Research, Teaching, & Cultural Engagement
In the summer of 2015, I spent two weeks in Novo Hamburgo, Brazil, where I collected data for my M.A. paper with my colleague and dear friend Dr. Taiane Malabarba. During my stay I worked as a visiting EFL instructor at Cultura Americana Ethic, visited UNISINOS, and began learning Brazilian Portuguese.
My M.A. paper takes a cultural-historical approach to analyzing the conceptual representations of manner-path conflation in motion event narrations as produced by Brazilian Portuguese learners of English. In my research, I analyze both speech and co-speech gesture as an intrinsically-related system of communication, which provides a more holistic view of the complete mental image during online thinking. This line of research is particularly useful in assessing learner development and comprehension of L2 features that are often overlooked.
Besides collecting data and teaching English, I visited nearby towns and became acquainted with the culture in Rio Grande do Sul. I went to a Churrasco (Brazilian Barbeque), which was hosted by local Gauchos — the people welcomed me warmly and the food was exceptional! I would like to extend a great deal of my gratitude to my advisor Dr. Jim Lantolf and the Center for Language Acquisition, without whom my trip and data collection would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Taiane Malabarba for hosting me during my stay and for helping me collect my data.
Manner and Path Through Gesture:
An Examination of Motion Events by Brazilian L2 Speakers of English
At this year's conference for the American Assosciation of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2016 held in Orlando, FL, Dr. James P. Lantolf, Dr. Taiane Malabarba, and I presented our analysis of our co-speech gesture data collected in the previous year. As this was my first formal poster presentation at a conference, I was quite pleased to receive the abundant feedback given by fellow AAAL goers. Moreover, I was humbled by the kind remarks made about our work, and was honored to be visited by some of the researchers that inspired the study we presented.
Keenan M. Sweigart
Applied Linguist and Second Language Educator