Rate My Professor Elpida Petraki

Dr. Elpida Petraki is a lecturer in the Communication in Health Professions Education (COHPE) unit within the Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences Education Portfolio at Monash University. She teaches writing skills to undergraduate and graduate-entry professional students across health disciplines in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. Holding a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as an MA in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching and an MA in American Studies (Literature), Petraki has several years of prior experience teaching Applied Linguistics, Linguistics, and academic composition to university students in diverse fields. Her appointment at Monash dates from 2021, where she contributes to curriculum development focused on professional communication in health professions.

Petraki's research specializations include language learner investment-motivation, language and identity, multilingualism, and issues in tertiary academic writing, particularly for English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners and in health professions education. She investigates student challenges with professional writing, the role of AI writing tools, machine translation, and translanguaging practices in academic assignments. Key publications feature the peer-reviewed article 'Nursing and midwifery students’ ethical views on the acceptability of using AI machine translation software to write university assignments: A deficit-oriented or translanguaging perspective?' (Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2024, with Averil Grieve, Amir Rouhshad, Alan Bechaz, and David Wei Dai), alongside abstracts such as 'Equity in health profession education: Academics’ perceived challenges in assessing written reflections' (2024), '“I think that goes deeper than my pay grade”: Academic and student perspectives on use of AI for reflective writing in nursing and midwifery' (2024), 'Student ethical considerations on the use of language assistance tools for assessed academic writing' (2023), and 'The use of AI writing tools as a translanguaging practice in academic writing' (2023). Earlier work includes 'From Napaŋ to N'haber: is reshaping language, reshaping national identity?: the case of Cypriot Turkish' (2011). She received a shared Association for Academic Language and Learning Grant in 2021 and spoke at the Monash Multidisciplinary Workshop on Language 2022.