Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented a talk titled “Language Variation and Standard Language Ideologies in Spanish Classrooms” at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 17–19 in Chicago, Illinois.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented at the Heritage Languages Special Interest Group panel of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 18-20 in Boston, Massachusetts. Their talk, titled “Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Reflections on Their Study Abroad Experiences,” was based on a thematic analysis of follow-up interviews with a subset of participants who had completed their original survey. It explored how the participants’ heritage speaker status impacted their study abroad experiences.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a talk titled “Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Reflections on Their Unique Study Abroad Experiences” with coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg at the 9th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, held February 24–26 in Tallahassee, Florida.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a recorded talk titled “The Unique Experiences of Heritage Spanish Speakers Studying Abroad” with her collaborator Tammy Jandrey Hertel (University of Lynchburg) at the 2021 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo, which was held virtually November 19–21.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a poster titled “On Becoming Bilingual: Students’ Language Ideologies in a (Second) Language Acquisition Course” with her collaborator Suzanne García-Mateus (California State University, Monterey Bay) at the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, which was held virtually March 20–23, 2021.