Courses

Academic Proficiency courses are those on academic writing and speaking, and usually aimed at international students and non-native English speakers. Academic writing focuses on the writing process, academic English, and drafting written work on an academic topic. Academic speaking focuses on acquiring skills in presentation delivery, structure, and visual display.

At Utrecht University I teach courses on English linguistics, with a focus on phonetics and phonology. These courses involve learning IPA transcription, production of English phonemes, and overall pronunciation skills. I also run a seminar on accent variation in English.

Language and Gender

I've taught numerous versions of this course for over six years (in departments of Applied Linguistics, Anthropology, and Linguistics). I take sociolinguistic and discourse analytic perspectives when assigning readings, lecturing content, and creating assignments/research projects. I focus on the social construction of gender through practices of language use. Many of these courses included a large writing component (15 pages of drafted writing per student), which was met by student-conducted research and subsequent IMRD research paper.

Language in culture

Course taught at UCLA (Anthropology) in Spring 2016. A focus on ethnographic methods in linguistic anthropology. Topics includes language socialization, communities of practice, multilingualism, and language and cognition. I supervised student research projects on linguistic phenomena in a given community.

Course at UCLA (Applied Linguistics) in Winter 2016. A survey of theories of language acquisition (first and second) and language pedagogy. Assignments included observation of teaching methods in a foreign language classroom, L2 textbook review, and a motivated lesson plan for a course module.

This course covers the neurobiological, motivational, and experiential aspects of language learning (first and second). Assignments included an autobiographical account of a language learning experience, and a subsequent analysis of the experience using a theoretical framework from readings.

At UCLA I taught a number of courses in ESL, including English for Academic Purposes (writing, academic discussion, public speaking), and cultural studies (American Culture through Film). For the latter, I co-developed a curriculum focused on the socio-pragmatic skill of humor. At USD’s English Language Academy I also taught pre-university students in academic writing and oral presentations. I developed a course in research writing for newly admitted international students as well.

I have taught Spanish at many levels of proficiency with many age groups. After my undergraduate education, I co-taught an intensive summer course for high school students. Thereafter I taught after- school Spanish programs for elementary schools. At the start of my graduate study I taught Spanish 1-3 (at UCLA) to undergraduate students. For these courses I developed daily lesson plans, and oral and general assessments.