Shelley L Staples

Shelley L Staples is a Professor at the University of Arizona teaching in undergraduate English, MA TESL, and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching PhD programs. Her research employs corpus-based discourse analysis to investigate language variation across spoken and written contexts, focusing on situational factors and speaker characteristics including register, first language, and proficiency levels.

Dr. Staples earned her PhD in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University (2014). Her work bridges theoretical linguistics and practical applications in English for Academic/Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP), with current projects examining academic writing development and healthcare communication patterns. She utilizes mixed-methods approaches combining qualitative discourse analysis with quantitative computational text analysis.

Recent publications (2023-2025) demonstrate concentrated research on grammatical complexity metrics, disfluency patterns in L2 speech, and innovative asset-oriented approaches to learner corpus data. Key trends include methodological advances in multi-dimensional analysis, development of accessible corpus tools (e.g., CIABATTA), and investigations into linguistic features across academic registers and proficiency levels.

As Principal Investigator, Dr. Staples directs two major corpus initiatives:

• Corpus and Repository of Writing (Crow): A longitudinal resource tracking academic writing development
• Multilingual Corpus of Assignments—Writing and Speech (MACAWS): Supporting research in less commonly taught languages

These projects provide infrastructure for studying language variation across disciplines and proficiency levels, directly informing pedagogy in second language writing and assessment. Her leadership establishes critical resources for applied linguistics research and instruction.