Margaret W. Piccoli is a lifelong educator, an author, and an improv enthusiast. As
a second language teacher, she has personally experienced the challenges to use comprehensible
language while incorporating it in content-based, meaningful, and engaging activities
for all proficiency levels. Over the last 25 years, Margaret has taught high school
Spanish in Louisiana, English as a Second language at the Università Cattolica in
Italy, Italian at Ithaca College, and World Language Education and English as a Second
Language at the School of Education at Louisiana State University. She believes that
activities that integrate the arts, specifically improvisation, consider the whole
child and offer multiple outlets of expression. Her academic and research interests
lie in second language acquisition, improvisation, and language learning through the
theatre-arts, but her passion is the teaching and advancement of a multilingual society.
Piccoli, M. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language
learners. TESOL Journal (9(4), 1-9.
Piccoli, M. (2016). Words Matter: Creating academic language in the classroom through improvisation.
Ubiquity: The journal of learning, literacy, and the arts, 3(2), 70-86.
Piccoli, M. & Hernendez, L. (2023). Purpose, Adaptability, Creativity, and Enjoyment (PACE): four Lessons Learned Using
Task-Based Language Teaching. Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. Oxford, MS.
Piccoli, M. & Dubroc, A. (2022). Graphic Novels: A Promising Light to Support English Learner to Build Literacy and
Language Acquisition. National Council of Teachers of English. Anaheim, CA.
Piccoli, M. (2022) LATESOL. The Louisiana Glossary of Best Practices and Strategies for Language Acquisition for
EL and WL Classroom Instruction. Baton Rouge, LA
Piccoli, M. (2022). Additive or Subtractive: A Crosswalk of Current English Language Program and Instruction
in K-12 Schools. Panel presented at The Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL). Baton Rouge,
LA.
Piccoli, M. (2022). Scaffolding Strategies to Maintain the Integrity of Authentic Texts. Roundtable presented at The Louisiana Foreign Language Teaching Association (LFLTA).
Baton Rouge, LA.
Piccoli, M. (2019). Assessing English Language Learners’ Comprehension of Content through the Theatrical
Technique of Improvisation. National Council of Teachers of English. Baltimore, MD.