Yasaman Rafat

Challenging Native-speakerism in Pronunciation Training: A Shift to Accent Perception Training

Biography

I am an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies (Linguistics) at the Department of Languages & Cultures, at Western University. I am also the Director of the Second Language Acquisition and Multilingualism Lab at Western University. Previously, I completed my BA (Honors), MA and PhD at the University of Toronto. My research focuses on speech learning, attrition and change in both child and adult second language/dialect learners, bilinguals, and multilinguals. My research is interdisciplinary and collaborative, where I consider the role of input (auditory, orthographic and visual), as well as cognitive and social factors. I work on different languages including Spanish, English, Farsi, Arabic, Italian, and are open to working on other languages. I employ different methodologies to analyze speech production and perception in different populations. These experimental techniques include acoustic analysis, eye-tracking, and neuroscientific methods. My research has been funded both internally and by SSHRC.