungrading in the teaching of L2 writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 66, 2024. (with Soo Hyon Kim)
- “Generative artificial intelligence and second language writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 62, 2023. (with Soo Hyon Kim)
- “‘Because she’s not a native speaker of English, she doesn’t have the knowledge’: Positioning NNES Scholars in U.S. Higher Education.” Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 25, no. 7, 2022, pp. 1088-1106 (with Chatwara Suwannamai Duran)
- “Preparing Writing Teachers to use Assessment Rubrics.” NYS TESOL Journal, vol. 7, no. 2, 2020, pp. 7-25.
- “Professional Identity (Re)Construction of L2 Writing Scholars.” L2 Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, 2019, pp. 18-34. (with Soo Hyon Kim)
Book Chapters
- “Introduction.” EFL Writing Teacher Education and Professional Development: Voices from Under-represented Contexts, edited by Estela Ene, Betsy Gilliland, Sarah Henderson Lee, Tanita Saenkhum, and Lisya Seloni, Multilingual Matters, 2024, pp. 1-13. (co-authored with Estela Ene, Betsy Gilliland, Sarah Henderson Lee, and Lisya Seloni.)
- “Responding to the University’s Internationalization: Establishing Placement Mechanisms for Cross-Cultural Composition.” Building Internationalized Spaces: Second Language Perspectives on Developing Language and Cultural Exchange Programs in Higher Education, edited by Estela Ene, Kyle McIntosh, and Matthew Allen, University of Michigan Press, 2022, pp. 123-140. (with Hannah Soblo)
- “English Writing Instruction and Teacher Preparation in Thailand: Perspectives from the Primary and Secondary Schools.” Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts: English Language Teacher Preparation and Development, edited by Lisya Seloni and Sarah Henderson Lee, Multilingual Matters, 2020, pp. 111-130.
- “Navigating Administrator-Researcher Roles: Developing Recruitment Strategies for Conducting Programmatic Assessment with Diverse Undergraduate and Graduate Writers.” Navigating Challenges in Qualitative Educational Research: Research, Interrupted, edited by Todd Ruecker and Vanessa Svihla, Routledge, 2019, pp. 51-61. (with Joe Wilson)