Presentations

Learning a second language is difficult, and so is teaching it. How SLA research can inform teaching methods. Plenary presentation. XXIV Semana de Letras. Organized by Universidade Federal de Paraná. Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. July 2022. 

Setting relevant goals for L2 pronunciation learning: What do teachers and researchers have to say? Plenary presentation. Meeting of the Núcleo de Pesquisa em Fonética e Fonologia Aplicada à Língua Estrangeira (NUPFFALE). Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. May 2022.

Let's not obsess over the trill: Toward a model of evidence-based pronunciation instruction for Spanish. Plenary presentation. 8th Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (CASPSLaP). Organized by University of Wisconsin, Madison. February 2022.

Cinderella finally invited to the ball: Pronunciation instruction and L2 speech. Semiplenary  presentation.  41st Annual Conference of the Argentinian Federation of English Teachers Associations (FAAPI, Federación Argentina de Asociaciones de Profesores de Inglés). San Juan, Argentina. September 2016. 

Phonetic training to promote dialectal competence among Spanish teachers in Brazil. Guest lecture, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, February 8, 2024.

Informed decision-making in L2 teaching: How SLA research can help us get there. Guest talk for Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Virtual, November 8, 2023.

Setting an agenda for instructed second language pronunciation research. Guest talk at the symposium Second language speech learning: Balancing big data and individual trajectories. Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, October 19, 2023.

Fulbright Scholar opportunities in Brazil. Invited speaker at webinar organized by the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Institute of International Education, June 14, 2023.

Raza, identidad y enseñanza del español en los Estados Unidos: Hacia una pedagogía de inclusión. Guest lecture in Spanish for graduate program in Linguistics. Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil. July 22, 2022.

Enseñanza de la pronunciación del español como lengua extranjera en los Estados Unidos: Oportunidades y desafíos. Guest lecture for Spanish undergraduate students. Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil. July 22, 2022.

Pathways to empower Black and African American students in college-level Spanish classes. Guest lecture series, Second Language Studies Research Group, The University of Texas at Austin. Virtual, March 11, 2021.

Dr. Rajiv Rao's “Topics in Hispanic Linguistics” (SPANISH 630), graduate course, Diphthongs in Second Language Spanish, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Virtual, February 18, 2021.

Rethinking a Spanish language program at the college level: Toward inclusive and relevant second language education for ALL students. Guest lecture series, Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Virtual, January 28, 2021.

Beyond input: How can we help L2 learners acquire pronunciation in an instructed setting? Dr. Mailce Borges Mota’s Linguistics Group, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil. Virtual, June 24, 2020.

When input is not enough: Implementing meaningful pronunciation instruction in the L2 Spanish classroom. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University. Washington, DC, October 4, 2019.

Using HVPT to train teachers on dialectal features of Spanish. 15th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT) Conference. Ames IA, USA, September 2024.

Training preservice EFL teachers on nontraditional dialects of English. The 33rd Conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA 33). Montpellier, France, July 2024.

“I barely learned any Spanish”: Initiatives to improve language education and materials for Black students. Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Houston TX, USA, March 2024.

What counts as a pronunciation error in the L2 classroom? Depends who you ask. Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Portland OR, USA, March 2023.

What phonetic features predict intelligibility, comprehensibility, and foreign accent in L2 Spanish speech? 8th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, New Sounds 2022. Barcelona, Spain, April 2022. [with C. Nagle & A. Huensch]​​

Can teachers learn to teach L2 pronunciation? Testing the effectiveness of a training module for novice Spanish teachers. 13th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT) Conference. Virtual, June 2021.

Rethinking translation as a pedagogical tool in the Spanish as a second language class. Annual Conference of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters (MASAL). Virtual, March 2021. [with M. Á. Castañeda Pino]

Acquisition of Spanish diphthongs by second language learners. Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. El Paso TX, USA, October 2019.

A longitudinal study of second language development in two learning contexts. Annual Conference of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters (MASAL). Alma MI, USA, March 2019. 

Production of final boundary tones in declarative utterances by English-speaking learners of Spanish. 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018. Poznan, Poland, June 2018. [poster presentation]

What’s research got to do with it? The relationship between research findings and teaching practices in Spanish pronunciation instruction. Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (CASPSLaP). Bloomington IN, USA, February 2018. [with C. Nagle & R. Sachs]

Relationship between perception and production of L2 intonation. Second Language Research Forum (SLRF). Columbus OH, USA, October 2017.​

Pitch peak alignment as indicator of phonological development in a second language. 8th International Conference on Second Language Speech, New Sounds 2016. Aarhus, Denmark, June 2016.

Categorical perception and prenuclear pitch peak alignment in Spanish. Speech Prosody 2016. Boston MA, USA, May-June 2016. [poster presentation]

Neither English nor Spanish: Pitch peak alignment in Spanish among bilingual speakers. Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Orlando FL, USA, April 2016.

How is intonation in a second language perceived? The case of pitch alignment in Spanish. 8th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT) Conference. Dallas TX, USA, October 2015.

El papel de la personalidad en el acento de hablantes de una segunda lengua. III Jornadas Internacionales de Fonética y Fonología. Mar del Plata, Argentina, September 2013.

How slippery you are, oh construct of awareness: Toward a finer-grained methodological perspective. Second Language Research Forum (SLRF). College Park MD, USA, October 2010. [with R. Leow & E. Johnson]

Getting a grip on the slippery construct of awareness: Methodological issues. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT). Washington DC, USA, March 2009. [with R. Leow & E. Johnson]

L1-L2 phonological transfer at the word level: Stress placement on cognates by Spanish learners. Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Denver CO, USA, March 2009. [poster presentation, with C. Guidi]

Language learning strategies for the pronunciation of English in the foreign language classroom. Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Washington DC, USA, March 2008.