On Tues. Apr. 18, 2023, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Dr. Katherine Christoffersen (UTRGV, Project Director/Principal Investigator (PI)), Dr. Ana Carvalho (University of Arizona, co-PI), and Dr. Ryan Bessett (University of California San Diego, co-PI) a Humanities Collections and References Resource (HCRR) Implementation grant for their project entitled “Bilingual Voices in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands: Preserving, Expanding, and...

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On April 22, 2022, Ms. Carolina DeAnda was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award for her poster entitled 'Celebrating Language Variation in RGV Classrooms' at the Engaged Scholar Symposium on Thurs. Apr. 21. This poster builds on our March AAAL 2022 presentation. This poster describes the process of planning, designing, and creating online teaching modules based on the CoBiVa. Each teaching module includes background information on the topic, links to resources, an explanation of...

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At our first in-person conference in years, CoBiVa traveled to the 2022 meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics in Pittsburgh, PA. Dr. Christoffersen and undergarduate student Ms. Carolina DeAnda presented "Citizen Sociolinguistics at the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Community-Based, Community-Driven Sociolinguistic Corpus with Resources for the Public" on a panel on citizen sociolinguistics.  The CoBiVa is a part of citizen...

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In December, 2021, Dr. Katherine Christoffersen together with M.A. student Ms.Kimberly Regalado published an article entitled "Toda lengua es válida aquí en esta clase: Translanguaging pedagogy and critical language awareness in sociolinguistics classes on the U.S.-Mexico border" in the Journal of Bilingual Education Research and Instruction. This article is a part of a special issue organized by the Center of Bilingual Studies (CBS)...

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As a part of the National Endowment of Humanities project "Bilingual Voices in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands," Dr. Bessett, Dr. Carvalho and I wrote a white paper on our findings on technologically-aided transcription methods for bilingual sociolinguistic corpora. This white paper entitled "Technologically-Aided Transcription Methods for Sociolinguistic Corpora: Findings, Resources, and Considerations" details the project from beginning to end including links to resources...

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This year's LASSO 2021 Virtual Conference included two presentations related to the Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) and presented by three faculty and five students. First, Dr. Katherine Christoffersen, Ms. Kimberly Regalado, and Ms. Carolina DeAnda presented "Learning sociolinguistics en dos idiomas: Translangaging pedagogy and critical language awareness in university level courses" on Friday, Sept. 24. This presentation analyzed how students responded to a...

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During Spring 2021, we tested out 2 different transcription methods (Microsoft Stream and ExpressScribe) with students in internship style corpus development classes at UTRGV and UA. We here report the findings of both the speed and ease of use of these methods, funded in part by the National Endowment of the Humanities. Based on preliminary findings on speed and ease of use during a pilot study with research assistants and evaluations of accuracy, SpeechNotes was no longer considered a...

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During our project, funded in part by the National Endowment of the Humanities, Dr. Ryan Bessett, Dr. Ana Carvalho, and myself (Dr. Katherine Christoffersen) tested several technologically-aided transcription methods. We eventually found that Stream auto-generated transcripts were preferable based on accuracy, speed, and ease of use. While Stream generated transcripts with timestamps, it did not create the precise WEBVTT format required for time-alignment and clickable transcripts on the...

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CoBiVa was represented at the 2021 virtual convening of the American Association of Applied Linguistics, which took place from Friday March 19 through Tuesday March 23. Maddie (Madeline) Hernandez presented her project entitled "Virtual community engagement & applied linguistics: The impact of creating digital resources for the public" at a live roundtable session. There was a lively and active discussion about this work, created collaboratively with Freddy (Jose)...

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Following our review of technologically-aided transcription methods and preliminary analysis of speed and ease of use, we analyzed the accuracy of two such those methods: auto-generated transcription (Microsoft Stream) and audio from speakers (SpeechNotes). This is part of the National Endowment of the Humanities grant-funded project "Bilingual Voices in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands: Technology-Enhanced Transcription and Community Engaged Scholarship." The...

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During this year's LASSO 2020 Virtual Conference, three different groups of students and researchers from UTRGV connected to the Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) presented. First, our Engaged Scholar & Artist Award awardees Ms. Madeline Hernández and Mr. José Jiménez did a phenomenal job presenting at their first ever academic conference. Their presentation entitled "Digital Resources for the Public: Virtual Community Engagement and its...

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Congratulations to Ms. Madeline Hernández and Mr. José Jiménez who have been awarded the prestigious Engaged Scholar & Artists Award by UTRGV for their project Digital Resources for the Public: Virtual Community Engagement and its Impact. They will be working on this project during 2020-2021, and it's a great fit for our current situation.  The purpose of this research is bifold: 1) to create digital materials/resources based on the research of...

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On Sunday June 6,   the CoBiVa was featured in the Brownsville Herald! We're very thankful to Ms. Erin Sheridan and   The Brownsville Herald  for the article, which made the front page. We're very excited about the opportunity to share with the community about the beauty and value of code-switching and bilingualism! The news article covered the   National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH)  grant awarded to Dr. Katherine Christoffersen...

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On Tues. Apr. 7, 2020, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Dr. Katherine Christoffersen (UTRGV, Project Director/Principal Investigator (PI), Dr. Ana Carvalho (University of Arizona, co-PI), and Dr. Ryan Bessett (UTRGV, co-PI) a Humanities Collections and References Resource grant for their project entitled “Bilingual Voices in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands” in the amount of $59,975. This multi-site project will document language in the Rio Grande...

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