Joseph Garcia
Bio
I began a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition at CMU in the Fall of 2023. I am particularly interested in how to empower language learners by working to move away from the “deficient non-native” model to a more agentive, multicompetence framework. My research interests center around these topics and consider affective aspects of self-efficacy and motivation.
I have been learning Arabic for the last 7 years encouraged by a desire to engage with Arabic speakers and share life with them. I love visiting the Middle East and North Africa and practicing as many dialects as possible. For the past few years I have had the pleasure of helping other Americans study Arabic and discover the beauty of the language and cultures represented in this region. Arabic education and the use of multiple dialects in the classroom is a key area of interest to me and I plan to use classroom based research to investigate this further.
Areas of Interest
- Multilingualism
- Arabic Dialects
- Learner Identity
- Self-Efficacy
- Motivation
Selected Awards and Honors
- G. Richard Tucker Second Langauge Acquisition Fellowship
- Arabic Flagship
Selected Community, University, and Professional Service
- Graduate Society of Applied Linguistics, Texas Tech University
- Alliance Church, Volunteer ESL Instructor