Applied Linguistics

The two main faculty research streams in Applied Linguistics are sociolinguistics and second-language teaching and learning. FRIT faculty are part of the Ph.D. Concentration in Romance Linguistics and the IPRH reading group Social Dynamics of Language Variation and Change. They conduct research in sociophonetics, language policy and planning in the European Union, languages and cultures of the Mediterranean, language endangerment and death, ethnic minorities and the media, and diaspora and migration. Faculty members collaborate with the campus-wide inter-disciplinary SLATE program and specialize in computer- and mobile-assisted and -mediated language teaching and learning (notably virtual language learning environments and speech-to-text and text-to-speech mobile technology), qualitative and mixed-methods research, teaching and learning of pronunciation and oral/aural skills, and the role of metalinguistic knowledge in instructed L2 learning and teaching.