One of my current projects is on the acquisition of Russian word order by second language learners and heritage speakers of Russian. This work was recently presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development. It's a collaborative project that involves two current Linguistics students (Maria Goldshtein and Sofya Styrina) as well as an alumna of our department (Tatiana Luchkina).
Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University -- Doing a degree at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana gave me plenty of teaching opportunities and also introduced me to the Academic world, which inspired me to further develop my research agenda.
In addition to working on updating and improving the curricula of the Arabic program, I am actively pursuing several projects that focus on teacher development. More recently, I am preparing my students to participate in national competition QatarDebate. I am working with a team of students from advanced Arabic language classes for this upcoming debating event. This championship will take place...
The Linguistics program at UIUC is well-rounded and rigorous with innovative and supportive faculty. My outstanding advisor, Professor Rakesh Bhatt, has unwaveringly encouraged my work as a military sociolinguist and actively ensures that I am gaining the tools that I will need to be successful both now and after graduation.
I often reflect on the knowledge I learned and the pedagogical guidance I received during my time in the MATESL program, and I realize that my degree from Illinois made it possible for me to be where I am today. My first teaching job at the Intensive English Institute -- when it was in a house on Nevada St. -- was the start of a very enjoyable, rewarding career.
The MATESL program offers high-quality coursework in language assessment and a variety of opportunities to apply this knowledge in the real world, e.g., as a Teaching Assistant and EPT rater. The mentorship of talented professors such as Dr. Xun Yan has also been invaluable in helping me succeed.
Ionin, T. and Luchkina. T. (2018). Focus on Russian scope: An experimental investigation of the relationship between quantifier scope, prosody, and information structure. Linguistic Inquiry, 49(4). Abstract: An experimental investigation of quantifier scope in Russian SVO and OVS sentences, in which the factors of word order, prosody, information structure, and indefinite form...
Armstrong, A., Bulkes, N. Z., & Tanner, D. (in press). Quantificational cues modulate the processing of English subject-verb agreement by native Chinese speakers: An ERP study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Numerous studies have demonstrated that native Mandarin speakers have pervasive difficulties processing L2 English agreement morphology. However, less is known about...
Yoon, J. H. S. (2017) Published: Thu, 11 May 2017 Central to the debate on the demarcation of morphology and syntax is the position staked out by the Lexicalist Hypothesis, which holds that morphology and syntax are distinct systems which interface with each other in a particular way. Proponents of the Lexicalist Hypothesis point to a suite of diagnostics collectively known as lexical...