Lorenzo García-Amaya, assistant professor of romance languages and literatures and co-director of the Speech Production Lab, highlighted his research and teaching methods during his lecture as the University of Michigan’s 30th Golden Apple Award recipient.
In a unique twist, García-Amaya’s Oct. 16 presentation, titled “Words You Didn’t Know,” was delivered online as a partially animated video. It was followed by a live question-and-answer session.
The Golden Apple Award recognizes outstanding teaching. It is U-M’s only teaching award bestowed by students.
Winners are asked to give the lecture they would want to give if it were the last one of their careers. The tradition is inspired by teacher Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos, a third-century sage who taught others to “get your life in order one day before you die.”
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, García-Amaya is the first Golden Apple Award recipient to receive notification of the award on Zoom and deliver his lecture virtually.
García-Amaya, who teaches Spanish linguistics, said helping students achieve their goals is the best part of his job. He said he strives to create a safe, engaging learning environment, incorporating a mix of PowerPoint presentations, online tutorials, readings, discussions and classroom activities.
“But perhaps what I work the hardest on is making sure that everyone is present in the here and now,” he said. “In my experience, students tend to engage best when they are aware that their teaching is subordinated to their learning process.”
García-Amaya highlighted new teaching aids he has been developing. One is a tool designed to help students pronounce hard sounds in Spanish. Students can click on a phonetics symbol, and an illustrated cross-section of a mouth moves to illustrate how the sound is produced.
García-Amaya also talked about some of his recent research projects, including one that involved the study of a small group of people in Patagonia who are fluent in both Spanish and Afrikaans.
In another project, García-Amaya investigated the effect of captioning on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar. He helped design a video that included obscure Spanish words from unfamiliar dialects that learners watching the videos did not know. The researchers found that enhanced captioning increased both recognition and production, or the ability to keep a word’s meaning.
“The work that we’re doing in the Speech Production Lab is leading to a better understanding of how language changes throughout the learning process, as well as the development of more efficient techniques to teach second languages,” he said.
García-Amaya ended his lecture by touching on the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice and other important current issues.
“These problems are large, and almost impossible to combat as individuals,” he said. “However, here in the United States, we have a right by which we can make our collective desires known: voting.
“Undergraduates in my lab are extremely passionate about this topic. They have started a movement to encourage both other lab members and their peers to vote in the upcoming election. Please take their example and spread the word. Do not only exert your right to vote, but also encourage and help those that may feel uncapable or intimidated to do so to also exert their right.
“Remember that the sky’s the limit.”
