B258 Wells Hall, 619 Red Cedar Road
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
Phone: 517-353-0754
Fax: 517-432-1149
Patti Spinner received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, and also has an M.A. in German from the Ohio State University. She has taught German as a foreign language at the Ohio State University and Kenyon College, and ESL at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rostock (Germany), and Inlingua Language Schools (Germany). She has also developed music-based lessons for ESL grammar instruction, including Betty Azar's English Grammar series.
Research Interests
Dr. Spinner's primary research interests are in the second language acquisition of morphosyntax from a formal perspective, particularly the acquisition of features such as grammatical gender, case, number, and tense. Currently she is investigating the acquisition of gender and number in L2 Swahili. Another project examines Italian gender and number using eye-tracking measures. Other research interests include morphosyntactic measures of L2 language development and the use of music in the instruction of L2 grammar. Her work has appeared in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, and the International Review of Applied Linguistics.
Publications
Patti Spinner (2011). Second language assessment and morphosyntactic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33: 529-561.
Patti Spinner (2011). Second language research in Bantu languages: A (mostly) untapped research opportunity. Review article. Second Language Research 27: 418-430.
John Grinstead & Patti Spinner (2009). Subjects, topicalizations and Wh-questions in child German and Southern Romance. Probus 21, 51-82.
Patti Spinner & Alan Juffs (2008). The L2 acquisition of gender in a complex morphological system: The case of German. IRAL, the International Review of Applied Linguistics 46, 315-348.
ESL Song Lessons. (2007). Azar Grammar Series, Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. New York: Pearson Longman.
Presentations
Patti Spinner, Susan Gass, & Jennifer Behney (2011, September). Ecological validity in L2 eyetracking research. Stockholm: EuroSLA.
Sehoon Jung & Patti Spinner (2011, March). L2 processing of wh-movement in English by adult learners: The effect of L1 and learning environment" University of Washington: GASLA 11.
Patti Spinner, Susan Gass, & Jennifer Behney. (2010, October). Using the eye-tracker for a morphosyntactic study in SLA. Paper presentation as part of colloquium: Eye-tracking for SLA research: Applications, outcomes, and methodological considerations.
Patti Spinner, Susan Gass, & Jennifer Behney. (2010, September). The L2 Acquisition of gender in Italian: An eye-tracking study. Paper presented at the European Second Language Association conference, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Patti Spinner (2010, March). The second language acquisition of Bantu languages. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Atlanta, GA.
Patti Spinner. (2009). The detection and assembly of the number feature in L2 Swahili. Boston University Conference on Language Development 34: Boston.
Patti Spinner & Jamie Thomas (2008). Number and gender in the L2 acquisition of Swahili (2008). Boston University Conference on Language Development 33: Boston.
Patti Spinner & Jamie Thomas (2008). The L2 acquisition of grammatical gender in Swahili. GALANA 3 (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, North America). Storrs: University of Connecticut.
Patti Spinner & Alan Juffs (2007). ESL placement tests based on morphosyntactic development: Can it be done? EuroSLA 17. Newcastle: Newcastle University.
Patti Spinner (2006). The mapping problem in L2 acquisition of case: Evidence from learners of German. GALANA 2 (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, North America). Montreal, QC: McGill University.