DOCSLIB.ORG

Curriculum Vitae: Lorenzo García-Amaya, Ph.D

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Curriculum Vitae: Lorenzo García-Amaya, Ph.D. Work Address: 4108 Modern Language Building 812 E. Washington Street Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Telephone: Office: 734-647-2323 Email: [email protected] Web Page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lgarciaa/ Lab Website: http://umich.edu/~speechlab/ (Co-director) Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fDgaLS8AAAAJ& (Updated May 31, 2021) AREAS OF STUDY Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Oral Fluency, Psycholinguistics, Second Language Cognition, Study Abroad, Bilingualism, Andalusian Spanish, Sociophonetics EDUCATION May 2012 Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Hispanic Linguistics, Departments of Spanish & Portuguese and Second Language Studies, Indiana University Dissertation title: Second Language Fluency and Cognition: The Study of Spanish Second Language Development in an Overseas Immersion Program and an At-Home Foreign Language Classroom May 2006 Master of Arts (M.A.), Hispanic Linguistics, Departments of Spanish & Portuguese, Indiana University May 2003 Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English Language & Literature, University of Seville, Spain EMPLOYMENT 2016-Present Assistant Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 2015-2016 Lecturer IV, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 2012-2015 Lecturer III, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI García-Amaya CV, 1 of 20 2011-2012 Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 2010-2011 Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 2005-2010 Director; Conversation, Culture & Phonetics Instructor, Indiana University Honors Program in Foreign Languages, León, Spain 2004-2010 Assistant Instructor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN PUBLICATIONS (*graduate student or **undergraduate student collaboration) Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (published, accepted, or in press) [1] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (in press). An investigation into utterance-fluency patterns of advanced L2 bilinguals Afrikaans and Spanish in Patagonia. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.19090.gar [2] Cintrón-Valentín, M.*, & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (in press). Investigating textual enhancement and captions in L2 grammar and vocabulary: An experimental study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000492 [3] Henriksen, Nicholas, Andries W. Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, & Micha Fischer*. (in press). Exploring language dominance through code-switching: Intervocalic voiced stop lenition in Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals. Phonetica. [4] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2021). A change of setting: Measuring language use in an overseas immersion context. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 6(1), 32–58. https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.19010.gar [5] García-Amaya, Lorenzo & Sean Lang**. (2020). Filled pauses are susceptible to cross-language phonetic influence: Evidence from Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(5), 1077-1015. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263120000169 [6] Szpiech, Ryan, Joshua Shapero, Andries W. Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, Paulina Alberto, Victoria Langland, Ellie Johandes**, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2020). Afrikaans in Patagonia: Language shift and cultural integration in a rural immigrant community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2020(266), 33–54. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2020-2110 García-Amaya CV, 2 of 20 [7] Henriksen, Nicholas & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2019). Falsetto in interaction in Western Andalusian Spanish: A pilot study. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 34, 101–124. [8] Cintrón-Valentín, Myrna*, Lorenzo García-Amaya, & Nick C. Ellis. (2019). Captioning and grammar learning in the L2 Spanish classroom. The Language Learning Journal, 47(4), 439–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2019.1615978 [9] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2017). Detailing L1 and L2 use in study-abroad research: Data from the Daily Linguistic Questionnaire. System, 71, 60–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.09.023 [10] Henriksen, Nicholas & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2012). Transcription of intonation of Jerezano Andalusian Spanish. Estudios de Fonética Experimental, 21, 109–162. [11] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2008). The effect of topic on rate of speech. Estudios de Lingüística Inglesa Aplicada, 8, 117–150. Submitted Manuscripts in Peer-Reviewed Journals [1] García-Amaya, Lorenzo & Myrna Cintrón-Valentín*. (Under review in Modern Language Journal – revision submitted on 2/24/21). The Effects of Textually Enhanced Captions on Written Elicited Imitation in L2 Grammar. [2] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (Under review in Foreign Language Annals – revision due on 6/17/21). Exploring the connection between language use and oral proficiency during study abroad: Results from the Daily Language Questionnaire 2. [3] Garcia-Amaya, Lorenzo. (Under review in Second Language Research – submitted on 5/30/21). Investigating the relation between L2 pauses and syntactic complexity: Longitudinal data from study-abroad learners. Edited volume [1] García-Amaya, Lorenzo, Jannis Harjus, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2019). Las Hablas Andaluzas. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 34. Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings & Book Chapters [1] García-Amaya, Lorenzo, Harjus Jannis, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2019). Introducción. Las hablas andaluzas: estado de la cuestión [Introduction. Andalusian Spanish: The State of the Matter]. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 34, 7–13. García-Amaya CV, 3 of 20 [2] Henriksen, Nicholas, Lorenzo García-Amaya, Andries W. Coetzee & Daan Wissing. (2019). Language contact in Patagonia: Durational control in the acquisition of Spanish and Afrikaans phonology. In F. Martínez-Gil & S. Colina (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Phonology (pp. 416-438). NewYork: Routledge. [3] Coetzee, Andries W., Lorenzo García-Amaya, Jiseung Kim*, Daan Wissing, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2019). Velar palatalization in Patagonian and South-African Afrikaans: Language and Settlement History in an Expatriate Community. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain & P. Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th international congress of phonetic sciences (pp. 1610-1614). Canberra, Australia: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association. [4] Alberto, Paulina, Ana Silva*, Andries W. Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, Victoria Langland, Ryan Szpiech, Ellie Johandes**, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2019). Los otros afro-argentinos: Narrativas raciales de la colectividad sudafricana de la Patagonia del siglo XX. In E. Lamborghini, M. Ghidoli, & J. F. Martínez Peria (Eds.), Estudios Latinoamericanos 4: Actas de las Sextas Jornadas del GEALA (pp. 175–190). Buenos Aires: Editions of the Cultural Center of the Floreal Gorini Cooperation. [5] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2018). Utterance fluency in the study abroad context: An overview of research methodologies. In C. Sanz & A. Morales-Front (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Study Abroad Research and Practice (pp. 181–192). New York: Routledge. [6] Henriksen, Nicholas, Meghan E. Armstrong, & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2016). The intonational meaning of polar questions in Manchego Spanish spontaneous speech. In M. Armstrong, N. Henriksen, & M. Vanrell (Eds.), Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields (pp. 181–206). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [7] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2015). A longitudinal study of filled pauses and silent pauses in second language speech. In R. Lickley (Ed.), The 7th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2015) (pp. 23-28). Edinburgh, UK: The University of Edinburgh. [8] Coetzee, Andries W., Lorenzo García-Amaya, Nicholas Henriksen, & Daan Wissing. (2015). Bilingual speech rhythm: Spanish-Afrikaans in Patagonia. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: The University of Glasgow. [9] Abelló-Contesse, Christián & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2012). Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. In C.A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. García-Amaya CV, 4 of 20 [10] Geeslin, Kimberly L., Lorenzo García-Amaya, Maria Hasler-Barker, Nicholas C. Henriksen & Jason Killam. (2012). The L2 acquisition of variable perfective past time reference in Spanish in an overseas immersion setting. In K. Geeslin & M. Díaz-Campos (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 14th Hispanic Linguistic Symposium (pp. 197–213). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [11] Geeslin, Kimberly L., Lorenzo García-Amaya, Maria Hasler-Barker, Nicholas C. Henriksen, & Jason Killam. (2010). The SLA of direct object pronouns in a study abroad immersion environment where use is variable. In C. Borgonovo, M. Español-Echevarría & P. Prévost (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 12th Hispanic Linguistic Symposium (pp. 246–259). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [12] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2009). New findings on fluency measures across three different learning contexts. In J. Collentine, M. García, B. Lafford & F. Marcos- Marín (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 11th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 68–80). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [13] García-Amaya, Lorenzo. (2008). Variable norms in the production of // in Jerez de la Frontera,
Recommended publications
  • SLA in Uncertain Times: Disciplinary Constraints, Transdisciplinary Hopes

    SLA in Uncertain Times: Disciplinary Constraints, Transdisciplinary Hopes

    Working Papers in Educational Linguistics (WPEL) Volume 33 Number 1 Spring 2018 Article 1 Spring 2018 SLA in Uncertain Times: Disciplinary Constraints, Transdisciplinary Hopes Lourdes Ortega Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel Part of the Education Commons, and the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Ortega, L. (2018). SLA in Uncertain Times: Disciplinary Constraints, Transdisciplinary Hopes. 33 (1), Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel/vol33/iss1/1 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel/vol33/iss1/1 For more information, please contact [email protected]. SLA in Uncertain Times: Disciplinary Constraints, Transdisciplinary Hopes Abstract We live in uncertain times in an uncertain world. While large-scale efforts exist to end poverty, promote peace, share wealth, and protect the planet, we are witnessing serious deterioration of solidarity and respect for human diversity, coupled with alarming tides of authoritarian populism in the West. Many multilinguals—even more so multilinguals in marginalized communities—are vulnerable in the present climate. Researching bi/multilingualism is the business of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. How well equipped is this field to respond to the present challenges? In this article I unpack four constraints that I believe hamper SLA’s capacity to generate useful knowledge about multilingualism. One is a disciplinary identity that is built around the language two of learners and the late timing of learning. The second constraint is the adherence to an essentialist ontology of language that considers it a system separate from the act of communication. A third constraint is a teleological view of linguistic development benchmarked against an ideal monolingual native speaker model.
  • Implicit and Explicit Knowledge About Language

    Implicit and Explicit Knowledge About Language

    Comp. by: TPrasath Date:27/12/06 Time:22:59:29 Stage:First Proof File Path:// spiina1001z/womat/production/PRODENV/0000000005/0000001817/0000000016/ 0000233189.3D Proof by: QC by: NICK ELLIS IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LANGUAGE INTRODUCTION Children acquire their first language (L1) by engaging with their caretakers in natural meaningful communication. From this “evidence” they automatically acquire complex knowledge of the structure of their language. Yet paradoxically they cannot describe this knowledge, the discovery of which forms the object of the disciplines of theoretical lin- guistics, psycholinguistics, and child language acquisition. This is a difference between explicit and implicit knowledge—ask a young child how to form a plural and she says she does not know; ask her “here is a wug, here is another wug, what have you got?” and she is able to reply, “two wugs.” The acquisition of L1 grammar is implicit and is extracted from experience of usage rather than from explicit rules—simple expo- sure o normal linguistic input suffices and no explicit instruction is needed. Adult acquisition of second language (L2) is a different matter in that what can be acquired implicitly from communicative contexts is typically quite limited in comparison to native speaker norms, and adult attainment of L2 accuracy usually requires additional resources of explicit learning. The various roles of consciousness in second language acquisi- tion (SLA) include: the learner noticing negative evidence; their attending to language form, their perception focused by social scaffolding or explicit instruction; their voluntary use of pedagogical grammatical descriptions and analogical reasoning; their reflective induction of metalinguistic insights about language; and their consciously guided practice which results, eventually, in unconscious, automatized skill.
  • Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages Patrick Rebuschat

    Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages Patrick Rebuschat

    Introduction: Implicit and explicit learning of languages Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster University) Introduction to the forthcoming volume: Rebuschat, P. (Ed.) (in press, 2015). Implicit and explicit learning of languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Implicit learning, essentially the process of acquiring unconscious (implicit) knowledge, is a fundamental feature of human cognition (Cleeremans, Destrebecqz, & Boyer, 1998; Dienes, 2012; Perruchet, 2008; Shanks, 2005; Reber, 1993). Many complex behaviors, including language comprehension and production (Berry & Dienes, 1993; Winter & Reber, 1994), music cognition (Rohrmeier & Rebuschat, 2012), intuitive decision making (Plessner, Betsch, & Betsch, 2008), and social interaction (Lewicki, 1986), are thought to be largely dependent on implicit knowledge. The term implicit learning was first used by Arthur Reber (1967) to describe a process during which subjects acquire knowledge about a complex, rule-governed stimulus environment without intending to and without becoming aware of the knowledge they have acquired. In contrast, the term explicit learning refers to a process during which participants acquire conscious (explicit) knowledge; this is generally associated with intentional learning conditions, e.g., when participants are instructed to look for rules or patterns. In his seminal study, Reber (1967) exposed subjects to letter sequences (e.g., TPTS, VXXVPS and TPTXXVS) by means of a memorization task. In experiment 1, subjects were presented with letter sequences and simply asked to commit them to memory. One group of subjects was given sequences that were generated by means of a finite-state grammar (Chomsky, 1956, 1957; Chomsky & Miller, 1958), while the other group received randomly 1 constructed sequences. The results showed that grammatical letter sequences were learned more rapidly than random letter sequences.
  • Two Approaches to Second Language Acquisition: Universal Grammar and Emergentism

    Two Approaches to Second Language Acquisition: Universal Grammar and Emergentism

    English Teaching, Vol. 75, Supplement 1, Summer 2020, pp. 3-8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.75.s1.202006.3 http://journal.kate.or.kr Two Approaches to Second Language Acquisition: Universal Grammar and Emergentism William O’Grady and Kitaek Kim* 1. THE TWO APPROACHES TO SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Language presents us with many questions. Why does it have certain properties and features, but not others? Why does it vary and change in the ways that it does? How is it acquired with such ease by young children despite its evident complexity? And why do adults find it so difficult to acquire a second language (L2), despite their cognitive maturity and their access to well-designed pedagogical programs? An impressive feature of Universal Grammar (UG), as it was traditionally conceived, is that it offers an integrated explanatory narrative—an inborn system of grammatical principles stipulates the architecture of language, including limits on variation and change, while also shedding light on the apparent magic of first language acquisition. With the help of additional assumptions, such as the full-transfer/full-access proposal of Bonnie D. Schwartz and Rex Sprouse (1996), it is even possible to offer an explanation for why the mastery of a L2 proves so challenging, but is perhaps nonetheless attainable. Parts of the discussion in the first section of this paper appeared in O’Grady, Lee, and Kwak (2009). *Corresponding Author: William O’Grady, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1890 East-West Road, Moore 569, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA; E-mail: [email protected] Co-Author: Kitaek Kim, Professor, Department of English Language Education, Seoul National University Received 10 June 2020; Reviewed 17 June 2020; Accepted 25 June 2020 © 2020 The Korea Association of Teachers of English (KATE) This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits anyone to copy, redistribute, remix, transmit and adapt the work provided the original work and source is appropriately cited.
  • Syntactic Complexity in L2 Writing: Progress and Expansion

    Syntactic Complexity in L2 Writing: Progress and Expansion

    Journal of Second Language Writing 29 (2015) 82–94 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Second Language Writing journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seclan Syntactic complexity in L2 writing: Progress and expansion Lourdes Ortega Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 1437 37th Street NW, Box 571051, Poulton Hall 250, Washington, DC 20057-1051, USA A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T In this commentary to the Special Issue, I first identify four themes that arise from the Keywords: contributions that each study makes to the study of syntactic complexity in L2 writing. I Syntactic complexity then explore several other themes that stem from the collective findings from the five Crosslinguistic influence studies and which connect with the general landscape of the research domain. Two L2 proficiency Genre questions guide the domain. One question is substantive: What do we know about how Cross-rhetorical transfer syntactic complexity grows, and what factors affect this growth? The other question is L2 development methodological: How can one best measure syntactic complexity? Both, of course, are Writing quality interrelated. An overarching conclusion is that much progress has been made in what is already known, substantively and methodologically. An emerging insight is that we can look forward to several areas of expansion that are imminent in the domain. ã 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Syntactic complexity is understood broadly as the range and the sophistication of grammatical resources exhibited in language production. Synonyms such as variety, diversity, and elaboratedness of deployed grammatical features are also often seen in all contemporary definitions of high currency among second language (L2) researchers.
  • Preprint Ellis, NC (2013). Second Language Acquisition. in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

    Preprint Ellis, NC (2013). Second Language Acquisition. in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

    Second Language Acquisition Nick C. Ellis University of Michigan [email protected] preprint Ellis, N. C. (2013). Second language acquisition. In Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 365-378), G. Trousdale & T. Hoffmann (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1. Introduction Usage-based approaches hold that we learn linguistic constructions while engaging in communication, the “interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language” (Slobin 1997). Constructions are form-meaning mappings, conventionalized in the speech community, and entrenched as language knowledge in the learner’s mind. They are the symbolic units of language relating the defining properties of their morphological, syntactic, and lexical form with particular semantic, pragmatic, and discourse functions (Bates and MacWhinney 1987; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987; Croft 2001; Croft and Cruse 2004; Goldberg 1995, 2003, 2006; Tomasello 2003; Robinson and Ellis 2008; Bybee 2008). Broadly, Construction Grammar argues that all grammatical phenomena can be understood as learned pairings of form (from morphemes, words, and idioms, to partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns) and their associated semantic or discourse functions. Such beliefs, increasingly influential in the study of child language acquisition, have turned upside down generative assumptions of innate language acquisition devices, the continuity hypothesis, and top-down, rule-governed, processing, bringing back data-driven, emergent accounts of linguistic systematicities. Constructionist theories of child first language acquisition (L1A) use dense longitudinal corpora to chart the emergence of creative linguistic competence from children’s analyses of the utterances in their usage history and from their abstraction of regularities within them (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2003; Diessel, this volume; Tomasello 1998; Tomasello 2003).
  • The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition

    The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition

    ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition Edited by Susan M. Gass and Alison Mackey The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition ‘The editors, Susan M. Gass and Alison Mackey, have done a sterling job with this Handbook. The biggest names and rising stars in the fields of second language teaching and language learning have contributed to this “magnum opus”.’ Jean-Marc Dewaele, Birkbeck, University of London, UK The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition brings together fifty leading international figures in the field to produce a state-of-the-art overview of second language acquisition. The Handbook covers a wide range of topics related to Second Language Acquisition: language in context, linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic theories and perspectives, skill learning, individual differences, L2 learning settings, and language assessment. All chapters introduce the reader to the topic, outline the core issues, then explore the pedagogical application of research in the area and possible future development. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition is an essential resource for all those studying and researching second language acquisition. Susan M. Gass is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at Michigan State University. She is the author of many titles and co-author of Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course, Third Edition (Routledge, 2008), with Larry Selinker. She co-edits the series, Second Language Acquisition Research (with Alison Mackey, for Routledge). Alison Mackey is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is the author of many titles, and co-author of Data Elicitation for Second and Foreign Language Research (Routledge 2007), with Susan M.
  • The Emergence and Development of Syntactic Patterns in EFL Writing in a School Context: a Longitudinal Study

    The Emergence and Development of Syntactic Patterns in EFL Writing in a School Context: a Longitudinal Study

    languages Article The Emergence and Development of Syntactic Patterns in EFL Writing in a School Context: A Longitudinal Study M. Luz Celaya Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and English Studies, University of Barcelona, 08007 Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] Received: 21 March 2019; Accepted: 18 June 2019; Published: 19 June 2019 Abstract: The present longitudinal study analyses the emergence and development of syntactic patterns in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) written production. Data were elicited by means of a paper and pencil task from sixteen school learners at three different times over a time span of 6 years. Studies in the area of Second Language Writing (SLW) have mainly focused on English as a second language and very few longitudinal studies have been carried out with low proficiency learners in a school context. To further contribute to the field, we have tried out a new measure of analysis, namely, the production of syntactic patterns. The results show that most learners produce both a wider variety and a higher number of patterns from one time to another, although statistically significant differences vary across patterns in relation to the times of data collection; secondly, it was found that the behaviour of two of the learners differed from that of the rest of the participants. It is concluded that in an instructional setting, the development of syntactic patterns in EFL writing as proficiency increases does not always show progression towards complexity and that it may be learner dependent. Keywords: English as a foreign language; individual variation; syntactic patterns; Second Language Writing 1.
  • 2 Research Methods

    2 Research Methods

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UCL Discovery Luke Plonsky and Laura Gurzynski-Weiss 2 Research Methods Abstract: This paper begins with the assumption that there is no perfect study. Rather, the process of conducting language acquisition research involves numerous deci- sions, each of which is accompanied by a set of strengths and weaknesses and which must be justified as appropriate to the substantive domain and the research questions being addressed. The chapter describes many of these choices and their correspond- ing benefits and drawbacks, illustrating key concepts and techniques with examples while making frequent reference to methodological issues and trends currently taking place in the field. In particular, we focus on major decisions related to (a) research designs, both descriptive/observational and (quasi-)experimental; (b) elicitation tech- niques and instruments for collecting data both linguistic (e.g., grammaticality judg- ment tasks) and non-linguistic (e.g., questionnaires) in nature; and (c) quantitative (e.g., analysis of variance) and qualitative (e.g., grounded theory) techniques for analyzing data. Keywords: research design, quantitative research methods, qualitative research meth- ods, language acquisition, statistics 1 Introduction 1.1 The Value of Methodological Knowledge It is difficult to overstate the importance of methods in language acquisition research. Simply put, they are the means by which empirical evidence is gathered to advance knowledge. Our understanding of language acquisition is only as strong as the methods we employ. This path toward knowledge construction is contrasted with theoretical developments which complement, instruct, and are informed by empirical work (↗6 Language Acquisition Theories).
  • Challenging Learners in Their Individual Zone of Proximal Development Using Pedagogic Developmental Benchmarks of Syntactic Complexity

    Challenging Learners in Their Individual Zone of Proximal Development Using Pedagogic Developmental Benchmarks of Syntactic Complexity

    Challenging Learners in Their Individual Zone of Proximal Development Using Pedagogic Developmental Benchmarks of Syntactic Complexity Xiaobin Chen and Detmar Meurers LEAD Graduate School and Research Network Department of Linguistics Eberhard Karls Universitat¨ Tubingen,¨ Germany {xiaobin.chen,detmar.meurers}@uni-tuebingen.de Abstract and identify reading material individually chal- lenging learners, essentially instantiating the next This paper introduces an Intelligent Com- stage of acquisition as captured by Krashen’s con- puter Assisted Language Learning system cept of i+1 (Krashen, 1981) or relatedly, but em- designed to provide reading input for lan- phasizing the social perspective, Vygotsky’s Zone guage learners based on the syntactic com- of Proximal Development (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1976). plexity of their language production. The In terms of structure of the paper, we first locate system analyzes the linguistic complexity our approach in terms of the Complexity, Accu- of texts produced by the user and of texts racy, and Fluency (CAF) framework in SLA re- in a pedagogic target language corpus to search. Then we review approaches adopted by identify texts that are well-suited to foster earlier studies in developmental complexity re- acquisition. These texts provide develop- search, including problems they pose for a peda- mental benchmarks offering an individu- gogical approach aimed at offering developmental ally tailored language challenge, making benchmarks. We propose and justify a solution, ideas such as Krashen’s i+1 or Vygotsky’s before presenting the architecture and functional- Zone of Proximal Development concrete ity of the SyB system. and empirically explorable in terms of a broad range of complexity measures in all 2 Development of Syntactic Complexity dimensions of linguistic modeling.
  • Lourdes Ortega Curriculum Vitae

    Lourdes Ortega Curriculum Vitae

    Lourdes Ortega Curriculum Vitae Updated: August 2019 Department of Linguistics 1437 37th Street NW Box 571051 Poulton Hall 250 Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057-1051 Department of Linguistics Fax (202) 687-6174 E-mail: [email protected] Webpage: https://sites.google.com/a/georgetown.edu/lourdes-ortega/ EDUCATION 2000 Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Department of Second Language Studies, USA. 1995 M.A. in English as a Second Language. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Department of Second Language Studies, USA. 1993 R.S.A. Dip., Diploma for Overseas Teachers of English. Cambridge University/UCLES, UK. 1987 Licenciatura in Spanish Philology. University of Cádiz, Spain. EMPLOYMENT since 2012 Professor, Georgetown University, Department of Linguistics. 2004-2012 Professor (2010-2012), Associate Professor (2006-2010), Assistant Professor (2004-2006), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Department of Second Language Studies. 2002-2004 Assistant Professor (tenure-track), Northern Arizona University, Department of English. 2000-2002 Assistant Professor (tenure-track). Georgia State University, Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL. 1999-2000 Visiting Instructor of Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University, Department of Linguistics. 1994-1998 Research and Teaching Graduate Assistant, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. 1987-1993 Instructor of Spanish, Instituto Cervantes of Athens, Greece. FELLOWSHIPS 2018: Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC). August through December, 2018. 2010: External Senior Research Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg. One-semester residential fellowship at FRIAS to carry out project titled Pathways to multicompetence: Applying usage-based and constructionist theories to the study of interlanguage development.
  • Code-Switching and Predictability of Meaning In

    Code-Switching and Predictability of Meaning In

    CODE-SWITCHING AND PREDICTABILITY OF MEANING IN DISCOURSE Mark Myslín Roger Levy University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego What motivates a fluent bilingual speaker to switch languages within a single utterance? We propose a novel discourse-functional motivation: less predictable, high information-content mean- ings are encoded in one language, and more predictable, lower information-content meanings are encoded in another language. Switches to a speaker’s less frequently used, and hence more salient, language offer a distinct encoding that highlights information-rich material that comprehenders should attend to especially carefully. Using a corpus of natural Czech-English bilingual discourse, we test this hypothesis against an extensive set of control factors from sociolinguistic, psycholin- guistic, and discourse-functional lines of research using mixed-effects logistic regression, in the first such quantitative multifactorial investigation of code-switching in discourse. We find, using a Shannon guessing game to quantify predictability of meanings in conversation, that words with difficult-to-guess meanings are indeed more likely to be code-switch sites, and that this is in fact one of the most highly explanatory factors in predicting the occurrence of code-switching in our data. We argue that choice of language thus serves as a formal marker of information content in discourse, along with familiar means such as prosody and syntax. We further argue for the utility of rigorous, multifactorial approaches to sociolinguistic speaker-choice phenomena in natural conversation.* Keywords: code-switching, bilingualism, discourse, predictability, audience design, statistical modeling 1. Introduction. In an early sketch of language contact, André Martinet (1953:vii) observed that in multilingual speech, choice of language is not dissimilar to the ‘choice[s] among lexical riches and expressive resources’available in monolingual speech.