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María González-Ferrer

María González-Ferrer
Blurred image of the arch used as background for stylistic purposes.
PhD Candidate
Teaching Assistant of Spanish

Born in Madrid, Spain, María is a Ph.D. candidate in the Hispanic Linguistics program. Recently honored with the Sigma Delta Pi Award for international research, she will spend the Fall 2024 semester conducting research in Spain and Mexico. In addition, she will be teaching two sections of the SPAN 2001E online course.

Her primary research interests are Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics. For her dissertation, María is examining how English-speaking learners acquire Spanish pronoun doubling structures and exploring variations of this structure among native Spanish speakers from Argentina, Spain, and Mexico. Previous to this research, she examined the semantic evolution from Latin of the Spanish prepositions por and para, as well as the cognitively-based semantic senses that these prepositions encode. Her study presented convincing evidence in favor of taking an alternative conceptual and meaning-based approach to teaching these prepositions to L2 learners of Spanish, and abandoning the more traditional treatments presented in 34 first and second-year college Spanish textbooks. Her ultimate goal as a linguist and a Spanish teacher is to improve didactic materials and raise awareness of the importance of accurate and authentic data that language students are exposed to.

In the last 5 years at UGA, María taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced Spanish, both in person and online (SPAN 1002E, SPAN 1110, SPAN 1110E, SPAN 2001, SPAN 2001E, and SPAN 2002). She also served as a TA for the Service learning class (SPAN 4090), and as the Writing Intensive Program TA for the Latin American cinema class (SPAN 4082).

In addition to teaching regular classes, María received Graduate School Research Grants for the 2020-2021 and 2023-2024 academic years. During the 2020-2021 year, she served as a Graduate Research Assistant with Dr. Quesada and Dr. Blackwell. In 2023, she was honored as one of the 15 UGA graduate students selected for the Future Faculty Fellowship Program. She also coordinated the UGA Study Abroad program in Valencia during the summers of 2022 and 2023.

Of note:

Besides her studies, she is part of the organizing committee of the Spanish short film festival "España en corto". She is also part of the organizing committee of the Women+'s Forum series, that champions female voices in academia. 

If you would like to contact María, feel free to send her an email (maria.gonzalez3@uga.edu). 

Education:

She completed a MA in Hispanic Linguistics at the UGA with a minor in Cinema, a BA in Translation & Interpreting of English, Portuguese & Spanish at Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain), and a BA. in Advertising and Public Relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). 

 

 

Articles Featuring María González-Ferrer

Every year the Center for Teaching and Learning recognizes the significant contributions graduate students make to the instructional mission of the University of Georgia through Teaching Awards sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Instruction.…

María González-Ferrer has been selected as a recipient of a 2024 Sigma Delta Pi (SDP…

María González-Ferrer, Graham Johnson, and Eliot Westdorp, doctoral students in Romance Linguistics, recently published their paper "The historical evolution of the Spanish discourse marker pues from the 16th century" in the proceedings of the…

Events featuring María González-Ferrer, J. Graham Johnson, Ningxian Li
Gilbert Hall Room 116 and ZOOM

The Romance Languages GSO is proud to organize the following colloquium:

  1. 'Nunca voy a usar el lenguaje inclusivo'. Actitudes lingüisticas hacia el languaje inclusivo en Espana y Argentina

    Presented by Maria Gonzales & Graham Johnson (in Spanish, at 4:00)
  2. The transition feature of todavia

    Presented by Ningxian Li (in…
On ZOOM

GSO invites you to the next colloquium:

"Análisis de por y para en los libros de texto"

by María González-Ferrer

contact Anais.Jandot@uga.edu for ZOOM link

,
Gilbert Hall

People from all departments are welcome at this event. Please, feel free to share this info and the flyer with your students. 

,
Gilbert Hall

People from all departments are welcome at this event. Please, feel free to share this info and the flyer with your students. 

Major Professor

Professor of Spanish Linguistics

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