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Teaching interests
- Spanish sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistic theory and practice in Spanish
- Spanish in contact with other languages
- Spanish language documentation
- Spanish linguistics
- Introduction to Spanish linguistics
- Hispanic culture
- Cultural history of the Spanish language
- Hispanic culture in the US
- Spanish language
- Basic language
- Spanish conversation
- Spanish grammar
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New courses I have created at WMU
- SPAN 3240 (Introduction to Spanish Linguistics)
- SPAN 4100 (Hispanics in the US: Language and Culture)
- Traditional delivery section
- E-learning delivery section
- SPAN 4900 (History of the Spanish Language)
- SPAN 4900 (Spanish Bilingualism Around the World)
- SPAN 4900 (Spanish in the US)
- SPAN 4900 (Spanish Language and Contemporary Society)
- SPAN 5500 (Dialects of Spanish in the United States)
- SPAN 5500 (Spanish Theoretical Linguistics)
- SPAN 6050 (Foundation in Spanish Linguistics)
- SPAN 6100 (Cultural History of the Spanish Language)
- SPAN 6100 (Hispanic Language and Culture in the US)
- SPAN 6400 (General Survey of Spanish Linguistics)
- SPAN 6400 (Spanish in Contact)
- SPAN 6400 (Spanish Sociolinguistics)
- SPAN 6400 (The Pragmatics of Spanish)
- SPAN 6400 (US Spanish)
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Undergraduate courses I teach frequently
- SPAN 3240: Introduction to the Study of Spanish Linguistics
- SPAN 4900: Studies in Spanish Linguistics
Graduate courses I teach frequently
- SPAN 6050: Foundation in Spanish Linguistics
- SPAN 6400: Topics in Spanish Linguistics
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Sponsored teaching projects
- Project Director, WMU Instructional Development Grant: "WMU Center for Multilingualism in Michigan"
- E-teaching endorsement to create, develop, and teach Department's first e-learning course (hybrid, 75% on-line delivery) "Hispanics in the US: Language and Culture"
- Project Director, WMU Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) grant (inaugural competition): "¡Oye, Mira! : Web Conferencing and Multimedia in Spanish Linguistics Courses"
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Teaching honors
Nominated for WMU Distinguished Teaching Award
Charter faculty member of WMU Phi Beta Kappa Theta of Michigan Chapter
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Teaching philosophy
I strongly believe that students learn by doing. This conviction guides all of my teaching, which is highly student-centered at all levels. I frequently make use of cooperative learning techniques and my lessons regularly incorporate oral, aural, written, and visual learning modalities.
- The Spanish language classes that I teach use a communicative, interactional approach.
- The Spanish linguistics classes that I teach integrate independent student field research.
- The Hispanic culture classes that I teach involve making foods, learning dances, and creating artwork.
- In my graduate level Spanish classes, I often require students to teach a lesson as "profesor(a) del día" and present original research to the class, conference-style.
I strongly believe that language use in part constitutes and in part reflects the cultural richness of human society. Exposure to realia is therefore central to all of my classes, especially the Hispanic culture classes that I teach. I use information technology where possible to access real materials and I send students into the community when possible to observe real social and cultural events.
- My classes regularly incorporate online Hispanic newspapers, music, and live streaming audio and video feeds.
- My classes highly encourage attending local cultural events and participating in local cultural activities.
- My advanced and graduate classes require students to visit restaurants, clubs, and other appropriate social events.
I strongly believe that class interactions should not be limited to scheduled meetings. WebCT Vista, a.k.a. Blackboard, is integral to most of my classes. My teaching and my course involvement often extend far beyond the four walls of the classroom.
- Students engage in in real time class discussions outside of class meetings, from anywhere they have internet service.
- Multimedia materials that illustrate course lessons are published, distributed, and consumed outside of class meetings.
- Paperless homework assignments are given, turned in, graded, and returned online.
- Students have immediate access to their course grade at any time.
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Research interests concerning Spanish language, culture, and society in Catalonia
- Documentation and digital preservation of spoken language data
- Social, cultural, and linguistic effects of language contact and bilingualism
- Variation in ways of speaking
- Ways of constructing linguistic identities and ideologies
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Recent publications available online
(2007). "Doing Catalan Spanish: Pragmatic resources and discourse strategies in ways of speaking Spanish in Barcelona." In J. Holmquist, A. Lorenzino & L. Sayahi (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 183-192). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project (print and web editions; web edition available at http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wss/3/index.html).
(2006). "Frustrations of the documentary linguist: The state of the art in digital language archiving and the archive that wasn’t." [Invited paper for the Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data Project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation]. In Proceedings of the EMELD Language Digitization Project Conference 2006: Tools and Standards: The State of the Art.
Available
at http://emeld.org/workshop/2006/proceedings.html.
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Recent book publications
(2009). Materials for the sociolinguistic description and corpus-based study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a documentation of colloquial Spanish in naturally occurring groups. Lewiston, NY: Mellen.
*Announcement on Linguist List*
*Publisher's description*
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Current research projects
- Launching DARDOSIPCAT (Digital ARchive to DOcument Spanish In the Països CATalans)
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Recent plenary lectures
October 2007: "Language contact, language change, spontaneous speech innovation, and why we need more digital archives of spoken language corpora from contact dialects." Colloquium on Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations, Sponsored by The German Science Foundation’s Research Center on Multilingualism, University of Hamburg, Germany.
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