MARS
MARS is a repository service of Mason Publishing and the Data and Digital Scholarship Services (DDSS) at the George Mason University Libraries. MARS provides enduring, stable, well-indexed access to a wide range of scholarship from the Mason community, such as Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), articles, presentations, reports, and creative work. Learn more about publishing, sharing, and preserving research data with the George Mason University Institutional Dataverse, and our other repository services.
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Recent Submissions
A cross-linguistic corpus acoustic analysis of rhotic
(2025-12) Miklas, Janalyn A.; Kelley, Matthew C.
Cross-linguistically, rhotics exhibits a wide range of pronunciation variation, especially word-finally. The languages compared in this study include Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh, Farsi, Russian, Romanian, Macedonian, Czech, Irish, and Mexican Spanish, which all have been described as having a fricative-like variant of their rhotic(s). Previous research has reported a word-final devoiced and fricated alveolar tap for Turkish and Uzbek; a dentalized alveolar trill and voiced uvular fricative for Kazakh; alveolar trill, approximant, and tap which may be fricated word-finally for Farsi; alveolar and palatalized trill for Russian and Romanian; alveolar trill for Macedonian; alveolar trill with a fricated variant for Czech; palatalized tap which may be fricated in Irish; and alveolar tap with a fricated variant in Mexican Spanish. The data used for this cross-linguistic corpus study is from the Mozilla Common Voice corpus. This exploratory analysis will examine spectral differences within and across languages for each rhotic. The results of this study aim to assess the range of descriptions used for rhotics and their variants.
L1 Arabic-L2 English speakers use subject-verb agreement cues in real-time comprehension of English
(2025-11) Miklas, Janalyn A.; Lukyanenko, Cynthia
Adult and child listeners rapidly use morphosyntactic cues during real-time comprehension of their first language. Later learners, in contrast, may not use cues unless they are also available in their L1. Can L1 Arabic late learners of English use number-marked verbs to anticipate an upcoming noun? Arabic has subject-verb agreement, but does not have an overt present-tense copula. Using a visual-world eye-tracking task, L1 English and L1 Arabic participants heard a sentence (there are the good apples) paired with pictures that were either different or the same in number (2 apples, 1 carrot; 2 apples, 2 carrots). Advantages in different over same trials suggest that both groups use the number-marked verb in real-time comprehension, and that L1 English participants use it in both singular and plural trials, while L1 Arabic only showed evidence in plural trials. Morphosyntactic cue use during comprehension appears possible even with relatively modest overlap between languages.
The First Virginia Climate Assessment
(George Mason University, 2025-11) Ruess, P.J.; Kinter, James; Ferreira, Celso M.; Ortiz, Luis E.; Ellis, Andrew W.; Ermagun, Alireza; Ezer, Tal; Fox, Alice; Klinger, Barry A.; Maggioni, Viviana; Peterson, Thomas D.; Allen, Michael; Burls, Natalie J.; Cash, Benjamin; Clower, Terry L.; Costadone, Laura; Dollan, Ishrat J.; González-Dueñas, Catalina; Henneman, Lucas R. F.; Hoffman, Jeremy D.; Larson, Michael; Lindquist, Holly; Mitcham, M. B.; Mitchell, Molly; de Lima, Andre de Souza; Tong, Daniel; Ugliano, Arianna; Whitehead, Jessica
The Virginia Climate Assessment (VCA) is the first ever statewide, science-based assessment of Virginia’s past, current, and future climate to evaluate the impacts on the 8.7 million Virginians, vital ecosystems, and major economic sectors within the Commonwealth. The VCA is the first iteration of a series of reports that will establish a baseline against which future weather and climate changes can be measured, and effectiveness of adaptation efforts can be gauged.
The Virginia Climate Center led the VCA in collaboration with authors and reviewers from several Virginia institutions with expertise specific to topics of concern such as extreme heat risk, sea level rise, flood risk, and economic impacts within the state’s six defined climate regions. The report contains key findings regarding the Commonwealth’s shifting weather and climate patterns and will highlight areas of exposure, providing Virginians with insights that inform climate resilience and preparedness strategies.
The Invisible Art of Teaching: Finding Your Hidden Superpowers that Transform Learning
(2025-11-12) Dailey, Stephanie F.; La Croix, Leslie
In the evolving landscape of higher education, the most transformative teaching practices often operate beneath the surface. This interactive session, The Invisible Art of Teaching: Finding Your Hidden Superpowers that Transform Learning, invites educators to uncover and intentionally harness the personal and relational strengths that drive student engagement and success. Through guided reflection, collaborative dialogue, and a structured “Superpower Identification” activity, participants will identify their unique instructional assets and explore strategies to integrate them into inclusive, innovative, and evidence-based teaching practices. By recognizing and connecting individual superpowers, educators will leave equipped with practical tools to amplify collective impact, strengthen community, and cultivate transformative learning environments that center authenticity, connection, and active learning.
Experimenting with AI in Spanish
(2025-11-12) Sweet, Colleen
Using generative AI in an online writing intensive course can be challenging for both students and instructors. Additional challenges emerge when students are writing in a language that they are still in the process of learning. This teaching talk describes a carefully structured project designed to support students’ experimentation with generative AI in Spanish in an asynchronous writing intensive course. One of the benefits of this strategy is that it empowers students to evaluate new technologies and their effectiveness as tools for supporting their learning. Aligned with the objective of “writing to learn” in WI courses, the project uses the TILT approach and provides opportunities for students to collaborate with others and reflect on transferable skills they have learned in their writing course. The teaching strategies discussed can be applied to working with multilingual learners and multiple course modalities.