Welcome! ¡Bienvenido!
My name is Sara and I'm a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois (USA). When I am not writing papers for my classes, teaching or going to conferences to present my research I love to practice yoga, sing, cook and travel.
I love learning foreign languages. I'm a Spanish native speaker but I can also speak English, some French and some German.
I was born and raised in Spain (Albacete and Utrera, Sevilla) and decided to move to the US in 2011. I started as a Spanish instructor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 2012, I moved to Chicago where I started an MA in Hispanic Linguistic at UIC.
Although the winters in the Illinois area are terrible (especially for an andalusian like me) I love being around students who are motivated and have the same enthusiasm to learn as I do.
After 2 years in gradschool and almost no social life I still decided to pursue a PhD in the same field I was in, only this time I was going to move a couple of hours south. I moved to Urbana, Illinois - where I currently live and work.
I'm a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics and as such I teach Spanish to undergraduate students, conduct research, and attend advanced courses covering different linguistic aspects. My research focuses on 1) second language acquisition, and 2) heritage languages . You might be wondering -that sounds fancy, what is that exactly? The answer is very simple, do you remember those tortuous foreign language classes you took in primary or secondary school ? (let's say Spanish, French, German,...??) YES! I specialize on the learning of languages that are not your first (childhood language) and how they are acquired in adulthood. Well, that is a simple definition of second languages but I also mentioned heritage languages, right? A heritage language (in very simple terms) is a language that you learn at home, most likely from your father or mother, and that is not the official language spoken in the country where you reside. This is very common in the US, where the language chosen to communicate by the goverment is English, but tons of families all over the country speak a different language at home (Spanish, Polish, Chinese, ... and many more). Interesting, right? Now you know why I love my job.
