Digital Commons Network^™

Spn 122 - Latin American Language And Culture, Salvador Salazar

Open Educational Resources

Spanish 122 provides an overview of Latin American cultures. Students will analyze and discuss representative texts and other forms of cultural production (film, visual art, music, etc.) from various regions and time periods to better understand and appreciate the diversity of Latin American history and society. The course will be conducted in Spanish.

Spanish 120 - Advanced Spanish Grammar & Creative Writing, Kevin Martillo Viner

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes: Children And The Formation Of The Rio De La Plata Spanish Address System, Israel Sanz-Sánchez, María Irene Moyna

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the effects of child language acquisition as a critical factor in a morphological change, namely, the replacement of the etymologically singular second person paradigm (tuteo) by its plural counterpart (voseo) in 19th century Rio de la Plata Spanish. The account applies a sociohistorical model which proposes that young children can function as language change agents in environments characterized by unpredictable input variation, lack of normative mechanisms, and the emergence of peer networks among young learners. The model is then applied to explain the rapid generalization of voseo in the late 1800s, a well-documented but poorly understood process. …

Second Language Learning: Functional Literacy Vs. Mastery, Ella Ross

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

The Beauty Of Being Bilingual: Language And Empathy In Speech-Language Pathology, Kathleen Nordstrom

Antonian Scholars Honors Program

Flowing between two languages is beautiful in many contexts and even more so when the goal is to enhance communication and encourage progress in the speech-language pathology setting. While working in a local Spanish Immersion school, I was fascinated by how the speech therapist would speak to the students using their first language of Spanish or English. I was curious, how does speaking in their first language create a safe and comfortable environment? In “The Beauty of Being Bilingual: The Connection of Language and Empathy in Speech-Language Pathology,” I will interview bilingual SLPs in the Twin Cities to learn about …

Addressing Health Illiteracy In The Hispanic Community – A Call To Action: An Integrative Review, Sarah Akers Dersch

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The United States Hispanic population is rapidly growing; however, existing healthcare endeavors are insufficiently accommodating this expansion. This demographic is linked to multiple serious health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease, cancer, and liver disease. In order to improve health outcomes within this community, interventions, such as health literacy screening, need to be further explored to identify current insufficiencies and help this population overcome these health challenges. This integrative review seeks to determine the effectiveness of current health literacy screening tools among native Spanish speakers in the U.S. This review seeks to amalgamate data from various studies to demonstrate …

Perceptual Sensitivity To Stress In Native English Speakers Learning Spanish As A Second Language, Ramsés Ortín, Miquel Simonet

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Second language (L2) learners of Spanish whose first language (L1) is English tend to find Spanish lexical stress patterns difficult to acquire. This study investigates whether such difficulty derives, at least in part, from an obstacle encountered during perceptual processing: reduced perceptual sensitivity to stress distinctions. Participants were adult L1 English L2 Spanish learners of various proficiency levels. The experiment was a categorical matching task with triads of auditory stimuli minimally contrasting in stress (target) or segmental composition (baseline), an ABX task. The results show that learners were more accurate in the baseline condition than in the target condition, suggesting …

Bilingualism: Bringing World Language To The Youth, Kyle Villella

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

This research thesis focuses on world language education in the United States, more specifically, in the state of Rhode Island. In a changing world, learning a second language is key to creating more culturally competent citizens of the world. This thesis pushes for world language education in elementary schools, particularly in first grade. The first section of the thesis focuses on the reasoning behind beginning this education and how a child’s brain is more capable of second language learning This thesis then looks into how this style of education can be successful and the best pedagogical approaches. It analyzes how …

Daily Heterosexist Experiences In Lgbtq+ Adults From Spain: Measurement, Prevalence, And Clinical Implications, Román Ronzón-Tirado, Ruby Charak, Ines Cano-Gonzalez

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals face unique stressors related to their sexual and gender identities that have a detrimental impact on their mental health. Nonetheless, studies have not yet investigated these minority stressors among LGBTQ+ individuals from Spain. The limited availability of standardized tools/instruments to measure minority stressors in Spanish makes it challenging to explore these experiences among Spanish speaking individuals. The present study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Daily Heterosexist Experiences Questionnaire (DHEQ) among LGBTQ+ adults from Spain, compare rates of minority stressors across diverse gender and sexual orientations, and examine the impact …

Putting Policy Into Practice: The Problematisation Of Catalan Language Planning And Ideologies In Media Discourse, Farah Ali

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

The revitalization of the Catalan language has been an ongoing effort in Catalonia for decades. The language policies that have stemmed from this effort have perpetuated ideologies that promote the use and legitimization of Catalan as both an official and a vehicular language. While this effort is widely regarded as an example of successful language revitalization, the process has not been without conflict between Spanish and Catalan, particularly in terms of domains of use and disparate attitudes towards the two languages (Newman & Trenchs-Parera, 2015; Woolard, 2016; Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019; Ianos et al., 2020). Given that these policies aim …

Professional Perspectives On Bilingualism In Persons With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study, Rosa N. Benavidez Saldivar, Jessica R. Stewart, Ruth Crutchfield, Roy K. Chen, Lily Puente

Communication Sciences & Disorders Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: The present study examined the perspectives of professionals regarding bilingualism and ASD.

Methods: A total of 27 professionals participated in this study. Data was collected via an online survey. The survey was designed based on a literature review and consultation with a team of experts in the field of ASD. Information relating to demographic information, professional practice information, and perspectives of bilingualism and ASD was collected.

Results: Professionals participating in the present study were most likely to agree with the statement, “A child with ASD from a bilingual household is able to understand both languages” and least likely …

On Playful Language Divergences. Code-Switching Among Spanish-Portuguese Bilinguals, Ana M. Carvalho, Katherine Christoffersen

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Uruguayan Portuguese, a variety of Portuguese which occurs in contact with Spanish in northern Uruguay along the Uruguayan-Brazilian border, has been perceived to be a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, in which speakers are either unable to separate languages or engage in code-switching for pragmatic purposes. Here, we analyze in-group communication using visual and verbal data extracted from video recordings of conversations among bilinguals in northern Uruguay, in order to investigate whether all language mixing is random or if speakers engage in pragmatically meaningful code-switching. We identify instances where Portuguese was inserted into Spanish segments with the intention to shift …

Ouachita's Dr. Jason Doroga Gives Presentation At University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Felley Lawson, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Dr. Jason Doroga, assistant professor of Spanish at Ouachita Baptist University, presented his paper “Negative Analogy: A New Direction for Analogical Change” as part of the Linguistics Friday Seminar Series at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in April. The paper analyzes the cycles of analogy and changing patterns of language use in the speech community, exploring the role of analogy in explaining changes in the form of Spanish-language past participles.

Spanish Culture Club, Emily Taylor

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

No abstract provided.

“It’S Not Just About Improving My Spanish.” Student Perceptions Of Service Learning, Farah Ali

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

In the last few decades, service learning (SL) has emerged as an instructional model that facilitates connections between learning experiences in and outside the classroom, and highlights the socio-political nature of language use (Grim, 2010; Bettencourt, 2015; Moreno-López et. al, 2017). However, its effective and relevant curricular implementation remains a challenge for educators. This exploratory paper examines how SL impacts advanced learners’ beliefs, attitudes, and motivation towards learning Spanish, as well as their ability to connect their service experiences with course content. Findings show that learners evaluate service experiences through a proficiency-based lens, where the success of their experiences depended …

Taller Real, Laura Middlebrooks

Open and Affordable Course Content at VCU

The Taller REAL (Recursos Educativos Abiertos y Libres) BETA was created for use in Virginia Commonwealth University's fourth semester Spanish course, SPAN 202, in which students study inclusivity (la inclusividad), health and wellbeing (la salud y el bienestar), career paths and professionalism (las carreras y el profesionalismo) as well as current events (las noticias).

Phonetic Feature Size In Second Language Acquisition: Examining Vot In Voiceless And Voiced Stops, Daniel J. Olson

School of Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or “size” of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. …

“It Wasn’T Just About Learning How To Speak Spanish”: Engaging Histories Of Oppression And Enslavement In Spanish Heritage Language Education, Tania Avilés, Anthony J. Harb

Publications and Research

We present a curricular intervention in elementary Spanish heritage language in a Hispanic serving institution located in the US Northeast (Bronx, NYC), that aims to contextualize Latinx students’ experiences and perceptions of Blackness within broader histories of oppression and enslavement. Our practice brings together critical Latinx pedagogy and critical approaches to Spanish heritage language education to facilitate sociohistorical consciousness for both language instructors and students through the use of open-access Latinx archival resources. We outline a three-week unit designed using the First Blacks in the Americas online collection curated by the City University of New York Dominican Studies Institute. During …

Korean Learners’ Acquisition And Use Of Variable First-Person Subject Forms In Spanish, Avizia Y. Long

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Within the scope of research that lies at the intersection of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, there is a growing body of empirical work on learners’ acquisition of variable subject expression in Spanish. This research has been instrumental for demonstrating that second language (L2) learners acquire linguistic and social constraints on subject form use. The present study extends research on variable Spanish subject expression to an understudied learner population: native Korean-speaking learners. Interview data were examined for the range and frequency of first-person subject forms produced by Korean-speaking learners at four instructional levels as well as linguistic and individual (extralinguistic) …

Learner Development Of A Morphosyntactic Feature In Argentina: The Case Of Vos, Rebecca Pozzi

WLC Faculty Publications and Presentations

Students have been found to improve their sociolinguistic competence, particularly regarding the acquisition of dialectal features, while studying abroad. Nevertheless, most of the research on learner development of morphosyntactic features in Spanish-speaking immersion contexts has examined that of variants characteristic of Peninsular Spanish in Spain, namely clitics and the informal second-person plural vosotros. Since the informal second-person singular, vos, is more prevalent than its equivalent, tú, in several Latin American countries, learner acquisition of this feature also merits investigation. This article explores second-language learner production of vos among 23 English speakers during a 5-month semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a …

No Spanish In Cinderella’S Kingdom: A Situated Ethnography Of Disney World’S Engagement With Elena Of Avalor, Diana Leon-Boys

Communication Faculty Publications

Research indicates that Disney theme parks function as sites of ideological negotiation. This study builds on the research by examining Disney World’s incorporation of its first avowed Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Bringing together discourses of Latinidad, theme parks, and media, this essay focuses on how the park incorporates Elena into its landscape at the level of production, representation, and audiences. I argue that Disney’s inclusion of Elena, and by extension Latinidad, is malleable, situated within the geographic setting, and dependent on various factors seldom disclosed by the conglomerate. Ultimately, Elena exists as an outsider within the Disney park …

(Not) Speaking Spanish: Explicit Pronunciation Instruction In The Online High School Classroom, Brahm Vanwoerden

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Students in the language classroom often face a variety of challenges inherent to the process of learning a second language as an adult. These range from lack of sufficient motivation to structurally uninspired curriculum and are often amplified in the case of a drastic shift in environment. Such a shift took place rapidly over the course of 2020, transforming thousands of classrooms into virtual versions of themselves in a matter of weeks. Students began to receive vastly different quantities and types of language input and interacted with the language in substantially affected ways. Factors that previously played a large role …

Episode 14: Mateo Burner, Christina Torres

Futures in Languages Transcripts

Listen to Mateo Burner talk about his experiences in the Spanish BA and MA programs within the Modern Languages and Literatures Department. Find out what he's been up to since graduating in the fall of 2015 and how his experiences at UCF led him to his career path.

Second Languange Acquisition Of /S/ -Weakinging In A Study Abroad Context, Earl K. Brown, Alicia Harley, Bret Linford

Faculty Publications

This study examines the second language (L2) development of variable /s/-weakening in the spontaneous speech of L2 learners of Spanish who studied abroad in either Dominican Republic, where /s/-weakening is widespread, or central Spain, where /s/-weakening is much less common. Learners’ realizations of /s/ were coded impressionistically and acoustically by measuring voicing, center of gravity, and duration. The results show that regardless of the study abroad location, students did not change the amount of sibilance they produced over time. However, they became more nativelike with respect to /s/-voicing and duration. Additionally, whereas some linguistic factors were found to significantly constrain …

The Island Heritage / El Patrimonio De La Isla, Susana Castillo-Rodriguez

Languages and Literatures

In 1926, Philip. J. Fisher published “The Island Heritage. Episodes from the Missionary History of Fernando Poo, West Africa. A Play for Young People”. This book has remained unknown until present. There is one copy at Archives and Special Collections, SOAS Library (London).

This play is of enormous interest not just for it has been mentioned above but also because:

1. It is a vivid narration of the settlement of Protestant missionaries in Clarence, based on historical facts and personal experience collected first hand by Philip. J. Fisher as he interviewed some of the protagonists in the play.

2. It is the …

Bilingualism And Language Attitude In Melilla (Spain), Lotfi Sayahi, Miguel Àngel Montero Alonso

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Autorretrato De Un Idioma: Metalenguaje, Glotopolítica E Historia, José Del Valle, Daniela Lauria, Mariela Oroño, Darío Rojas

Publications and Research

This introduction to an anthology of texts from the history of Spanish presents the theoretical bases for writing language history from a glottopolitical perspective

Episode 5: Milagro Truyol Quiroz, Christina Torres

Futures in Languages Transcripts

Listen to Milagro talk about her experiences studying in the Spanish BA, Spanish MA, and MATESOL programs. You'll also hear about her professional experiences working as an instructor.

Social Interaction In The Spanish Classroom: How Proficiency And Linguistic Background Impact Vocabulary Learning, C. Cecilia Tocaimaza-Hatch, Jonathan Santo

Psychology Faculty Publications

Spanish learners engaged in two-way interaction gap tasks where, through social interaction, they identified and defined low-frequency vocabulary. Participants (referred to as actors to differentiate them from task partners) completed two such tasks. Each time, they collaborated with different partners of varying degrees of Spanish proficiency and linguistic background, either an L2 learner or a heritage speaker (HS). The purpose of the study was thus to shed light on if and how features of the collaborating partners in mixed (HS–L2) and matched (L2–L2; HS–HS) partnerships impacted vocabulary learning. Through a mixed methods analysis of the data (perception measures and qualitative …

Foreign Language News, Georgia Southern University

World Languages and Cultures News (2013-2023)

• Work by McGrath published recently