On Friday, June 2nd, Maxine Uy Altura, a junior in the Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism major presented her research entitled "Cross-linguistic influence in Tagalog-English bilingual speech" at the Koret Undergraduate Research Slam at McHenry Library.
Maxine has been one of the fifty-two campus-wide 22-23 Koret Undergraduate Research Scholars and has been conducting her research on the speech patterns of heritage Tagalog speakers in California in the Bilingualism Research Lab under the supervision of Professor Mark Amengual.
When asked about her research experience in the Bilingualism Research Lab, Maxine states that "doing research in the UCSC Bilingualism Research Lab this year has been the highlight of my undergraduate career. Before this school year, I didn't know much about research within the applied linguistics field, but working with Dr. Amengual has really opened my eyes to bilingualism research and applied linguistics research as a whole. I am glad to have gotten hands-on experience that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else." Maxine adds "being a Filipino student and an applied linguistics major are both incredibly important to my identity. In starting this project on English-Tagalog Bilingual Speech, I have been able to connect these two identities and create something bigger than myself. I am excited to continue data collection and acoustic analysis in the coming months, as well as finally start writing the research paper! Ultimately, I am glad to have been given this opportunity to give back to my community and contribute to an understudied field of linguistics."
Well done, Maxine!
