My Research
Understanding the complexities of language, language learning, and language teaching has been the central focus of my research. My work explores the structural properties of language, its social uses, and the processes of language learning and teaching in both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) contexts. My recent research examines learners’ difficulties in acquiring L2 Spanish and classroom pedagogies that help address these challenges. By integrating diverse methodological approaches, I investigate questions that emerge at the intersection of linguistic inquiry and pedagogical practice.
Ongoing Research Projects
On Language Teaching:
Teaching Languages in the Age of AI: Professional Development for Graduate Instructors.
How does a structured professional development program on AI tools and responsible technology practices influence graduate language instructors’ teaching practices?
This project explores a structured professional development program that supports graduate language instructors in developing advanced teaching skills through the use of AI tools and responsible technology practices in language teaching. Because graduate instructors are often responsible for enacting curricular and instructional innovations in the classroom, their professional development is critical to the successful integration of emerging technologies in language teaching.
Toward an Epistemological Stance for Language Program Evaluation in College Language Programs.
What kinds of knowledge and evidence should count when evaluating language programs?
This project examines how proficiency-based assessment practices can inform an epistemological stance for language program evaluation in college language programs. It argues that the knowledge and evidence used to evaluate language programs should extend beyond traditional measures of student achievement, such as test scores and course completion rates. A comprehensive evaluation framework should incorporate multiple sources of evidence that reflect the complex, social, and multimodal nature of language learning. These sources may include learners’ demonstrated proficiency across modes of communication, reflective practices, classroom interactions, and evidence of intercultural, transcultural, and communicative competence. Recognizing that language learning is constructed through diverse semiotic resources and situated communicative practices, the project advocates for the integration of both quantitative and qualitative forms of evidence to support a more nuanced understanding of learner development, instructional effectiveness, and program quality.
On Multilingual Repertoires and Second Language Learning:
Spanish Language Learning Without Borders: In Search of Multilingual Repertoires.
How to create a transnational context in L2 teaching that goes beyond artificial outcomes?
Being a user of Spanish allows L2 learners to connect with those wider speech communities and create an awareness of multilocality (Vertovec 2009). By problematizing constructs of ‘language’ and ‘L2 learning and teaching’ and mobilizing a series of students’ experiences and repertoires as resources in the process of L2 learning, this study examines a curricular effort to redesign Spanish language classes in terms of transnationalism. It is particularly concerned with engaging L2 learners in transnational language exchanges and explorations that may have an impact on L2 learners’ identity and how they relate to the social world. In academic contexts, such approach may reveal the complexities and dynamics in the way learners control their diverse resources for L2 learning, and consequently, may allow us to reconsider the L2 learner as a developing multilingual language user rather than two monolinguals in one.
On Heritage & Second Language Writing:
Construcciones discursivas y de identidad en la escritura en español como lengua heredada.
¿Cómo entender y relacionar la tensión entre las historias individuales y sociales en el contexto de la escritura del español como lengua heredada en EE.UU.?
Esta pregunta orienta el presente estudio cuyo objetivo es examinar la auto-representación y las elecciones retóricas específicas que hacen los hablantes de lengua heredada (HLH) en textos escritos para posicionarse en el discurso académico. Los resultados ofrecen un marco conceptual para habilitar a los HLH a identificar y superar el relato del déficit y validar su voz en la escritura.
Genres: A Bridge Between Linguistic Knowledge Integration and L2 Spanish Writing.
How to improve second language learners’ writing skills in Spanish?
The genre-based approach has been recognized as an important step forward to improve L2 writing. It blends the best practices from the fields of applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition. It also offers students and instructors a powerful pedagogical L2 writing tool and allows them to increase their awareness about different ways of organizing information in writing. By discussing distinctive features of purposeful texts, learners systemically acquire L2 metalinguistic awareness, which empowers them to manipulate information and accomplish different purposes through writing. In L2 Spanish courses, in particular, the range of settings and contexts where writing is taught is enormous; nevertheless, the genre-based approach has been remarkably overlooked and the need for research is especially great. This project investigates the contribution of the genre-based approach in L2 Spanish writing classes. It specifically examines the impact and effectiveness of this approach on L2 Spanish writing skill development.