Linguistics Consultation
My Linguistics Consultation services are supported by a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics, which was supported the publication of my graduate thesis. I continue to refine my skills in this enterprise through a variety of professional experiences, with clients ranging from academic researchers to developers of educational technology.
I provide effective linguistics consulting by taking into account my clients' overall desired outcomes and by relying on an acute sense of how contemporary linguistic theory can best be applied in pursuit of these outcomes. Depending upon the particular demands of a given project, I make use of research from the domains of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, encompassing nearly all phenomena related to language, to ensure the highest quality consulting service.
Finally, in addition to continuing to work as a linguistics consultant, I also regularly research, publish, and present on topics in field of linguistics. I believe now is one of the greatest times in modern history to be a language scientist as new evidence about the brain, the language faculty, and the human species in general— coupled with advances in technology— have brought us closer to understanding one of humankind's greatest assets. Consequently, I aim to bring my enthusiasm for this science to every project I undertake.
Services include:
- Application of linguistic theories for product development and analysis
- Identification of linguistic evidence to support pedagogical and civil initiatives
- Linguistics for media production
- Discourse analysis / Forensic linguistics
- Language research
If you are interested in any of these services, please do not hesitate to contact me with questions or comments.
- Featured Client
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Englishcentral.com (formerly BabelCentral)— According to the company's website, EnglishCentral "... aims to become the premier, web-based conversational English language learning destination for desktop and mobile users...[whose] unique value proposition is based on combining two key elements:...helping users with their spoken English, using proprietary speech recognition technology that "listens" to users' speech and then scores that speech based on their pronunciation and syntax...[and allowing]users to choose content they love, from a massive database of video content covering popular subject areas (e.g., travel, sports, politics, business, movies) and existing popular content (e.g., Obama's speeches)."
Before launching the Beta version of their product online, the company sought out linguists who were able to anticipate the ways in which users would engage with their products so that learning objectives could be identified and "built into" the product. I was fortunate enough to be chosen as one of those linguists.
Over the course of three months, I worked under contract as a consultant to create a discreet list of learning objectives based on a number of criteria, including:
- The pedagogical potentials of the digital media itself, which entailed becoming familiar with the technology used on the site— a highly-effective voice-recognition system created by the company's founder. In order to identify learning potentials, it was necessary to evaluate the types of language-learning that would be possible through the use of this technology. Of course, the goal of helping learners improve pronunciation was one of the obvious potentials, but it was equally important to seek out additional potentials.
- Once general learning potentials were identified, it was necessary to delineate specific language-learning goals; these goals needed to be designed with the learner in mind, and since each learner comes to the product with a different set of skills and a different level of proficiency, these considerations had to be addressed in the process.
- The language-learning objectives also had to be supported by evidence from within the field of linguistics; consequently, pyscholinguistic and sociolinguistic theories were used to select the best possible outcomes.