School of Languages and Cultures

2026 Summer Research Program

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Engage in a formal research project over the summer break with the UQ Summer Research Program.

The UQ Summer Research Scholarship Program offers scholarships to students wishing to gain experience working alongside a researcher in a formal research environment in their area of interest at UQ.

Each project will be offered for a period of six (6) weeks between 12 January to 20 February 2026.

Successful applicants will receive a $3,000 grant.

Participation is open to undergraduate (including honours) and master by coursework students who are currently enrolled and will remain at UQ for the entirety of the research program.

Apply now

Applications will close 12 October 2025.

Check out some testimonials from previous scholars.

  1. Testimonies of torture in Indonesia
  2. Using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to explore family discourse
  3. More than Frills and Ribbons: Translating Essays on Japanese Children’s Literature
  4. Dingo Lingo – Building a database of Indigenous words for ‘dingo’
  5. Discourse analysis of regional dialects in Korean: Preserving cultural identities
  6. Health risk and benefit communication
  1. Professional conference interpreters’ use of interpreting strategies in real-life Chinese/English simultaneous interpreting at the United Nations
  2. A review of interactional competence amongst vulnerable university students
  3. Drawing language in action: Stimuli development for language experiments
  4. Up next for Djambarrpuyŋu texts: Creating a digital corpus of Djambarrpuyŋu from legacy materials
  5. Building Indigenous languages dictionaries and learning resources

8. A review of interactional competence amongst vulnerable university students

Project title: 

A review of interactional competence amongst vulnerable university students

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

36 hours per week for 6 weeks

Except for occasional face-to-face meetings, the work can be done mostly remotely.

Description:

This study aims to improve the integration and learning outcomes of vulnerable university students by focusing on developing academic oral communication skills, particularly interactional competence (i.e., the ability to co-create meaningful, context-sensitive communication in classroom and extracurricular settings). Grounded in academic discourse socialisation theory, it emphasises the social dimensions of learning and the role of classroom engagement. The proposed study is to conduct a literature review to prepare for a larger project. Expected outcomes include identifying a clear gap in the literature and preparatory work for development of an instrument utilised to identify the target cohort for a larger project.

Week 1 – Orientation (Project brief), familiarising with relevant data base and using online reference management tool (Zotero) .

Week 2 – 6 – Search for relevant articles and creating annotated bibliography

Expected learning outcomes and deliverables:

Scholars are expected to gain skills in searching for relevant literature using various data base and creating annotated bibliography in the relevant areas of the study.

Suitable for:

Have honours/postgraduate-level training in Applied Linguistics or equivalent.

Primary Supervisor:

Dr Noriko Iwashita

Further info:

Available from Noriko Iwashita (n.iwashita@uq.edu.au)