¶¶Òõ̽̽

BIO

My early academic training in English Language and Literature at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina triggered my interest in how people learn second languages and how this can be helped through formal instruction. These interests led me to pursue a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics with a concentration in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Pittsburgh.

I do research on sentence processing in a second language in order to determine whether there are fundamental differences between native speakers and second language learners when it comes to integrating words into a sentence. I am also interested in the relationship between individual differences, such as working memory capacity and the ability to learn a foreign tongue natively. I have investigated these issues both with instructed populations (in a classroom), and also with people learning language naturalistically. I am further interested in how literacy may have a facilitative effect on the acquisition of second language representations and processing ability. At ¶¶Òõ̽̽, I teach courses in Spanish and Linguistics such as Second Language Acquisition, Dialects of Spanish, Contrastive Analysis and Spanish Pronunciation.

Courses

• SPAN 3110: Composition and Conversation
• SPAN 3115: Phonetics and Phonology
• SPAN 3120: Spanish Grammar
• SPAN 4110: Advanced Composition and Conversation
• SPAN 4100: Topics in Spanish Language Study: Spanish/English Contrastive Analysis
• SPAN 4990: Advanced Special Topics: Dialectology
• SPAN 3990: Advanced Special Topics: Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
• LING 2560: Introduction to Syntax
• LING 2310: Introduction to Psycholinguistics
• LING 2320: Second Language Acquisition
• LING 2990: Intermediate Special Topics: Introduction to Psycholinguistics
• LING 3990: Advanced Special Topics: Applied Linguistics: Harry Potter Corpus
• EDSC 5259: Teaching a Foreign Language in Secondary Schools
• ESOL 1990: Introductory Special Topics: Academic Communication Skills II

Publications

Publications (DOCX)

Awards and Achievements

• 2008 Instructional Incentive Grant, University of Vermont
• 2005-2006 Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh

Area(s) of expertise

Applied linguistics, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics