Meet L2TReC's Research Assistant
L2TReC is supported by a great team of dedicated teachers, researchers, and administrators. Part of that team consists of our wonderful Research Assistants, who provide much needed support for work across the center's Learner Corpora, MuSSeL and CUDLI. Among that team is Research Assistant, Sara Rodríguez Matarredona. Today, we are highlighting Sara, her contributions to L2TReC, and her research with CUDLI.
Get to know Sara
Hi! My name is Sara, and I joined the Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC) at the University of Utah in January 2024 as a graduate research assistant. My journey in second language teaching began during my undergraduate studies, but it was during my MA in Spanish: Professional Practices and Research that I developed a deeper interest in both teaching second languages and the researching its acquisition.
At L2TReC, my work has been mostly focused on transcribing and coding audio and written files for the Spanish corpora. However, I am currently working on using CUDLI’s corpora to expand my previous research on the acquisition of Spanish prepositions by native speakers of English.
I first became familiar with Corpus linguistics during my Spanish MA at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where this was one of the core courses. While initially challenging, I quickly realized the potential of corpora in a wide variety of fields. They can be used in teaching, when providing real-life examples or selecting relevant vocabulary, but also in research, such as in error-analysis. Corpora are just treasures of data with so much to offer when it comes to analyzing language, and L2TReC is a wonderful place to learn from them and contribute to supporting linguistic diversity.
Beyond my research, I am excited to be graduating with an MA in Language Pedagogy with an emphasis in Spanish this upcoming May here at the U! I am not completely sure about what the future holds for me after that, but I am considering pursuing a PhD. I am excited to keep developing myself academically and contributing to teaching foreign languages and researching L2 acquisition, though I also enjoy having some down time. Whether I am studying or just relaxing, people will probably find me wearing headphones, as music is a huge part of my life. I particularly enjoy listening to Bruce Springsteen (fun fact his lyrics were the focus of my undergraduate dissertation), and a wide variety of pop, rock and indie artists. I love spending time outdoors, whether it is traveling, hiking or playing sports. I have been playing tennis for most of my life and am an eager soccer fan!
