PhD Graduate I am currently an Assistant Professor of TESOL in the Modern Languages Department at SUNY Cortland. I'm an acquisitionist and a psycholinguist. My primary linguistic interests pertain to Second Language Acquisition, Cognitive Linguistics and Formal Linguistic Theory (Syntax and Semantics). My work focuses on the development of motion descriptions by English-Portuguese bilinguals. In essence, I am interested in how learners employ different linguistic strategies to describe movement through space. In my tenure at UGA, I received a Fulbright scholarship, a Goizueta Foundation Fellowship, and a Transition to the Professoriate Scholar Award (formerly SEC Emerging Scholars Award). I also founded and coordinated the Second Language Acquisition and Cognition Lab in the Department of Linguistics. My PhD dissertation was UGA's Nominee for CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, Humanities and Fine Arts Category. Education Education: 2019- 2025, PhD in Linguistics, University of Georgia. 2025, Graduate Certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. 2024, Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, University of Georgia. 2009- 2014, B.A., English Studies (Linguistics, Literature and TESOL), magna cum laude, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Research Areas of Interest: Language Acquisition Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis Semantics Syntax and Morphology Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Specific Research Areas: Second Language Acquisition Cognitive Linguistics Semantic Typology and Motion Event Semantics Second Language Pragmatics Grants: PORT-LACSI Research Grant AwardLatin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, University of Georgia, 2024; ($800) Charlayne Hunter-Gault Giving Voice to the Voiceless Program Grant, Grady College, University of Georgia, 2021; ($1,000) Shelter Projects Micro-Fellowship, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia, 2021. ($500) Selected Publications Selected Publications: Peer-Reviewed Publications: Costa-Silva, J., Zhang, S., & Lee-Schoenfeld, V. (2025). The effects of bilingual proficiency on the acceptability of motion encoding strategies. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136672892400052X Costa-Silva, J., Lee-Schoenfeld, V. (2024). Syntactically Branching out Beyond the Traditional Classroom: A Report on the Discovery Method. Language, 100 (3), e99-e123. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a937195 Costa-Silva, J. (2024). Neither Portugal nor Brazil: an investigation of the decolonial efforts in instructional materials adopted in early Portuguese courses at U.S. universities. Hispania, 107(1), 67-86. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpn.2024.a921462 Costa-Silva, J. (2024). Islandhood in Brazilian Portuguese Revisited: Evidence for Sensitivity Effects. UGA Working Papers in Linguistics. Costa-Silva, J., Fischer, D. N. (2022). Voicing the Global South: Translanguaging for Social Justice. In Língua(gem) e justiça social: saberes, práticas e paradigmas, 2, 40-53. Costa-Silva, J., Saccomani, J. (2021). A revista de um programa de português como ferramenta didática: uma alternativa translíngue e multicultural. In Microgeopolítica da língua portuguesa: ações, desafios e perspectivas, 187-198. Costa-Silva, J. (2018). Uma proposta interdisciplinar para o ensino de inglês: a história dos multi-word verbs. In Revista de Letra em Letra, 5, 74-82. Creative Writing: Costa-Silva, J. (2021). “The Lost Star: A estrela perdida”, e-book, Sponsored by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts’s Shelter Project Micro-Fellowship, University of Georgia Costa-Silva, J. (2015). “O Último Natal”, e-book. Costa-Silva, J. (2014). “Sinais de Trânsito” (“Traffic Lights”), short-story, II "Travessia" Writing Contest, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Awards, Honors and Recognitions Awards and Special Recognitions: Internal Awards: 2025, Nomination for CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, Humanities and Fine Arts Category 2024, Transition to the Professoriate Scholarship (formerly SEC Emerging Scholars). 2024, Summer Doctoral Research Assistantship, Graduate School. 2024, Graduate Research AwardWillson Center for Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia. 2024, Excellence in Teaching Award, Office of the Vice President for Instruction. 2023, Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Center for Teaching and Learning. 2023, Outstanding Contributions to the Department, Department of Linguistics. 2018, Team Work: Career Readiness Challenge, Career Center, University of Georgia - with Fala Aí Magazine. External Awards: The Goizueta Foundation Fellowship, The Goizueta Foundation, 2019-2023. Global Engagement Initiative Award, ACTFL Language Connects, for the Portuguese Flagship Online Summer Program, 2020; Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship, U.S. Department of State, 2017-2018; American English E-Teacher Program Scholarship, U.S. Department of State, 2015; Crossing Countries through Culture, Youth in Action Programme, European Union Commission (Slovakia), 2007-2008; Tales Inside Us, The Tale of Europe, Youth in Action Programme, European Union Commission (Turkey), 2007. Travel Funding: Graduate Student Domestic Travel Award. Costa-Silva, J., Lee-Schoenfeld, V. (2023, July). Syntactically Branching out Beyond the Traditional Classroom: A Report on the Discovery Method. Paper presented at the NSF-funded 2023 Conference on Scholarly Teaching and SoTL in Linguistics. Linguistics Society at UGA Travel Funding: Costa-Silva, J. (2023, March). The Acquisition of Motion Encoding by English-Portuguese Bilinguals Across Proficiency Levels. Paper presented at the 90th Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. Graduate School Domestic Travel Award: Rodríguez, Shannon, Paula Mellom, Jean Costa Silva, Rebecca K. Hixon, & Jodi Weber. (2021, March). Impact of Instructional Conversation on WTC in Undergraduate Foreign Language Courses. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics, Virtual. Honors: Blue Key Honors Society - University of Georgia Chapter. Alpha Alpha Alpha (Tri-Alpha) Honors Society. Courses Taught Courses Taught: LING 2100 LING 3150W LING 2100E LING 4175/6175 LING 3160W
