PIRE FELLOWS – UCI PIRE PROGRAM IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND BILINGUALISM

Undergraduate PIRE Fellows 2024

Alejandra Sanchez Jimenez

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

Hello! I am a fourth year Education Sciences major at UCI. Though I aspire to pursue a K-6 teaching career, my time as a research assistant at the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain lab has uncovered a new interest in the field of language science. I have had the opportunity to learn more about research, bilingualism, language learning, and cognition through my participation in the lab, and this has also provided insight into my own experience as a Spanish-English bilingual, and factors to consider for the future of bilingual education and this population.

Under guidance of Dr. Judith Kroll, Dr. Teresa Bajo, and PhD student Nick Sulier, I will be traveling to Granada, Spain where we will investigate the effects of interactional context on cognitive engagement during bilingual language processing. More specifically, we will compare the Spanish-English bilingual population in Granada to the Spanish heritage language speaker population at UCI, who differ in their immersed language context, and explore potential differences in their cognitive engagement during dual language use. With the integration of different language tasks, we will also be investigating the role of cognitive factors during lexical and syntactic processing, and how these compare within and between the bilingual populations. We hope our research expands previous findings on this topic and deepens our understanding of bilingualism as we examine the role of language experience on language processing.

Julieta Monreal

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Zofia Wodniecka, Jagiellonian University, Poland

Hello! I’m Julieta Georgina Monreal, currently in my third year pursuing a major in Education Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. My interest in bilingualism was piqued during my participation in the BMB Lab Fall 2022, collaborating with the incredible team led by Guadalupe Mendoza. Beyond that, I am actively engaged in other research labs at UCI, particularly focusing on Racial Injustice within the School of Education.

Looking ahead, upon completing my undergraduate studies, I aspire to attend law school, specializing in educational policy. My goal is to advocate for change and justice for those marginalized by existing educational policies, amplifying the voices of individuals often overlooked.

Recognizing the importance of experiential learning in working with diverse communities, I am committed to exploring the intricacies of educational policy and its various branches. This research proposal aims to investigate language attrition and entropy among Polish-English bilingual students and refugees in Poland, alongside a population of heritage Spanish-English bilinguals at UCI. The study seeks to unveil insights into the dynamics of language attrition and entropy within diverse bilingual populations. By doing so, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of cognitive processes, including language regulation mechanisms, across a range of bilingual contexts.

Berta Soler

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Connor Mayer
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

My name is Berta Soler and I am a second year undergrad majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Language Science. I was born in Barcelona, and am trilingual in English, Catalan, and Spanish. I have done Linguistics research with Spanish since first year, and look forward to furthering this in my PIRE project!

My PIRE project is called ‘Comparing Distributional and Substantive Learning of Phonological Classes and Alternations.’ It centers around language acquisition through the use of an Artificial Grammar Learning study. We will be focusing on the ways that rhyming agreements may facilitate learning, especially in speakers whose native languages have this feature. This will help us understand the ways that agreement patterns are learned as well as the ways certain patterns can be taught most effectively.

Graduate PIRE Fellows 2022

Nicole Vargas Fuentes

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisors: Judith Kroll, Julio Torres
PIRE Partner: Eleonora Rossi, University of Florida

I am a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. I received my B.A. in Psychology and Foreign Languages (Portuguese and French) from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. I am mainly interested in the variation in the bilingual language experience. To that aim, I investigate the relationship between language and emotion, how it varies depending on language experiences, and how it interacts with cognitive processes (e.g., memory). In my research I utilize a series of experimental and behavioral designs and neurocognitive techniques.

Nick Sulier

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisors: Judith Kroll, Julio Torres
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

I am a second year PhD student in the School of Education. I received my B.As in Linguistics and Spanish from Boise State University and my M.A in Linguistics from the University of New Mexico.

In a very broad sense, I am interested in the following question: Why are some individuals more successful at learning a new language, while others are not?

Specifically, I research the cognitive (i.e, cognitive control, working memory) affective (i.e motivation, grit) and social factors (i.e, learning context) that come to influence second language acquisition in adults and heritage learners. By using both behavioral and neuroscientific methods, I attempt to understand more deeply the factors that interact and influence language learning in adults. Ultimately, I hope my research can be used to aid both language learners and practitioners in a variety of different linguistic contexts.

My project investigates the relationship between cognitive control engagement, motivation, and grit in Spanish learners and Spanish heritage speakers. In the future, I hope to investigate and compare language learners and language learning contexts across the globe.

Undergraduate PIRE Fellows 2021

Kathlyn Canales

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

My name is Kathlyn Canales and I am an incoming fourth year Language Science major. My interest in bilingualism made me a perfect match to be a research assistant at the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab. My experience in the lab has also helped me gain a lot of personal insight being an English-Spanish bilingual myself. I am very grateful to be involved in the PIRE program and I am very excited to learn more throughout the experience.

Project Summary:

My study focuses on the phenomenon of language entrainment, which is when somebody uses a name or phrase that a partner had used before. I am particularly interested in how this relates to bilinguals and if codeswitching has an effect on this phenomenon. Another factor that I am considering is the language environment that the bilingual is living in. I am excited to be conducting research virtually in Granada, Spain and comparing the data collected to that of bilinguals in California.

Esther Kim

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jill Morford, University of New Mexico

My name is Esther Kim and I am going into my third year as a Psychological Sciences major at UCI. I have been an RA in the BMB lab since Fall 2020, working with Anne Therese, and I hope to take everything I have learned and experienced to pursue speech-language pathology in the future!

My study is a self-paced reading study, designed to measure whether exposure to non-dominant language in the middle of a task in your dominant language affects performance in pronoun resolution, for example by resulting in a) global decrease in processing speed (taking longer to process the sentences overall – which would mean longer reading times), and b) having a disproportionate effect on sentences where the referent of the pronoun is not congruent with the verb bias. We are attempting to look at congruency between verb bias and pronoun, and its relationship to the “exposure” task. The goal is to compare the performances in a group of monolingual English speakers with that of a group of Spanish-English bilingual heritage speakers. The project overall aims to investigate the bidirectional language effects in pronoun resolution. —

Michelle Nguyen

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Eleonora Rossi, University of Florida

Hello everyone! My name is Michelle and I’m an incoming third year who’s pursuing a Bachelor of Science at the University of California, Irvine. I am a first-generation college student and I am interested in helping marinized populations pursue education. I am also fascinated about cognitive neuroscience and I hope to conduct future research that will allow me to use my scientific knowledge to widespread education. I identify as a Vietnamese-American, I’ve studied Spanish, and I am currently self-teaching myself American Sign Language as a hobby. After graduation, I plan to pursue a career in academia and/or a career in industry. Outside of school, I love reading and creating social media content.

In the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain (BMB) Lab, I am under the guidance of Judith Kroll, Andrea Tabori, and Eleonora Rossi. I am also in collaboration with SURP student Josue Mena. Our project is called “Investing the Influence of Language Diversity for New Language Learning.” This study’s population includes Vietnamese-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals. We plan to study how the influence of being prior exposed/ having prior knowledge of a tone-language will assist in the learning of a new tone language (Mandarin). Through this study, we hope to contribute to the research about adult L2 learning. We hope that our research will benefit in possibly implementing future second language learning resources for adults who may not have easy access to them.

Annalin Roepkin

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jill Morford, University of New Mexico

Hi everyone! My name is Annalin Roepken. I’m going into my third year at UC Irvine. I’m majoring in Psychology with a minor in Linguistics. My curiosity for bilingualism came from constantly being surrounded by different types of bilingual people in every aspect of life. I’m currently a part of the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab at UCI. After I complete my degree I plan on attending graduate school and getting a Ph.D somewhere in the field of psychology.

The project I will be working on this summer is called the Gender v. Bias project. I will be working with Dr. Kroll, Dr. Frederiksen, and Dr. Morford to better understand implicit causality verbs and how they interact with gender bias. The project will be focused on incongruencies and coherence relation in language production in both monolingual and bilingual data. Hopefully our results will illustrate the relationship between gender bias and IC verbs in these different groups.

Melanie Santamaria

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Julio Torres
PIRE Partner: Rosa Guzzardo Tamargo, University Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

My name is Melanie Santamaria and I am a third year undergrad at UCI majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Spanish. I am a resident advisor for Mesa Court, an EMRAP associate, and conduct research in El Areyto Lab. After graduating from UCI, I hope to attend medical school and become an obstetrician-gynecologist.

The title of my PIRE project is “Family Language Policies in Different Spanish-English Bilingual Contexts”, and I will be working with PIRE partners in Puerto Rico. Family language polices are the explicit and overt planning about language use within the home. I am interested in examining family language policies in two different Spanish-English bilingual contexts. Participants will complete a questionnaire, take part in focus group discussions, and complete an elicited imitation task to estimate Spanish and English proficiency. If comfortable, participants will record a natural conversation with their family. Understanding family language policy is necessary to implement proper changes in universities, hospitals, and in all other societal institutions to better support heritage speakers.

Kellie Weast

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Eleonora Rossi, University of Florida

Hello! My name is Kellie, and I am currently a 4^th year undergraduate studying Language Science and French. As a late second language learner myself, I am intensely interested in research regarding language acquisition and bilingualism. After I finish my undergraduate studies, I hope to further my education in graduate school and pursue a career in academia.

This summer I will be conducting research remotely in order to investigate the effect of linguistic similarity on language acquisition in bilinguals. This study will analyze and compare the linguistic abilities of German-English bilinguals and Mandarin-English bilinguals as they participate in a 5-day Rosetta Stone lesson plan that will teach them Dutch. Dutch is a language that shares a great deal of linguistic similarities to German but very few with Mandarin. Being bilingual or multilingual in the world today has countless benefits, both cognitively and socially. However, many find learning a new language to be a daunting and often overwhelming task. This study could potentially show why that does not have to be the case and that noticeable progress in language learning can happen in days rather than months or years. In addition, it can potentially demonstrate the relative ease in which an individual can learn a language that is linguistically similar to one that they already know.

Christine Wong

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jorge Valdes Kroff, University of Florida

Hi I’m Christine Wong and I am an incoming 4^th year Psychology major with a minor in Chinese Language and Literature at UCI. I speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and Toishanese and I am very excited to be participating in the PIRE program this summer! In my free time, I like to read novels and mangas as well as watching true crime videos.

My project will be focused on code switching and cultural identity in Cantonese-English bilinguals as well as how the environments that they grew up in affect their usage of Cantonese and English as well as how they identify themselves. Ideally, I will have participants from various parts of the United States in order to see if there are any differences in code switching patterns that may be due to growing up in different environments in the US. I will also be attempting to see if there’s any differences in cultural identity and code switching patterns and frequency between Cantonese-English bilinguals who were born and raised in the US and Cantonese-English bilinguals born and partially raised in Hong Kong until the age of 11. If possible, I would also like to look at code switching behavior for Hong Kong natives that are Cantonese-English bilinguals. This project will hopefully provide insight into the how identity can play a role in code switching patterns and frequencies as well as how different environments

Graduate PIRE Fellows 2020

Noa Attali

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisors: Lisa Pearl, Gregory Scontras
PIRE Partner: Stefanie Wulff, University of Florida

My name is Noa Attali, I am a graduate student in Language Science at UC Irvine. I work with Lisa Pearl (Computation of Language Lab) and Greg Scontras (Meaning Lab) as part of the Quantitative Language Collective. I’m interested in ambiguity processing and acquisition, pragmatic reasoning, and intonational cues underlying communication.

Project Summary:
Corpus analysis of emphasis and scope ambiguity
In this research project, we’re investigating mechanisms of ambiguity resolution. We’re looking at cases of ambiguity arising when utterances have multiple logical operators (e.g., Everyone didn’t go, which has the quantifier every and negation n’t). Understanding these utterances involves interpreting which operator takes scope over the other: in line with their surface word order, the quantifier could take scope over negation (e.g., meaning that no one went) or, according to their inverse order, negation could take scope over the quantifier (e.g., meaning that not everyone went). Previous research conflicts on interpretation preferences but it seems that a host of factors, including listener age, pragmatic expectations, and syntactic priming, matter for interpretation. Researchers have also claimed for a long time that intonation, as a marker of information structure, can determine interpretation, so we are especially interested in the role of emphasis expressed through prosodic prominence in speech and through bolding or capitalizing in text. We propose a computational model of interpretation based on the quantifier (every, some, or no), the use of emphasis, and the question under discussion in the immediate discourse context. As part of determining values for parameters in our model and assessing its predictions, we seek to understand instances of this kind of scope ambiguity attested in corpora of natural written and spoken language. How often are these quantifiers used? When quantifiers appear in these ambiguous constructions, how often is the intended scope in fact clear, what is the question under discussion, and when is emphasis used?

Undergraduate PIRE Fellows 2020

Dayra Perez Bernal

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

I am a Fourth Year majoring in Psychology and minoring in Language science under the supervision of Dr. Judith Kroll and Christian Navarro-Torres. I am interested in psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience, with specific interests in code-switching and language acquisition. I am a Spanish-English bilingual, and also studied French. I hope to continue my education in graduate school and pursue a career in academia. Thanks to my mentors and colleagues’ advice, I feel like I am well on my way.

Project Summary:
My PIRE project examines how proficient bilinguals in different interactional contexts rely on cognitive control mechanisms when speaking in one of their languages. Two groups of Spanish-English speakers, one from Granada, Spain and another from Southern California, will perform a series of linguistic and non-linguistic tasks. The goal is to examine how the interactional context changes the relation between cognitive control (as measured by the AX-CPT), lexical access (as measured by a picture naming task), and language regulation abilities (as measured by a verbal fluency task).

Kiarah Hernandez

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jill Morford, University of New Mexico

Kiarah Hernandez is a third-year undergraduate student studying psychology with a minor in Chicano/Latino studies. She takes pride in being a first-generation student from Los Angeles. As a Jumpstart alumna, researcher for Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab, UCI PIRE fellow, and cultural chairwoman for Phi Lambda Rho Sorority, Inc., Kiarah is always eager to take risks and seek opportunities for growth. In her freetime, Kiarah enjoys attending Dodger games and Disneyland trips.

Project Summary:
Under the virtual supervision of Dr. Judith Kroll and Anne Therese Frederikson, Ph.D from UCI and Dr. Jill Morford from UNM, Kiarah’s PIRE Project will focus on the effects of implicit causality and thematic roles in verbs of heritage Spanish speakers and second language speakers of Spanish. Kiarah will investigate how these semantic and pragmatic discourse levels might differ for both distinct groups. Kiarah’s prediction is that the stronger Spanish skills of heritage speakers lead to more influence from Spanish on their English verb biases, because of potential differences in how Spanish and English use thematic roles.

Andy Huynh

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jill Morford, University of New Mexico

Hi! When I entered college, I wanted to learn more about the voice, but since then, that interest has expanded to include more than just the voice. After this summer, I’m going to start my third year as an undergraduate student at UCI. I am studying linguistics, and I plan on going to graduate school to learn about speech-language pathology. In my linguistics classes, a major focus has generally been on English, possibly because we are in an English speaking country, but I have often wondered how other languages behave as well as how being bilingual affects such behaviors. When the opportunity presented itself, I applied for Dr. Kroll’s lab, and I have been learning as an RA in her lab at UCI since Fall of 2019. I am interested in bilingualism and its cognitive and processing effects.

Project Summary:
This summer, I would have been travelling to New Mexico if not for the circumstances, but instead, I can now go surfing the internet in the comfort of home. I am working with Dr. Kroll, Dr. Frederiksen, and Dr. Morford to look at the IC biases of heritage speakers of Vietnamese as well as native speakers of Vietnamese who are learning English as a second language to see how they differ in respect to each other as well as compared to monolingual English and Vietnamese data. Our results will hopefully help us further our understanding of the language processes of these different bilinguals, and it can possibly be used to inform speech-language pathology practices.

Mackenzie Kephart

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Lisa Pearl
PIRE Partner: Antonella Sorace, University of Edinburgh

My name is Mackenzie Kephart and I am from Santa Barbara, California. I am a current senior studying Cognitive Science. I have always been interested in working with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I became interested in identifying and treating language deficits when I learned about careers in Speech Language Pathology. When I am not in school I work at special
education camps and other child camps to promote social interaction.

Project Summary:
My project is building a model that replicates the interaction of attention, executive functioning and metaphoric comprehension. There is a lot of documentation about the deficits people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience with both figurative language comprehension and attention, so this model will attempt to predict the differences in metaphoric comprehension between children diagnosed with ASD and typically developing children. This may have future implications for teaching figurative language in both special education and typical classrooms.

Noah Khaloo

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Jorge Valdés Kroff, University of Florida

My name is Noah Khaloo! I am a 4th year psychology student with an emphasis on language science at the University of California, Irvine. My hobbies include surfing, camping, and hiking with my dog!!

Project Summary:
My study observes the code switching behavior of Cantonese/English bilinguals from a sociolinguistic standpoint. Hopefully this research can assist the general understanding that no two bilinguals have the same linguistic experience, even if they speak the same languages. I am also part of the cohort that is figuring out how to get real data, remotely. Hopefully our efforts can help pave the way to ensuring online data collection in the research realm. This, I believe, is pivotal in gaining comparative data from different cultures and hopefully something I can use in my future as a researcher.

Jacob Kodner

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Gregory Scontras
PIRE Partner: Taomei Guo, Beijing Normal University

My name is Jacob Kodner, and I am currently a major in Language Science as part of the Campuswide Honors Collegium. Going into my second-year at UCI, I am very thrilled to be participating in PIRE this year. Having traveled to Taiwan on numerous occasions, I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese. In my free time, I enjoy watching Korean dramas and exploring different boba shops.

Project Summary:
I am currently investigating a linguistic phenomenon known as evidentiality (i.e. source of information) and how it is represented in the language of the Atayal, an indigenous group of Taiwan. I will be sending a questionnaire with narratives to participants in Taiwan who speak the language, all in the hopes of contributing to the ever-growing domain of research pertaining to evidentiality.

Ryan Lee

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Richard Futrell
PIRE Partner: Simon Kirby, University of Edinburgh

I am a senior Language Science major at UC Irvine.

Project summary:
Natural language allows us to convey information by letting us embed concepts into words and manipulate word order. For instance, “The man walked the dog” and “The dog walked the man” mean completely different things because of word order. This phenomenon reveals the principle of compositionality, which states that changes in syntax should be associated with changes in semantics. My research will seek to quantify the average information conveyed by a language’s word order. We will be looking at various languages as well as other timescales, i.e. information conveyed by word order versus internal word structure.

Katherine Lopez

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisors: Julio Torres, Judith Kroll
PIRE Partner: Teresa Bajo, University of Granada, Spain

Hello everyone, my name is Katherine Lopez, and I’m a third year undergrad at UCI majoring in psychology. After I graduate, I plan to attend grad school and pursue my Phd in social psychology and become a psychology professor. My hobbies are hiking, reading, going to the beach, and hanging out with friends.

Project Summary:
For the summer, my research will be centered around emotions, memory, and bilingualism, specifically in heritage speakers. We chose to test heritage speakers because not a lot of research has been done on them and because they have unique characteristics in comparison to other bilingual groups. We will be using an emotion-memory effect task to help us determine if heritage speakers L1 or L2 are more linked with their emotions. This task will help us determine whether bilinguals recall more emotional or more neutral words and see in which language(s) does this emotion-memory advantage persist. Whether they do so in one or both languages will help us understand more about the relationship between emotions and language experience.

Cesar M. Rosales

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partners: Merel Keijzer, University of Groningen and Eleonora Rossi, University of Florida

I am a fourth-year first-generation college student from Santa Ana, California. I grew up as a Spanish-English bilingual and this early experience shaped my interests in languages and linguistics.

Project Summary:
I am working with PIRE partners in Florida and abroad in the Netherlands on a project involving Rosetta Stone. Native English speakers in the US and studying abroad in the Netherlands complete an intensive short-term Dutch learning program. I am interested in investigating the effect that ambient exposure to Dutch has on those who are immersed in the target language in comparison to non-immersed participants.

Project Summary:
This summer I will be virtually traveling to Groningen in the Netherlands to investigate the impact of lexical similarity when learning a new language and how our learning environment will affect the language learning process. Our study will be sent to participants in America, Germany, and the Netherlands and through a 10 day Rosetta Stone lesson plan, we will study how their cognitive and linguistic abilities have changed as they learn Dutch!

Amy Santa Maria

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Peña
PIRE Partner: Sharon Unsworth, Radboud University, Nijmegen

Hello! My name is Amy Santa Maria and I’m a fourth-year student at UCI majoring in Language Science and minoring in Spanish/English Bilingual Education. My research interests include second language acquisition, first language attrition, and second language education. I’ve studied Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, and ASL, and hope to use my experiences of studying foreign languages to enhance my abilities as an ESL or EFL teacher in the future! After graduating from UCI, I plan on teaching English in Latin America with the Fulbright Scholarship or in Japan with the JET Program before returning to school for my Master’s degree.

Project summary:
I will be doing a secondary data analysis of the Human Abilities in Bilingual Language Acquisition (HABLA) Lab’s data collected over four years from Spanish-English bilingual children. The purpose of the proposed research is to describe how age and exposure to the L2 (English) relate to changes in children’s L1 Spanish skills over time (K-5th grade) and to examine which grammatical forms in L1 Spanish are more vulnerable to attrition as a function of age and/or exposure.

Katherine Tran

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Judith Kroll
PIRE Partners: Merel Keijzer, University of Groningen and Eleonora Rossi, University of Florida

My name is Katherine Tran and I’m a second year at the University of California, Irvine studying Language Science. I am also currently participating in the Air Force ROTC program at the University of Southern California and I plan to continue working in a career field that will utilize my linguistic capabilities. I am currently fluent in English, Spanish, and Mandarin, but I aspire to be a polyglot by the time I commission as an officer in 2023!

Wiley G. Wilson Jr.

UCI PIRE Faculty Advisor: Brandy Gatlin-Nash
PIRE Partner: Rosa Guzzardo Tamargo, University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras

Greetings, my name is Wiley Wilson and I am an African American male, currently an undergraduate majoring in Sociology, with a minor in Psychology in the School of Social Sciences. Though I am still very much a rookie to research, my interest in gaining a better understanding of different cultural beliefs, interests, practices, and perspectives is one of the reasons why I wish to venture into research. Growing up in Alabama, I really was never exposed to other cultures and really didn’t have insight and understanding of my own culture, so I basically missed out. So that is why my overall research, and certainly life goal, is to better learn of the different ideas, perspectives, beliefs, etc. of different cultures and how it applies to everyday life and reality.

Project Summary:
My project is called “Spanish-English Code-Switching Amongst UPRRP College Students: Attitudes, Perceptions, and Practices”, in collaboration with Dr. Brandy Gatlin, Dr. Rosa Guzzardo Tamargo, and student UPRRP partners Alexandra Irizarry and Ana Alvarez. The purpose of this study is to learn more about the concepts of language/dialect and code-switching amongst students enrolled in the University of Puerto-Rico, Río Piedras, in collaboration with partners within the University of California, Irvine, who are conducting a similar project with undergraduate African American students called “African American Voices in Higher Education: Integration, Acceptance, Assimilation, and Resistance” where the study is on gaining a better understanding of how code-switching apples and affects African American students at the University of California, Irvine.