Examples of teaching topics and materials
How does the brain adapt to visual word?
Lectures on word and letter recognition and reading
Slides from a talk I gave to students and colleagues at RIT/NTID in April 2018 about my work on the electrophysiological brain responses to printed words. The key question we are trying to answer is whether the deaf brain adapts differently to reading printed words compared to the hearing brain because it has impoverished access to spoken language. This work is important for our understanding about the brain's plasticity following deafness and has implications for reading and literacy.
![]()
![]()
|
Mapping the sign language lexicon: Intro to ASL-LEX & practical activity
A presentation and practical activity I presented at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, Lexington, KY, July 2017. The aim of the workshop was to provide information on resources useful for research on ASL, including (a) a new corpus of longitudinal data on the acquisition of ASL; (b) ASL-LEX and ASL SignBank lexical databases; and (c) upgrades to ELAN that bridge annotations with SignBank entries. This project was presented at the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research conference in Melbourne, Australia, 2016 and received an Early Career prize. The visualization of the ASL-LEX lexicon won the People's Choice award in the NSF Visualization Challenge competition (details here).
|

lsa_asllex_class_handout.compressed.pdf | |
File Size: | 1040 kb |
File Type: |

tislr2016_asllex_12_3_15.pdf | |
File Size: | 1578 kb |
File Type: |
What do sign languages reveal about human language?
A lecture presented at UCLA to students of Linguistics. In this presentation, I raise questions about language universals and the nature of human language, highlighting the importance of comparative research between signed and spoken languages, and review some key concepts in sign language research.
![]()
|
Sign Language Aphasia
Slides from a lecture on sign language aphasia in the Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences department, San Diego State University. In this talk, I introduce undergraduate students to aphasia in deaf individuals who use sign language to communicate. What can lesion studies in deaf signers tell us about the functional organization of the brain? Deaf ASL signers offer a unique group of people to test questions of language universals, and the extent to which the deaf brain may be different from the hearing brain. Does damage to the brain's left hemisphere, e.g. following a stroke, lead to similar language impairments in deaf and hearing individuals? Read more here: https://www.aphasia.org/stories/sign-language-aphasia/
![]()
|
List of courses taught to date:
Undergraduate:
ELA020X244S Linguistics of Sign Languages (University of Roehampton)
EN1138 Analysing English (Kingston University)
EN1228 Language in Context I and II (Kingston University)
EN1188 Systems of Language (Kingston University)
EN2218 Global English (Kingston University)
EN3198 Language and Gender (Kingston University)
EN3388 Language and the Media (Kingston University)
EN3348 Professional Skills for Linguists (Kingston University)
EN3208 Stylistics (Kingston University)
Graduate:
ENM405 The Social and Cultural Contexts of English Language Teaching (MA level; Kingston University)
ELA020X244S Linguistics of Sign Languages (University of Roehampton)
EN1138 Analysing English (Kingston University)
EN1228 Language in Context I and II (Kingston University)
EN1188 Systems of Language (Kingston University)
EN2218 Global English (Kingston University)
EN3198 Language and Gender (Kingston University)
EN3388 Language and the Media (Kingston University)
EN3348 Professional Skills for Linguists (Kingston University)
EN3208 Stylistics (Kingston University)
Graduate:
ENM405 The Social and Cultural Contexts of English Language Teaching (MA level; Kingston University)