Spanish Linguistics Commons^™

Broadening Perspectives: Using Multiple Teaching Approaches To Meet The Needs Of Language Students, Kalen Taylor

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

This portfolio is comprised of research, opinions, and ideas that the author has learned during the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University (USU). It is a representation of experiences gained through teaching lower division Spanish courses at USU. In addition to experiences, it is also comprised of research perspectives which were furthered by coursework in the MSLT program.

Contained within the pages is a road map of the author’s journey of learning and research. The portfolio begins with the author’s perspectives on teaching including his philosophy on teaching and how he has developed ...

El Asadito Y El Cumple: Personajes Y Espacio Como Formas De Significado, Mariana Pensa

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

El asadito y El cumple: personajes y espacio como formas de significado

En este ensayo se realiza una aproximación a los filmes El asadito (2000) y El cumple (2002) ambos dirigidos por el cineasta argentino Gustavo Postiglioni. Nos detendremos especialmente en la función connotadora del espacio y los personajes en los dos filmes, que remite tanto a una atmósfera espacial sofocante como a personajes alienados, anclados en una innacción existencial.

Observaremos cómo se va construyendo la tensión, expresando así la radiografía de un grupo de personajes que tienen una memoria común, y que se constituyen en síntomas y a la ...

Conference Program 2020, Seccll Conference

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

SECCLL Conference Program for 2020

The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface: Intransitivity And Word Order In L3 Spanish, Diana M. Fernandez Acosta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Until fairly recently, most researchers assumed that the acquisition of a second language (L2) and of a third (or subsequent) (L3/Ln) language were indistinguishable. This is not the case, as knowledge of two or more previous languages adds complexity to non-native acquisition. This study addresses the issue of crosslinguistic influence between three languages in view of two theories: (a) the L2 will always be the cause of crosslinguistic influence in an L3 (Bardel & Falk, 2012); (b) the determining factor for transfer is typological similarity between the languages in question (Rothman, 2010).

This study focuses on the L3 acquisition of Spanish by ...

The Grammatical Systems Of Attentionworthiness: Positional Signals And Invariant Meanings In Spanish Word Order, Eduardo Ho-Fernández

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a Columbia School analysis of word order phenomena in Spanish. The data was sourced from a corpus of manually collected utterances extracted from six volumes of Latin American short stories written in the twentieth century. The study employs various qualitative and quantitative techniques in order to test the various hypotheses offered as explanations of the distributional problems selected for the study. The observations roughly correspond to word orders that the grammatical tradition describes as having to do with either verbs with one argument (SV, VS, OV, VO) or verbs with two arguments (SVO, OVS, VSO, VOS, SOV ...

Latino, Latina, Latin@, Latine, And Latinx: Gender Inclusive Oral Expression In Spanish, Katie Slemp

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Gender identity is a rapidly changing concept and so is the language that we use to talk about ourselves or others that may identify outside of the traditional binary system. Spanish typically functions as a masculine generic-dominated language, but there are attempts to make the language more inclusive. One of those attempts appeared in the early 2000s: -x. This marker is unpronounceable as a syllable nucleus. Via an online survey and virtual interviews, this project discovers how Spanish speakers from various countries incorporate gender inclusive language (IL) in writing and speech. Which speakers incorporate IL? Additionally, why do they use ...

Code-Switching In L2 Spanish: A Comparison Of French And English Learners, Liliana Montoya

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates whether L2 Spanish learners’ grammar intuitions on code-switching (CS) show evidence of the predictions made by the Functional Head Constraint (FHC) proposed by Belazi, Rubin, & Toribio (1994). Building on this theory, the present work supports the idea that L2 learners have an intuitive sense of code-switching well-formedness, i.e., they count on unconscious grammatical principles to produce code-switched utterances as well as to assess their grammaticality. Our primary research question is: given the usual absence of CS input that classroom L2 learners receive, will their grammar intuitions on CS show evidence of the predictions made by the FHC? In order to answer this question, we carried out two experiments with two different groups of L2 Spanish learners: native speakers of English and French with different level of proficiency in the L2.

In Experiment 1, we used an Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) administered in Toribio (2001a) to evaluate participants’ grammatical intuitions on (un)grammatical switching boundaries. In Experiment 2 we employed two tasks to have two types of experimental data: A Self-paced Reading Task (SPRT) which looked at participants’ real time processing, and an AJT to observe their grammatical intuitions.

Confirming our hypothesis and in line with the FHC, we found that participants have accurate grammar intuitions about CS. These results are consistent with previous studies (Toribio, 2001a; Dussias, 2003; Koronkiewicz, 2018; Giancaspro, 2013, 2015) at proving that L2 learners exhibit linguistic knowledge of the structural restrictions in CS. The analysis per groups further showed that both the English and French intermediate learners’ exhibited more accurate acceptability responses than the beginner group. Intermediate L2 Spanish learners distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical CS while beginners had problems recognizing grammaticality especially in switches after modal/auxiliary, quantifier, preposition and adjectives. Results obtained ...

Phil The Phytoplankton, Kylie Kihm, Lexi Frankiewich

World Languages and Cultures

This project, a bilingual children's book, “Phil the Phytoplankton” and “Felipe el fitoplancton” educates young readers on the importance of phytoplankton in our world. The book emphasizes the fact that such small organisms, invisible to the naked eye unless gathered in immense quantities, are responsible for providing the earth with approximately 50% of the oxygen essential for human life. As defined by Cal Poly, sustainability is “the ability of the natural and social systems to survive and thrive together to meet current and future needs.” This book encourages a symbiotic relationship as a young girl, initially afraid of the ...

Explorando Lo No-Binario: Un Proyecto Sobre El Lenguaje Inlcusivo, Los Pronombres De Género, Y El Género No-Binario En Español, Elijah Michael Sobrien

World Languages and Cultures

En este proyecto, he traducido un sitio web de Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, sobre el uso de los pronombres de género. Además de la traducción, he explicado la razón por la cual es importante traducir este documento y proporcionar acceso a la información a diversas comunidades. La meta de este proyecto es promover el uso del lenguaje inclusivo entre todas personas. La traducción es importante porque para usar lenguaje inclusivo, una persona tiene que educarse sobre los pronombres de género y esforzarse por cambiar su modo de hablar. Este documento puede servir como recurso para personas que quieren aprender ...

Afro-Americano: The Transracialization Of The African-American Spanish Speaker, John M. Flanagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Transracialization is not a biological term connoting the change of one’s skin tone to become a member of a different race. Its definition has its roots in racialization—the ideological process that describes how one assembles ideas about groups based on their race and decides, for example, what a ‘Black’ person is and how ‘Black’ people speak. Thus, transracialization is a linguistic term that describes the political and sociocultural act of recontextualizing one’s phenotype with the use of language, and in so doing, upending the observers’ stereotypical expectations of who one is (Alim 2016). This dissertation deals with ...

Effects Of Cognates On Codeswitches, Ellie Decker

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Bilingualism And Emotion: How Do Spanish-English Bilinguals Experience The Two Languages Differently?, Caitlyn Whitesell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous literature has suggested that bilingual people react to emotional statements with varying degrees of intensity due to their personal experience with each language. Potential factors affecting emotional differences between languages included fluency, culture, age of acquisition, amount of exposure, language learning environment, and motivation. Isolating the impact of these factors on emotional experience challenges research because the factors cannot be easily controlled or separated. The current study investigated how the factors of age of acquisition, length of language exposure, and language-learning environment played a role in emotional reactions to similar stimuli by manipulating the language of the emotional stimuli ...

A Library Without Books: The Importance Of Language Representation In Public Libraries, Caelyn Armshaw

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The focus of this project is to assess the degree of access to Spanish-language books in the Omaha Public Library system. After constructing a map of all Omaha Public Libraries using Global Information System (GIS) and analyzing the population around those areas, I cross-referenced individual library catalogs to compare raw numbers of English-language books to non-English and specifically Spanish-language books. The ultimate finding of this project is that even though approximately 10% of Omaha citizens included in the census speak Spanish as their primary language, Spanish-language books make up only 2% of the total books across all Omaha Public Libraries ...

The Production And Perception Of Subject Focus Prosody In L2 Spanish, Covadonga Sanchez

Doctoral Dissertations

New information can be introduced in discourse through different strategies, including syntactic and prosodic ones. This project provides an account of the syntactic and intonational strategies used for focus-marking in Peninsular Spanish, Mainstream American English and L2 Spanish using parallel experimental designs and a unitary method of analysis within the Autosegmental-Metrical framework for the study of intonation. It provides a comprehensive description of specific phonological categories and their phonetic implementation not only in monolingual speech, but also as they develop in the L2 grammar of Spanish learners with different experiences with the target language, following the premises of the L2 ...

An Assessment Use Argument For Spanish For The Professionals, Cristina Pardo-Ballester

World Languages and Cultures Conference Papers, Posters and Proceedings

This study focuses on reflective practice journal entries and compares intermediate Spanish learners’ journals of their own oral performance through two different opportunities - an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and a Virtual Oral Interview Classroom/based Exam (VOICES) - within the framework of a Spanish for the Professions course. Students’ journals reveal that both types of assessment have their advantages in the learning process, which results in more autonomous and more efficient learners (Ziegler, 2014). Moreover, data from the two focus groups reveals information about sufficiency, relevance, beneficence, and usefulness about the Spanish speaking activities used in the Spanish for the Professions ...

Investigando La Creación De Un Canal De Noticias BilingüE En Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo: Un Estudio De La Representación LingüÍstica, Paige Farris Mcgill

World Languages and Cultures

The purpose of this research study is to determine if there is a desire or demand for a bilingual English-Spanish news outlet at Cal Poly. Spanish is considered the most relevant language because it is the second most frequently spoken language in the community. Results are based on analysis of data collected through an electronic survey and various interviews. Demographics of the university as well as the surrounding community are also factors to consider.

Glotopolítica De La Desigualdad: Ideologías Del Mapudungun Y El Español En Chile (2009–2019), Gabriel E. Alvarado Pavez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Glottopolitics of Inequality: Ideologies on Mapudungun and Spanish in Chile (2009-2019) by Gabriel Alvarado Pavez Advisor: José del Valle This dissertation is an attempt to analyze contemporary discourses on Mapudungun and Spanish and their development within the political and economic context of Chile between 2009 and 2019. The object of analysis is the diverse array of linguistic ideologies displayed on both the hegemonic press (newspapers of nationwide circulation) and on Facebook, which helps provide a sociolinguistic profile of Chile from a glottopolitical perspective. This entails a point of view focused on power structures and their modes of (re)production and ...

Mi Familia, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Spanish Language Books

No abstract provided.

A Story To Tell… How To Integrate The Three Modes Of Communication Through A Story Time Program In French, Frederique Grim

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

Bilingual story time programs found in local community libraries not only benefit children, they can also serve a need for L2 college students: the development of their communicative skills in an authentic environment. In addition to linguistic benefits, experiential learning has proven to prepare students for real-world skills, such as networking, mock professional experience and a sense of community engagement. This paper recounts how a world language story time program supports L2 learners’ three modes of communication, as articulated by ACTFL, and necessary for language development. Based on students’ perceptions, this study highlights their increase in motivation and confidence in ...

Drama Applied To Content-Based Instruction In Elementary Education, A. Rocio Muhs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Growing public interest in bilingual education has prompted many school districts to offer dual language models. Unaddressed challenges inherent in dual language immersion programs can compromise the quality of implementation, thus affecting student achievement and ultimately program sustainability. This study investigates how the integration of dramatic arts into core subject instruction in Spanish improves student learning and motivation among first grade second-language learners. Based on the existing challenges confronting a Dual Language Immersion Program in Western Montana, this study asks: What is the relationship between students’ attitudes about learning in a second language and the teacher’s pedagogical practices? In ...