Teaching

As a language and linguistics instructor with +20 years of experience in the classroom, my teaching covers a number of areas, at both the undergraduate and the graduate level.

Linguistics courses (for linguistics majors and minors)

At WCU, I have taught and/or developed several undergraduate and graduate courses for the Linguistics program. Some of these courses are at the introductory level, including LIN230 (Introduction to Linguistics). LIN130 (The World's Languages) is a general education humanities course offering an overview of linguistic diversity across the world. More advanced courses include LIN332 (Phonetics and Phonology), one of the core courses in the WCU Linguistics major, and LIN337 (Language Change), a Linguistics major elective on the basics of diachronic linguistics and language variation and change (scheduled to be offered in 2026-2027 for the first time). LIN211 (Language Communities in the US) is a critical sociolinguistics course on the social meaning of linguistic variation, with a focus on language-based discrimination and resistance. At the graduate level, LNC501 (Linguistics Studies) is one of the core courses of our Master of Arts in Languages and Cultures (Spanish, French, German) introducing students to advanced topics in linguistics (e.g. acquisition, sociolinguistics, bilingualism and code-switching, and critical approaches).

With my Fall 2024 LIN332 (Phonetics and phonology) group.

Representing the Linguistics Program at the 2023 Languages and Cultures Day

With LNC501 students at the departmental Fall 2023 reception

SPA499 (Georgetown U) in Fall 2016

The structure and history of Spanish

I have also designed and taught courses on various aspects of the linguistics of Spanish. SPA365 (Fonética y fonología del español) is a practical overview of the phonetics and phonology in Spanish, focuses on the description of the segmental and suprasegmental articulation of the language and its dialectal diversity. Both SPA370 (History of the Spanish Language) and its graduate counterpart, SPA510 (Spanish through Time and Space) introduce students to the main linguistic and sociolinguistic processes leading to the emergence of Spanish across history. Lastly, ESP318 (Speaking Spanish in the United States) is a culture cluster class that surveys several key aspects underlying the linguistic, sociodemographic, and cultural dimension of Spanish in the US.

In Fall 2016, I was invited to teach an undergraduate/graduate joint seminar for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University as a visiting professor. SPA499 (World Spanishes) consisted of an ecological exploration of the interface between multiple forms of contact and the observed historical patterns of structural and sociolinguistic variation across the Spanish-speaking word.

Spanish language courses

Since my MA student days at San Diego State, and then at UC Berkeley and WCU, I have had the chance to put my own experience as a language learner and my background in language pedagogy to use as a language instructor. I have taught the whole basic Spanish language sequence across these three institutions, as well as SPA202 (Intermediate Spanish - II) and SPA302 (Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition) at the WCU-IAU Barcelona study abroad program in June-July 2013.

At the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat in Barcelona with the WCU-IAU Barcelona Study Abroad group (Summer 2013)

Other courses

Besides the areas noted above, I have taught two literature-focused courses: SPAN25 (Lectura y análisis de textos literarios) (UC Berkeley) and SPA315 (Advanced Readings in Spanish) (WCU). Both courses provide Spanish minors and majors with analytical tools to read, interpret, and write about literary texts in Spanish.

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