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Suzanne Carla Franks

Profile picture for Suzanne Carla Franks

Contact Information

3053 Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building
707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-168
Urbana, IL 61801

Office Hours

Fall 2023: Monday & Tuesday 3:00-4:00 or by appointment
Teaching Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Second Language Acquisition, Phonetics, Phonology, Pronunciation teaching, Portuguese as a Foreign Language, English as a Second Language

Research Description

My research interests lie within several branches of applied linguistics: second language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, and language teaching methods. I am particularly interested in how phonetics and phonology can inform the teaching of second language pronunciation. One example of the interface between linguistics and language pedagogy involves analyzing the relationship between fluency and measurable phenomena, such as speech rate, pausing, and word boundary features.

Education

PhD (2014), Linguistics, University of Georgia
MA (1991), TESL, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Additional Campus Affiliations

Teaching Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Teaching Assistant Professor, Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies
Teaching Assistant Professor, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies

Highlighted Publications

Franks, S., & Barbosa, R. (2014). The importance of word-final vowel duration for non-native portuguese speaker identification by means of Support Vector Machines. Revista Brasileira de Linguistica Aplicada, 14(3), 689-714. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-63982014000300009

View all publications on Illinois Experts

Recent Publications

Eida, M., & Franks, S. C. (2022). Innovation in ITA course design: Incorporating student-designed field-specific corpora. In S. McCrocklin (Ed.), Technological resources for second language pronunciation learning and teaching: Research-based approaches (pp. 305-326). Lexington Books.

Franks, S. C., Spezzini, S., & Prado, J. (2018). Role of Speaking in Academic Language. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0865

Spezzini, S., Franks, S. C., & Carter, D. (2018). Accent Reduction Versus Intelligibility. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0707

Franks, S., & Barbosa, R. (2014). The importance of word-final vowel duration for non-native portuguese speaker identification by means of Support Vector Machines. Revista Brasileira de Linguistica Aplicada, 14(3), 689-714. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-63982014000300009

View all publications on Illinois Experts