I am currently an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Florida State University. I have a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Toronto. My research is at the intersection of second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and the speech sciences.
My research interests include:
- Phonetics and phonology
- Speech perpception and production
- Second and subsequent language acquisition
- Applied linguistics
- Phonetic and phonological variation in English and Spanish
I am working on three major projects at the moment:
1 – Examining the role of individual differences in underlying perceptual and articulatory skills when learning the pronunciation of a non-native language. This project consists of:
- developing and testing the effectiveness of asynchronous online Spanish pronunciation training
- identifying the explanatory roles of auditory processing and speech motor skill in L2 pronunciation development (in Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers and in Spanish learners).
- determining whether speakers with different underlying skills benefit more from certain types of pronunciation training.
2 – Investigating the interaction of languages in multilingual speakers.
- My most recent project in this area examines the acquisition of an artificial language by trilingual German-English-Spanish speakers.
- In other projects, I have examined the acquisition of L3 Spanish and L3 French.
3 – Development of vocabulary size and pronunciation over 3 semesters of Spanish, and the roles of working memory, inhibitory control, and various other factors.