Education

  • Ph.D. Rutgers University, Bilingualism and SLA
  • M.A. San Diego State University, Spanish
  • B.A. San Diego State University, Linguistics

Background

I specialize in Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition, and my research involves both second language learners and heritage speakers. My main area of research is lexical pragmatics, and I focus on the acquisition of vague and imprecise language. I am currently working on and collaborating in two research projects: one project examines the development of pragmatic knowledge and the use of vague language among adults in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. The second project investigates the acquisition of pragmatics and morphosyntax among children in the U.S., Mexico, Peru and Chile.

I have been teaching for over ten years, and I absolutely enjoy being in the classroom! I have taught several language courses and linguistics courses as well. I have been through the process of learning multiple languages, and I understand how challenging this process can be. For that reason, my teaching approach promotes learning experiences that are dynamic and hands-on and invites students to reflect on how to connect the course content to real-life situations.

As part of my service to the field and the community, I currently serve as a board member of Bilingualism Matters (BM) (University of Edinburgh), a research center for bilingualism advocacy that is run by international teams of researchers around Europe and the US. I also served as the director of the BM branch in New Jersey (RUBilingual) in 2018-2019.

I am highly interested in doing community outreach and promoting research-informed conversations about language acquisition and multilingualism.