Assistant professor Italian language and culture

Focus on Second Language Acquisition, both theoretical (mental representations of grammar) and methodological issues (ecologically-valid assessment methods).

Passionate about Community Based Research and knowledge dissemination.

For more see: uu.nl/staff/MPinto

Contact: m.pinto@uu.nl

Working on

  • Project: Nederlands voor alle kinderen, developing a new tool for assessing L2 development in newcomers. M. Pinto & S. Zuckerman (p.i)
  • Project: ERC-Microcontact, mapping and analyzing the heritage language of Italian migrants in America. R. D’Alessandro (p.i.)
  • Project: Bidirectional Storytelling, Community Engaged Learning project for BA-course: Podcast as a medium of exchanging learning practices of Italian L+ between students of Italian at Utrecht University and immigrants in Italy learning Italian at the Centro Astalli in Rome. M. Jansen & M. Pinto (p.i.)
  • L2 acquisition of definite determiners in Italian: two theoretical studies on syntax, semantics and discourse-pragmatics of plural noun phrases in Italian L2.

Relevant other positions

  • Dissemination activities (presentations/workshop) about growing up with two languages for bilingual families and professionals.

Teaching

  • BA Meertaligheid: Taal en talen in een wereld vol verschillen.
  • BA Italiano: dal significato alla forma.
  • BA Language Acquisition & Language Structure.
  • BA Lingue e culture a contatto.
  • BA Migrazioni al plurale.
  • BA Fondamenti di linguistica italiana.
  • MA Plurilinguismo e interculturalità.

Three relevant publications

Schuiringa, M., & Pinto, M. (2017). Dirlo o non dirlo?: Discrezione in situazioni imbarazzanti nella cultura italiana e in quella olandese. Incontri31(2), 28-44.

Pinto, M., & Zuckerman, S. (2019). Coloring Book: A new method for testing language comprehension. Behavior research methods51(6), 2609-2628.

Pinto, M. (2020). Advising Parents on Bilingual Education of Their Children. In Enhancing Intercultural Communication in Organizations (pp. 77-82). Routledge.