Justin White Wins Publication Award

White Wins Publication Award from American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese

The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) has named Dr. Justin White, Associate Professor of Spanish/Second Language Acquisition, Linguistics, the recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award for his article, "The Effect of Input-based Instruction Type on the Acquisition of Spanish Accusative Clitics," published in the June 2015 issue of Hispania.

White's award-winning article examines how adult language learners process language and which method is most effective for language acquisition. He collected pretest, treatment, posttest, delayed posttest data from about 500 participants, which totaled approximately 54,000 questions.  "For this particular study," said White,  "I looked at adults learning Spanish and how they processed the object pronouns in sentences in Spanish and developed various treatments to see not only which one was more effective, but also based on their cognitive processes, why it was more effective. What I found was that by accounting for learners default processing strategies, exposure to information that takes into account their processing strategies is most effective."

White's article was published in Hispania, one of the most selective and prestigious publication venues for linguistics and literature internationally. The journal's associate editors nominate and select the winner from all the eligible published articles.

"I was absolutely ecstatic when I received the news about the award. This is the highest honor, especially because this journal covers both Hispanic linguistics as well as literary studies, and it has the largest readership internationally of any journal of its sort," said White.

As the recipient of this year's award, Dr. White will be recognized at the AATSP Annual Meeting, which is being held this year in Miami, July 8-11.