BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby BEGIN:VEVENT CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations DESCRIPTION:The Linguistics Department presents Dr. Sofia Fernandez discuss ing "Exploring the role of regional phonetic variation in second language a cquisition"\n\n \n\nAbstract: This study explores second language acquisiti on\, sociophonetic variation\, and speech perception\, examining how prior linguistic experiences and exposure to regional variations influence the de coding of dialectal cues. It involves 108 English-speaking learners of Span ish\, categorized by their exposure to /s/ weakening or retention in Spanis h regions. This classification accounts for their linguistic backgrounds\, study-abroad experiences\, and teacher origins. Participants completed acti vities such as a language proficiency test\, listening comprehension activi ties\, an AX discrimination task\, and a language background questionnaire. Data analysis using logistic mixed-effects models revealed that participan ts exposed to conditions where /s/ changed from reduced to retained in isol ated word pairs exhibited lower identification accuracy compared to those e xposed to consistent word pronunciations. Additionally\, study-abroad parti cipants in /s/-weakening environments demonstrated significant interactions . AX discrimination accuracy strongly predicted listening comprehension\, u nderscoring the role of phonetic variant categorization in language process ing. This research highlights the impact of exposure to dialectal variation s on learners’ processing skills and pronunciation preferences\, emphasizin g the importance of recognizing linguistic diversity in language education and second language acquisition research.\n\n \n\nDr. Fernandez is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese\, New York University. Fernandez is also an alumna of the MA Applied Linguistics prog ram '19.\n\n \n\nVia Microsoft Teams \n\nJoin the meeting now\n\nMeeting ID : 219 960 959 435\n\nPasscode: rq9bs6am DTEND:20250131T185500Z DTSTAMP:20250224T003848Z DTSTART:20250131T175500Z LOCATION: SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Linguistics Colloquium: Phonetic Variation in SLA UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_48298145920594 URL:https://calendar.ohio.edu/event/linguistics-colloquium-phonetic-variati on-in-sla END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR