Thur. 5-31-2018, 53A Olson, I am bilingual: Building a campus-wide program for native speakers

Event Date

Location
Olson 53A

Location: 53A Olson

 

In the field of second language acquisition, the notion of target proficiency has traditionally been tied to the range of abilities exhibited by native speakers. Although never completely uncontroversial, the idea of what constitutes a native speaker has prompted repeated reformulations, particularly in the context of bilingualism. When the language learned and spoken at home is not the majority or societal language, as is the case in nearly half of California households, there are added challenges that can have an effect on some aspects of proficiency, revealing great variation in native abilities. In this talk, we will review the challenges facing native speakers of minority languages and provide an overview of our own Spanish for Native Speakers Program. Taking advantage of the rich language diversity on campus, we will also use this opportunity to discuss avenues for interdisciplinary collaboration among language faculty and propose a campus-wide program that celebrates bilinguals of all backgrounds.

Agustina Carando is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Director of the Spanish for Native Speakers Program. As a native Spanish speaker immersed in an English context, she became interested in the ways that bilinguals use their two languages and how one may influence the other, leading to long term changes in their mental grammar. Working with spontaneous and experimental data, she seeks to explore the ways that languages interact in the bilingual mind, how similarities and differences between the grammars are negotiated, what structures might be more or less vulnerable and under what circumstances, the role of frequency of exposure and, ultimately, the internal mechanisms underlying linguistic change.