The Cluster invites guest speakers from various departments to present their innovative linguistic research and provides members with the opportunity to engage in lively discussion. We also host professional development workshops, which are facilitated by faculty members, industry professionals, and graduate students.

Our speaker series for the Winter 2023 quarter has begun!

See below for details about our upcoming talk and the schedule for Winter 2023.

Our next talk of the 2022-2023 academic year:


Valeria Zunino Edelsberg

PhD Student, UC Davis (School of Education)


Responsive feedback on writing for emergent bilingual students


Monday, January 23rd

Sproul 912, 1:30 to 2:30 pm PT


If you have any questions, please email us: ucd.langsymposium@gmail.com


See below for more information about Valeria Zunino Edelsberg and our Fall Schedule:

Description of Valeria Zunino Edelsberg's Talk:


Feedback has been recognized as one of the most powerful resources for teachers to support learning (Clark, 2012). Although feedback benefits are undeniable, multiple studies have shown that its effects vary widely and can even negatively impact learning (Black & William, 1998; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Shepard, 2000). There are a variety of factors that influence how students engage with feedback and that determine students’ decisions and actions (Lui and Andrade, 2022). Through a qualitative research methodology and drawing on the culturally responsive teaching (CRT) framework, my study explores how emergent bilingual students perceive, interpret and use different types of written feedback on their writing and to what extent culturally responsive feedback practices can enhance its use. Eight Latino students between 12 and 15 years old reviewed four examples of teachers’ feedback and shared their perspectives through a semi-structured interview. Preliminary findings show that feedback that embraces students' cultural and language heritage enhances students' receptivity and willingness to use it to improve their work. Furthermore, individual characteristics play a key role in how students interpret and use teachers’ comments.


About Valeria Zunino Edelsberg:


Valeria Zunino Edelsberg is a third-year Ph.D. student in Education at the University of California, Davis. She has a master’s in Psychology from the Universidad Católica de Chile and a master’s in Education with an emphasis in measurement and assessment from the University of California, Davis. Valeria’s work experience has been mainly in public Institutions in Chile, such as the Ministry of Education and the Education Quality Assurance Agency. In the US, she has worked as a teacher assistant for the School of Education and the Chicano Studies Department, as a researcher for Global Affairs and the School of Education, as an independent contractor at the Northwestern Evaluation Association (NWEA), and as a consultor for UNESCO. Valeria is also vice-president of FEVED, a group of Chilean researchers with a common interest in educational assessment issues in Chile, and vice-president of the Chilean Association at Davis. Her current research focuses on formative assessment. She is particularly interested in studying the characteristics of effective and appropriate feedback for English learners and teachers’ preparation for implementing formative assessment.

Winter 2023 Schedule:

Co-chairs: Nicholas Aoki (Linguistics), Roxanne Elliott (Education), and Ana Ortega Pérez (Spanish and Portuguese)

  1. January 23rd (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):

Valeria Zunino Edelsberg (UC Davis; Education)

    • Responsive feedback on writing for emergent bilingual students


  1. February 13th (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):

Margarita Jimenez-Silva, Ed.D. (UC Davis; Education)

    • TBA


  1. March 6th (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):


Ingrid Sub Cuc (UC Davis; Native American Studies)

    • TBA

Previous speakers and workshop facilitators:

2022-2023

Co-chairs: Nicholas Aoki (Linguistics), Roxanne Elliott (Education), and Ana Ortega Pérez (Spanish and Portuguese)

Fall 2022:

  1. October 3rd (Zoom, 1-2pm PT):

Diana Ruggiero, PhD (University of Memphis; World Languages and Literatures)

    • The World of Languages for Specific Purposes: From Research to Teaching Medical Spanish through Community Engagement

    • Click here for a link to Dr. Ruggiero's presentation slides.

    • Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Ruggiero's talk!


  1. October 17th (Zoom, 12:30-1:30pm PT):

Kristin Predeck, PhD (Knowledge Engineer at Amazon)

    • Linguists in tech: what roles to explore, how to interview

    • Click here for a recording of the talk (This recording is only accessible to individuals affiliated with UC Davis and will be automatically deleted on 1/23/23).


  1. October 31st (Sproul 912, 12-1pm PT):


Georgia Zellou, PhD (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Clear speech in Tashlhiyt Berber: The perception of typologically uncommon word-initial contrasts by native and naive listeners

    • This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Mohamed Lahrouchi (Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Université Paris 8) and Dr. Karim Bensoukas (Mohammed V University in Rabat).

    • Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Zellou's talk!

2021-2022

Co-chairs: Sophia Minnillo (Linguistics), Beverly Cotter (Psychology), and Ana Ruiz Alonso Bartol (Spanish & Portuguese)

Spring 2022:

  1. April 4th: Kyle Patterson (UC Davis; French and Italian)

    • Meaningful Gaming Tools in the Classroom: Beyond Gamification

  1. April 18th: Tamara Gómez Carrero (University of Valladolid; Estudios Ingleses Avanzados (Advanced English Studies))

    • What do eye movements reveal about Spanish grammatical gender in codeswitching?

  1. May 22nd: Dian Yu (UC Davis; Computer Science)

    • Attribute Representation With Neural Language Models

  1. May 16th: Dr. Carrie Bonilla (George Mason University; Modern and Classical Languages)

    • Incorporating Second Language Acquisition Research in Language Placement Test Development

  1. June 2nd: Xinye Zhang and Professor Bob Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • From Proposal to Publication: How to Form Your Idea into a Journal Article


Winter 2022:

  1. January 26th: Kristin Predeck (UC Davis; German)

    • Exploring Acoustic and Perceptual Similarity of German and American English Vowels

  1. February 2nd: Peter Torres (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Professional Development Workshop: What You Need to Know About Teaching and Diversity Statements in One Hour

  1. February 9th: Katie Sendek (UC Davis; Psychology)

    • The Effects of Emotional Language on Predictive Processing in L2

  1. February 23rd: Dr. Ethan Kutlu (University of Iowa; Psychological and Brain Sciences, Linguistics)

    • Perception in Context: How Multilingualism Is A Door To New Horizons But a Gatekeeper For Some

  1. March 9th: César Hoyos (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Exploring emotional aspects of translanguaging in the L2 and heritage language learners of Spanish


Fall 2021:

  1. October 5th: Eleonora Beier (UC Davis; Psychology)

    • Prosodic Focus in Speech Directed Towards Human vs. Voice-AI Interlocutors

  1. October 19th: Online Teaching Group (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese, Linguistics, French and Italian)

    • Transitioning to Emergency Online Teaching: The Experience of Spanish Language Learners and Teachers at UC Davis

  1. November 2nd: Dr. Dana Ferris (UC Davis; Education, Linguistics)

    • Language & Self-Efficacy: How First-Year University Students View Themselves as Writers

  1. November 16th: Madison Barker (UC Davis; Psychology)

    • The Object, The Whole Object, And Nothing But The Object: Speakers Prioritize Whole-Object Semantics in Scene Descriptions

  1. November 30th: Dr. Carmen González (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Language and Ideology: Metaphors in Political Discourse

2020-2021

Co-chairs: Skyler Reese (Linguistics) and Lillian Jones (Spanish & Portuguese)

Spring 2021:

  1. April 19th: Chloe Brotherton (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Nasty Woman, Pronouns, and Labels: Connections between Feminist and LGBTQIA Language Ideologies and Policies

  1. May 3rd: Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Kenji Sagae, Agustina Carando, Sam Davidson, Paloma Fernández Mira, and Sophia Minnillo (UC Davis; Linguistics, Computer Science, Spanish and Portuguese)

    • COWS-L2H: How team work brings the best out of corpus research


Winter 2021:

  1. January 14th: Abram Jones (UC Davis; Continuing and Professional Education)

    • Task-Based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice

  1. January 28th: Pablo Robles García (University of Toronto Mississauga; Language Studies)

    • Optimizing vocabulary learning in the L2 Spanish Classroom

  1. February 11th: Lindsey Clouse (Black Hills State University; English)

    • "Bad" English on Screen: How Hollywood Depicts Stigmatized Dialects


Fall 2020:

  1. October 22nd: Masoud Jasbi (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Critical Thinking, Science, & Language

  1. November 5th: Margaret Merrill (UC Davis; Academic Technology Services)

    • "Parlez-vous instructional design?": Stories and lessons learned from an instructional designer with a PhD in Second Language Acquisition

  1. November 19th: Maximiliano Agustin Wilson (Laval University in Quebec; Neuroscience)

    • The behavioral and brain changes in reading aloud during aging

  1. December 3rd: Ciara Anderson (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • "Hey Alexa, what job opportunities are available to linguists in Conversational AI?"

2019-2020

Co-chairs: Peter Joseph Torres (Linguistics) and Daniela Cerbino (Spanish & Portuguese)

Fall 2019:

  1. October 11th: Georgia Zellou (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Everything you wanted to know about the academic job market (but were afraid to ask)

  1. October 25th: Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Wearing (and managing) the many hats of academic life

  1. November 8th: Cati De los Ríos (UC Berkeley; Education)

    • Learning from Los Músicos: Exploring the Translingual Literate Lives of Transnational Youth

  1. November 15th: Thapelo Otlogetswe (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Developing a Setswana Monolingual Dictionary

  1. November 22nd: Jack Hawkins (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • On Bilingualism and Language Change

2018-2019

Co-chairs: Glen Heinrich-Wallace (Linguistics) and Cory Osburn (Spanish and Portuguese)

Spring 2019:

  1. April 23rd: Michelle Cohn (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Exploring human-voice AI interaction: the role of acoustic expressions of emotion

  1. May 7th: Hugo Mailhot (UC Davis, Computer Science)

    • Workshop: Working as a Linguist outside of Academia: "Being the Linguist in the Room"


Winter 2019:

  1. February 4th: Cory Osburn and Glenn Wallace (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Workshop: Student-led information session on the qualifying exam (QE)

  1. February 11th: David Corina (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Cross-modal plasticity in children with cochlear implants

  1. March 4th: Emily Morgan (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • N400 Evidence for Parallel Lexical Predictions


Fall 2018:

  1. October 23rd: Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Workshop: Discuss how to suss out articles from journals you're not familiar with and best practices for finding the references you need

  1. November 6th: Travis Bradley (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

2017-2018

Co-chairs: Claire Henderson (Linguistics) and Marta Llorente Bravo (Spanish and Portuguese)

Spring 2018:

  1. April 19th: Robert Blake (UC Davis; French and Italian)

    • Online Language Learning: Tools and Tricks

  1. May 3rd: Fernanda Ferreira (UC Davis; Psychology)

    • Integrating Integration and Prediction in Psycholinguistics

  1. May 17th: Georgia Zellou (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Workshop: Abstract writing


Winter 2018:

  1. January 18th: Carlee Arnett (UC Davis; German and Russian)

    • Using Animations to Teach the German Passive

  1. February 15th: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics) and Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Workshop: Women in Academia

  1. March 1st: Justin Spence (UC Davis; Native American Studies)

    • Linguistic and Narrative Perspectives on California Dene Migrations

  1. March 8th: Julia Menard-Warwick (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Inclusionary and Exclusionary Interpretation Practices at Bilingual Parent Meetings


Fall 2017:

  1. October 17th: Robert Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Frequency effects in syntactic variation: Evidence from subject personal pronoun variation in U.S. Spanish and Mandarin Chinese

  1. October 31st: Eugênia Fernandes (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Idioms in Brazilian Portuguese: lexicalization and grammaticalization based on a continuum analysis

  1. November 14th: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Workshop: Job searching and employment as a language researcher

  1. November 28th: Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese) and Hugo Mailhot (UC Davis; Computer Science

    • MorphoLex: A morphological database for English and French words

2016-2017

Co-chairs: Benjamin Gomes (Linguistics) and Aaron Yamada (Spanish and Portuguese)

Spring 2017:

  1. April 19th: Luna Filipović (UC Davis; Language and Cognition)

    • How language affects what we say and remember: Spanish and English through a forensic linguistic lens

  1. May 3rd: Justin Davidson (UC Berkeley, Spanish and Romance Linguistics)

    • "Endogenous Change, Contact-Induced Change, and the Burden of Proof: Exploring "Natural" and "Unremarkable" /s/-Voicing in the Spanish-Catalan Setting"

  1. May 10th: Meredith Tamminga (University of Pennsylvania; Linguistics)

    • How much do individuals vary?

  1. May 24th: Robert Blake (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • What makes online language courses tick?


Winter 2017:

  1. January 25th: Jordi Torras (CEO of Inbenta)

    • Talk on Natural Language Processing

  1. February 22nd: Noriko Ishihara (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Agency in Language Teaching: Translingual Practice and Identity Negotiation

  1. March 1st: Miguel Ángel Fuentes Cortés (Visiting Student from La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

    • Patrones funcionales-valorativos en informes de arbitraje de artículos de investigación (talk was in Spanish)

  1. March 8th: Robert Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Dialectology in a Multilingual North America

  1. March 15th: Emily Moline (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Emergent Adult L1 Literacy: Findings from a Case Study


Fall 2016:

  1. October 11th: Kenji Sagae (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Syntactic parsing of child language and automatic assessment of grammatical development

  1. October 25th: Travis Bradley (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • The Evolution of Judeo-Spanish Palatals: Using Optimality Theory to Model Phonological Change and Microvariation

  1. November 10th: Betty Leaver (Defense Language Institute in Monterey)

    • Task-Based Instruction

  1. November 22nd: Agustina Carando (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)

    • Innovative usages in the Spanish of the United States: The role of English

2015-2016

Co-chairs: Caitlin Tierney (Linguistics) and Melissa Vega-Valdez (Spanish & Portuguese)

Winter 2016:

  1. February 5th: Andrew Cohen (University of Minnesota; Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA))

    • The Learning of Pragmatics from Nonnative Teachers

  1. February 22nd: Scott Payne (McGraw-Hill Education (Principal Instruction Design Analyst))

    • The Promise and Challenge of Conducting SLA Research in Digital Gaming Environments

  1. February 23rd: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics)

    • Workshop: Job searching and employment


Fall 2015:

  1. November 24th: Richard Kern (UC Berkeley; Berkeley Language Center (Director))

    • Technology and Second Language Acquisition