Modern Languages Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Immigration Stories: Final Project For Spanish For Heritage Speakers Class, Sarah S. Pollack

Open Educational Resources

The following is a complete set of instructions and materials for a capstone project for a Spanish for Heritage Speakers class. The project consists of conducting a carefully planned interview in Spanish with a family or community member about their immigration story. Students prepare appropriate questions and find background information about the historical, political, economic and cultural conditions in the country of origin of the interviewee. They record the interview and upload it to the StoryCorps Archive platform that is housed by the Library of Congress. Then, they listen to their own interview, and write up a three-page immigration story …

The Long-Term Impact Of A Study Trip Abroad On The Acquisition Of Regional Spanish Vocabulary Incidentally, Juan P. Rodríguez Prieto

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This quantitative study investigated the possible gains in the acquisition of regional vocabulary as a result of incidental learning after studying abroad for one semester. Five college students took courses at a language institute in Madrid (Spain) while living with a host family during a semester, while a control group with five participants continued their studies at XXXX, in the US. They took a survey online that contained forty vocabulary items exclusive to Spain (majo, mola, guay and similar) three times: at the beginning and at the end of the program and after three years. Results indicated …

The Impact Of College Students’ Motivational Orientations And The Social Dimension Of Emotional Intelligence In Their Willingness To Study Abroad, Juan P. Rodríguez Prieto

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This study investigated the effect of motivational orientations and the social aspects of emotional intelligence (EI) on L2 Spanish learners’ willingness to participate in a study abroad program. The only significant result was the correlation between an integrative motivational orientation and the Altruism Scale score (N = 68, r = .290, p < .05), indicating that those learners with a higher desire to learn the L2 in order to interact with members of the target community also showed more responsiveness to others as measured by empathy, nurturance, helpfulness, and social responsibility. No additional interactions were found between the motivational orientations and the social aspects of EI. Neither the motivational orientations (integrative/instrumental) nor the social subscales of EI used correlated with the L2 learners’ participation in a short-term (three weeks to Costa Rica, N = 30) or a long-term study abroad program (a full semester to Spain, N = 13). This finding is indicative that those variables do not seem to have an influential effect or predictability on whether participants would ultimately continue their study of L2 Spanish in a foreign country or at home in the near future.

Supporting "Pedagogical" Spanish Language Competencies: Bilingual Teacher Education "En La Frontera", Christian E. Zuniga

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This autoethnography explores my experience as a bilingual teacher educator on the Texas, United States-Mexico border supporting the development of preservice teachers' pedagogical Spanish language competencies through a course that I have been developing over the last few years. To this aim, I look at my positionality and experiences developing my bilingualism in the same border community and my pedagogical Spanish language competence. My goal is to suggest how teacher education can support the development of bilingual teacher candidates' Spanish language competence in ways that recognize the linguistic diversity of border communities, critically unpack hegemonic ideologies, and prepare teacher candidates …

Encouraging Languages Other Than English In First-Year Writing Courses: Experiences From Linguistically Diverse Writers, Alyssa G. Cavazos

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

First-Year Writing (fyw) courses are ideal writing spaces where students' diverse identities and language resources can flourish for specific rhetorical purposes. While research has focused on multilingual students' language and writing practices, little attention has focused on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of language difference in fyw. Because fyw courses are an integral space in students' writing experiences and an ideal place to counter English-only ideologies, this article focuses on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of how they negotiate language practices in academic contexts in higher education and how they perceive the role of languages other than English in fyw. Self-identified multilingual …

Agitando Lo Cotidiano. Una Conversación Sobre El Desafío Ⓐnarquista Frente Al Sexismo En El Lenguaje, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua. Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use …

The Crafting Of The Self In Private Letters And The Epistolary Novel: El Hilo Que Une, Un Verano En Bornos, Ifigenia, Querido Diego, Te Abraza Quiela, And Cartas Apócrifas, Angelica A. Nelson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The inherent flexibility of the letter form or epistolary mode of writing frees the writer within the framework of salutations and closings to use vocabulary and language to create, to omit or to invert conventional constraints imposed on women by a patriarchal society. The letter begins as a blank page but becomes the space for writing one’s personal thoughts and emotions to the absent other in a communicative effort to minimize the separation.

This dissertation examines the female narrator in actual letters written during the Spanish emigration to the New World in the sixteenth century and four epistolary novels written …

Ideology, Access, And Status: Spanish-English Bilinguals In The Foreign-Language Classroom, Michael E. Rolland

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Spanish language teaching in US higher education is today generally divided between ‘foreign language’ courses for novice learners and ‘heritage language’ courses for Hispanic/Latinx students with some knowledge of the language. However, ‘heritage’ students are a linguistically diverse group, and are also often enrolled at institutions where heritage courses are not offered. Little research to date has studied ‘heritage’ speakers enrolled in ‘foreign’ language courses. For this study I conducted semi-structured interviews to explore the affective and ideological characteristics of bilingual students enrolled in elementary Spanish courses. As the literature suggests, I find that these students have a generally low …

Don Quixote In Russia In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries: The Problem Of Perception And Interpretation, Slav N. Gratchev Phd

Modern Languages Faculty Research

This study examines the problem of the perception of Don Quixote in Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By using materials inaccessible to English-speaking scholars, I want to demonstrate that this process of appropriation was a long and a complex one, and there were specific reasons for that. The first modern novel, upon arrival in Russia, received minimal attention and was perceived as a simple, comical book; then, gradually, it started to gain significance. The majority of the materials that are used throughout this text are only available in Russian, are kept in the scientific libraries of Saint Petersburg …

A Corpus For Investigating English-Language Learners' Dialog Behaviors, Nigel Ward, Paola Gallardo

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

We are interested in developing methods for the semi-automatic discovery of prosodic patterns in dialog and how they differ between languages and among populations. We are starting by examining how the prosody of Spanish-native learners of English differs from that of native speakers. To support this work, we have collected a new corpus of conversations among college students. This includes dialogs between a nonnative speaker of English and a native, dialogs between native speakers of English, and Spanish conversations.

Ua68/2 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Interdisciplinary Studies, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Interdisciplinary Studies which include:

• African American Studies
• Asian Studies
• Canadian Studies
• Film Studies
• Latin American Studies

La Representación De La Masculinidad Y La Violencia De Género En La Novela Española De La Posguerra, Alfredo M. Pastor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While it may be argued that aggression against women is part of a culture of violence deeply rooted in Spanish society, the gender-related violence that exists in today’s Spain is more specifically a legacy of Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Franco’s Spain endorsed unequal gender relations, championed patriarchal dominance and power over women, and imposed models of hegemonic and authoritarian masculinities that internalized violence by rendering it a feature inseparable from manhood and virility.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of masculinity and gender violence in Franco’s Spain, by analyzing the novel as the primary cultural vehicle of social criticism and political …

The Roles Of First Language And Proficiency In L2 Processing Of Spanish Clitics: Global Effects, Aroline E. Seibert Hanson, Matthew T. Carlson

Modern Languages and Cultures Faculty Work

We assessed the roles of first language (L1) and second language (L2) proficiency in the processing of preverbal clitics in L2 Spanish by considering the predictions of four processing theories—the Input Processing Theory, the Unified Competition Model, the Amalgamation Model, and the Associative-Cognitive CREED. We compared the performance of L1 English (typologically different from Spanish) to L1 Romanian (typologically similar to Spanish) speakers from various L2 Spanish proficiency levels on an auditory sentence-processing task. We found main effects of proficiency, condition, and L1 and an interaction between proficiency and condition. Although we did not find an interaction between L1 and …

The Use Of Email Attachments To Increase Reading Compliance In Foreign Language Classes., Juan Rodríguez Prieto

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This is the first quantitative research on reading compliance in foreign language courses. It investigated the effect of email attachments with the assigned readings to promote read­ing compliance of the textbook. Their effect on learning gains was measured by 16 grammar or vocabulary quizzes during a semester. 31 intermediate L2 Spanish students assigned to two group conditions, those receiving the emails and those who did not, also completed a questionnaire at the end of the semester about their preparedness for the quizzes and about their opinions about the email attachments. Results indicated that participants in the email group prepared more …

Language, Politics, And History: An Introductory Essay, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This book chapter examines different articulations of language and history and introduces a new configuration that focuses on the political dimension of language.

Poeta Portugués Y Clásico Castellano, Luís Vaz De Camões (C.1524-1580): Edición Con Introducción Y Notas De Sus Sonetos Castellanos, Rose M. Sevillano

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation concerns the Castilian sonnets of Luís de Camões, a sixteenth century Portuguese poet known for his epic work Os Lusíadas (1572). Camões’ sonnets comprise the greater part of his minor works. I present those written in Castilian, which have not been fully explored. The study commences by focusing on its historical-literary context, revealing the background for the tradition of the lyric in the Iberian Peninsula, and incorporates a section dedicated to the history of the sonnet. In later chapters, I analyze the sonnets, and include endnotes that explicate the poetic language. Camões follows Petrarch, although stylistic factors betray …

Asking For A Letter Of Recommendation In Spanish And English: A Pilot Study Of Face Strategies, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Linguistic politeness plays an important role in the opinions people form of one another, especially when an individual has little other knowledge of an interlocutor, as is often the case in relationships between professors and students. Positive face refers to the desire to be liked and appreciated; negative face refers to the desire to be unimpeded. Positive and negative face are often characterized as corresponding to the dichotomies of involvement vs. independence, intimacy vs. distance, and solidarity vs. deference. An action or utterance that goes against one’s need for appreciation, in the case of positive face, or need for autonomy, …

Defining The Comedia: On Generalizations Once Widely Accepted That Are No Longer Accepted So Widely, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Defining the comedia is a challenge that is rarely addressed directly in the pages of the Bulletin of the Comediantes. Those of us who spend our professional lives working with the plays that are brought together under this cover term have a visceral or intuitive understanding of what falls into the category of comedia and what lies outside of it. We are hardly exempt from having to articulate our definitions in concrete terms, however, because students, colleagues, and organizations to whom we write grants all want us to establish the limits, scope, and parameters of our field of study. …

Student Perceptions Of Native And Non-Native Speaker Language Instructors: A Comparison Of Esl And Spanish, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

The question of the native vs. non-native speaker status of second and foreign language instructors has been investigated chiefly from the perspective of the teacher. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students have strong opinions on the relative qualities of instruction by native and non-native speakers. Most research focuses on students of English as a foreign or second language. This paper reports on data gathered through a questionnaire administered to 55 university students: 31 students of Spanish as FL and 24 students of English as SL. Qualitative results show what strengths students believe each type of instructor has, and quantitative results confirm …

Stylistic Considerations Of Calderón’S Opera Librettos, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

The two plays of Calderón that were set to music in their entirety have a number of common characteristics beyond those associated with the mythological plays as a whole. Both of the plays were performed in 1660, La púrpura de la rosa on January 17 to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa to Louis XIV of France, and Celos aun del aire matan on December 5 to celebrate the third birthday of the Infante Felipe Próspero. Presented in the Palacio del Buen Retiro, set to music by Juan Hidalgo, staged with the appropriate elaborate machinery, and performed by …