Browsing by Author "Velazquez-Castillo, Maura, committee member"

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Embargo
Decodificando la salud mental: effective Spanish communication and cultural understanding in a therapy session with the Hispanic community
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) García Faúndez, Catalina, author; Miller De Rutté, Alyssia, advisor; Velazquez-Castillo, Maura, committee member; Nekrasova-Beker, Tatiana, committee member
This project addresses the need for linguistic and cultural competence between U.S. mental health providers and Spanish-speaking clients. There is an increasing need for mental health providers to conduct therapy sessions in Spanish, but there is a lack of programs that train these professionals to provide successful sessions. This project presents results from a language needs analysis that was conducted to determine the linguistic and cultural needs required to have therapy sessions in Spanish. Data was triangulated using different methods and sources, including on-site therapy session observations, a survey for Spanish-speaking university students, a survey for graduate students studying psychology, and interviews with both mental health providers and Spanish-speaking community members. The results show the language tasks and functions and the cultural components and considerations necessary to interact successfully in Spanish in the context of mental health. This project illuminates the urgent need for a comprehensive Spanish program for mental health professionals. This research aims to start bridging the language and cultural gap for Spanish-speaking clients in the U.S. when they access mental health services.
Open Access
The relationship between metalinguistic knowledge/learning contexts and language proficiency
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Hanson, Jenna, author; Correa, Maite, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, advisor; Velazquez-Castillo, Maura, committee member; Doe, Sue, committee member
This study explores the relationship between learning context on learners' oral proficiency, metalinguistic knowledge of Spanish (MKS) and metalinguistic knowledge of English (MKE). The study also explores the relationship between MKE and MKS, and MKS on oral proficiency between the two learning contexts. The two contexts in question were a traditional semester (TS) that met five days a week, fifty minutes a day for fifteen weeks and a four-week summer intensive program that met five days a week, four hours a day for four weeks. A COPI (computerized oral proficiency interview) was administered to measure oral proficiency and two different measures of metalinguistic knowledge were employed to test MKE and MKS. The MKE test was administered as a pre and posttest, whereas the MKS test was given at the end of the semester. The study found that, a) students in the TS group have significantly higher levels of MKS, b) student in the TS group significantly improve their MKE more so than the IS group, c) there is a significant relationship between MKS and oral proficiency regardless of group, d) there is a significant relationship between MKE pretest and MKS at the end of the semester, and e) there is no significant difference between oral proficiency between the two contexts.
Open Access
Una investigación sobre el aspecto léxico y la comparación de su aplicación en el idioma Español y Chino
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Guo, Jianing, author; Correa, Maite, advisor; Velazquez-Castillo, Maura, committee member; Martey, Rosa, committee member
This paper discusses lexical aspect and its presence in Spanish and Chinese. We believe that linguistically, aspect exists in two dimensions: at sentence level (grammatical aspect) and at lexical level (lexical aspect). Semantically, lexical aspect is classified into state, activity, accomplishment and achievement. In this paper, we propose a method to distinguish these four types of verbs. In Spanish, lexical aspect associates with infinitive verbs, while in Chinese, lexical aspect does not consider particles as 着 zhe, 了l e, 过 guò but takes into account the complements. This paper studies the characteristics of lexical aspect in Chinese and then discusses in specific the aspectual function of resultative complements and static complements in Chinese. Furthermore, a comparison between those complements and its counterparts in Spanish is implemented.