Alanna Quinn | Spanish Major and Elementary Education Minor '18

Alanna Quinn, Spanish major, Elementary Education and BCLAD minor, and Honors student, received the Grand Prize $1000 in the William H. Hannon Library's 2018 Undergraduate Library Research Award competition. The awarded project is Alanna’s Honors thesis Grammatical gender acquisition in L2 Spanish (mentor: Prof. Mónica Cabrera, Spanish). Alanna investigated how grammatical gender is presented in Spanish textbooks at the college and high school levels by analyzing their content based on a thorough review of recent hypotheses on the L2 acquisition of gender. Apart from presenting a poster at the 10th LMU Undergraduate Research Symposium, her work was presented at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Southern California Chapter conference. About her presentation, Alanna says, “[It] was a great experience, because it allowed me to have one-on-one conversations […] and receive feedback. I enjoyed the challenge of condensing a lot of information into a brief explanation and poster.”