- Associate Professor of Spanish | Proficiency Coordinator | Director, International Studies and Diplomacy | Faculty Leader, SLOAA
- Email: spino@uri.edu
- Office Location: Swan Hall 130
Biography
LeAnne Spino teaches Spanish language and linguistics courses. She is the Director of the International Studies and Diplomacy Program and the Proficiency Coordinator for the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. She also works with the Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning as the Faculty Leader for Student Learning Outcomes, Assessment, and Accreditation. Before coming to URI, she was a Spanish lecturer at Princeton University.
Research
Dr. Spino specializes in second language acquisition. Much of her research focuses on issues that impact language teaching directly. She is particularly interested in the development of second language proficiency and the sociopolitics of language acquisition and pedagogy, especially as it pertains to heritage language speakers of Spanish. She hopes her research in these areas results in the improvement of language instruction.
Dr. Spino also conducts psycholinguistic research centered around the efficacy of online techniques such as eye tracking and self-paced reading to measure second language morphosyntactic processing. She is particularly interested in how methodological decisions affect empirical research outcomes.
Education
Ph.D., Second Language Studies, Michigan State University, 2017
B.A., Spanish and Psychology (cognitive), The College of New Jersey, 2009
Selected Publications
Preseau, L., Spino, L. & Tracksdorf, N. (2024). Gender inclusivity across the curriculum: An exploration of novice and advanced course content through student perspectives. In K. Knisely & E. Russell (Eds.) Redoing linguistic worlds: Unmaking gender binaries, remaking gender pluralities (pp. 89-116). Multilingual Matters.
Spino, L. (2023). Leveraging student surveys to promote recruitment and retention. In E. Heidrich Uebel, F. A. Kronenberg, and S. Sterling (Eds). Language program vitality in the United States: From surviving to thriving in higher education (pp. 159-165). Springer.
Méndez Seijas, J. & Spino, L. (2023). Written “corrective” feedback in Spanish as a heritage language: Problematizing the construct of error. Journal of Second Language Writing, 60.
Spino, L., Echevarria, M. & Wu, Y. (2022). Assisted self-assessment to optimize the OPIc test experience. Foreign Language Annals, 55(3), 853-876.
de Bruin, K. & Spino, L. (2022). Achieving more together than separately: Creating a department-wide vision for student success. Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) Bulletin, 58-69.
Erickson, L. & Spino, L. (2022). The Integrated Performance Assessment at the novice level: An experiment that works. French Review, 96(1), 53-75.
Méndez Seijas, J. & Spino, L. (2022). Critical sociolinguistics meets curriculum design: Demystifying language ideologies in the heritage learner classroom. Spanish as a Heritage Language, 2(2), 292-306.
Spino, L. (2022). The processing of grammatical gender agreement in Spanish: A methodological exploration of eye-tracking. In Ayoun, D. (Ed.), The Acquisition of Gender (pp. 184-208). John Benjamins.
Spino, L. & Wu, Y. (2021). Developing a growth mindset for language proficiency. The Language Educator, pp. 22-25.
Spino, L. & de Bruin, K. (2020). Increasing graduates’ employability through language proficiency and dual degrees. The Language Educator, pp. 32-36.
Godfroid, A., & Spino, L. (2016). Under the radar: Triangulating think-alouds and finger tracking to detect the unnoticed. In A. Mackey & E. Marsden (Eds.), Advancing methodology and practice: The IRIS repository of instruments for research into second languages. New York: Routledge, pp. 73-90.
Godfroid, A., & Spino, L. (2015). Reconceptualizing reactivity of think-alouds and eye-tracking: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Language Learning, 65(4), 896-928. DOI: 10.1111/lang.12136