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Katherine Martin
Katherine Martin, Associate Professor
Linguistics
Katherine I. Martin is an associate professor in Linguistics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and head of the APPLES (Applied Psycholinguistics in Literacy, Education, & Second Language) Lab, part of the Saluki Linguistics Laboratory Consortium.
Originally from Michigan, she earned an AB in Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science from the University of Michigan and an MA and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. She has been at Southern Illinois University Carbondale since 2015.
Dr. Martin works primarily in the fields of TESOL and second language acquisition. Her research focuses on second language literacy development, particularly the influence of writing system on word recognition and spelling; vocabulary learning; and the influence of individual differences such as working memory, phonological awareness, and foreign language anxiety. She is also interested in the complexities of coding second language data (e.g., in spoken data, how do we distinguish an accent versus an incorrect response? In written data, how can we distinguish spelling versus grammatical errors?) and extending the use of research instruments originally developed for monolingual populations to multilingual individuals.
Her current projects include a detailed examination of spelling skills in users of English as a second language and examining the time-course of word recognition and sentence reading using priming and eye-tracking methods. She also has active projects with students and former students looking at teachers’ familiarity with foreign language reading anxiety and comparing the efficacy of various strategies for learning foreign language verbs.
She teaches courses in multilingual education, language assessment, research methods, introductory linguistics, professional development, and second language reading and vocabulary. When not involved with academic work, she enjoys hiking, traveling, reading, and spending time with her husband and two pugs.