Research in Linguistics

Sophia Minnillo is a Senior in Emory College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Linguistics and French Studies. She was awarded a Fall 2019 Conference Grant, which she used to present at the Arizona Linguistics Circle Conference.

          In late October, I traveled to Tucson, Arizona, to present at the University of Arizona Linguistics Circle 13 Conference. The conference, entitled ‘Linguistics across Linguistic Subfields,’ included presentations from the fields of syntax, morphology, phonology, sociolinguistics, experimental linguistics, and second language acquisition (SLA). As my work falls into the latter sub-discipline  I greatly enjoyed learning from scholars who work on similar projects to my own. I also appreciated the diversity of subfields present, as findings from all of the fields represented, especially phonology and experimental linguistics, inform my research in SLA. 

My presentation, ‘Motivation and Achievement in the Academic Setting: An Investigation of French Oral Proficiency Outcomes,’ probed the question, ‘Why are some people more successful than others in learning how to speak a second language?’ As many of us may have experienced while taking language courses, any individual language class often includes students with varying proficiency levels, motivation, and attitudes toward languages. Linguists refer to motivation and attitudes as individual differences factors in language learning. Studies have found that these factors can both influence and reflect differences in students’ learning outcomes. 

In my project, I studied the extent to which a set of individual differences factors predict spoken proficiency learning outcomes in a university-level French as a second language program. I began this project as a Research Assistant in Dr. Yun Kim’s Language Acquisition Lab. Beginning in the spring of 2017, we recruited 35 French language learners to complete a spoken language production task and a questionnaire to report their attitudes and motivation toward learning French. In the summer of 2019, I finished this project while participating in the Emory Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) fellowship. My results indicate that students’ self-reported levels of anxiety, as linked to both attending French class and to communicating in French, serve as a significant predictor of students’ spoken proficiency in French, with higher levels of anxiety predicting lower spoken proficiency scores. I hope that this finding will assist French language programs, instructors, and students, in addition to informing the field of SLA.

The Arizona Linguistics Circle conference provided me with an exceptional opportunity to receive feedback on my study and on further directions for research. As one of the SLA presentations (Gorham 2019) employed a theoretical framework that I am espousing in my senior honors thesis, I benefited greatly from learning about Gorham’s study design and findings. In my thesis, I am examining computer-assisted language learning as implemented by language textbooks, computer programs, language departments, instructors, and students. I hope to present the results from my thesis at a conference again in the spring.

I am very grateful to the Emory Undergraduate Research Program for not only funding my travel to this conference, but also for supporting the summer research that led me to receive acceptance at the conference.  I also greatly appreciate the opportunity to travel to Tucson, a beautiful city which I had never visited before the conference. I am including a photo of a magnificent Arizona sunset to inspire fellow Emory linguists to present at this conference next year!

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.