SLAC Lab

Dr. Vera Lee-Schoenfeld , Primary Investigator

Vera Lee-Schoenfeld, PhD, is primarily a theoretical linguist with a research focus on German syntax. She also has an interest in language acquisition, holding degrees in TESOL and French Language Education. She is the co-author of Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language, Second edition (2010).

Dr. Pilar Chamorro , Faculty Mentor

Pilar Chamorro's research focuses on the semantic and pragmatic contribution of temporal, aspectual, and modal expressions across languages. She is also interested in the semantics of plurals, the mass/count distinction, and quantification.

Caroline Schneider , M.A., Faculty Mentor

Caroline's research focuses on second language acquisition, phonetics & phonology, and sociolinguistics. She is interested in the cognitive factors that affect the acquisition of L2 phonologies and how they interface with the other theoretical subfields of linguistics.

Emre Keser , PhD Student, Co-Coordinator

Emre (he/him) is a PhD student in Linguistics at the UGA. His research focuses broadly on psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and bilingual language processing. He is especially interested in how people understand sentences in real time and how language experience and cognitive factors shape comprehension. His work combines experimental methods, eye-tracking, and cross-linguistic perspectives to study language processing in both neurotypical individuals and people with aphasia.

Beyza Kucuk, PhD Student, Co-Coordinator

Beyza is a PhD student in Language and Literacy Education (LLED) at the UGA. Her research focuses on L2 writing, language assessment, and the impact of technology on how written language is produced and evaluated. She is particularly interested in how readers judge and interact with text in contexts where human and AI-generated writing overlap. Beyza’s current work includes an off-line study examining how readers perceive and evaluate AI-produced versus human-written texts.

Emma Dalbo , PhD Student

Emma’s research interests surround the intersection of AI and language teaching. Her primary language of interest is Korean. She studied Linguistics and Computer Science at Boston College, and she previously worked as an English teacher in South Korea.

Joshua Craig , PhD Student

Joshua is a first-year PhD student specializing in syntax and second language acquisition. He has eight years of ESL teaching experience and is particularly interested in language learning advice on YouTube, L2 syntactic development, and pedagogical approaches for learners with limited formal education.

Nova, Undergraduate Researcher

Nova (they/them) is an undergraduate student studying Linguistics, International Affairs, and Asian Languages and Literature with an emphasis on Chinese, and minoring in Korean and Vietnamese. Their interests outside of SLA include historical linguistics and language variation. They are currently conducting a literature review on the acquisition of second language writing.

Grant Shubin, Linguistics and Cognitive Science major

Grant is an undergraduate student studying Linguistics and Cognitive Science with a minor in Japanese and TESOL. He is very interested in motivation and its impact on the efficiency of acquiring second languages.

Andrew Vance, Linguistics major

Andrew is an undergraduate student interested in Second Language Acquisition. He currently does research on the acquisition of sound symbolism in L2 Japanese.