Roberto Herrera

PhD in Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin
MA in Teaching English and Spanish as a Second Language, Universidad de las Américas Puebla (Mexico)
BA in English, Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico)

I earned my PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, and I came to Gallaudet in 2007. I teach Spanish as a Second Language, Linguistics, and ESL as well as politics, culture, history, and literature of Latin America and Spain.

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About myself...

I have taught Spanish, English, and linguistics during my professional career, and I have always been enthusiastic about teaching courses to different kinds of students: native speakers of my own language, speakers of other languages, and linguistics students—undergraduate and graduate. Teaching at Gallaudet University has given me a unique opportunity to expand my teaching and linguistic knowledge and experiences.

As an undergraduate, I started to learn English as a second language. For many years, I had the opportunity to practice and improve that language. For that reason, learning another language—ASL—at Gallaudet has been exhilarating. The first two years, I taught with an interpreter. While the interpreters were great (they still are), I was happy to start teaching without them. It has given me the opportunity to explain the grammar, exchange information with the students, and get a little closer to the Deaf community. Also, learning a new language makes me understand from the inside what the students go through when learning what is also a third language for them. As a linguist, I know that American Sign Language (and any sign language) is a complex and highly sophisticated language. Like any other language, spoken or signed, it takes some time to master it, but once a person achieves mastery, the outcomes are always highly positive.

Gallaudet has a unique student population. As a Spanish teacher, I was thrilled and very nervous when I started teaching. I remembered vividly my very first day of classes, the very first minutes. A student asked, through the interpreter, if I was a new teacher. I told her that I was, and she asked me if I was nervous—it was so obvious. I answered that I was indeed. She calmed down, telling me not to worry, that she knew I would do all right. I calmed down. At that moment, I knew that I had come to the right place.

I am glad and proud to say that I work for a unique department in a unique university: we are the only department in the academic community devoted to teaching foreign languages to Deaf students. Although many scholars have worked on improving the methodology for teaching Spanish as a second language, very little has been done to improve the methodology for Deaf students. My research has precisely focused on improving my teaching techniques, and Gallaudet is not only the ideal place to do so, it is the place to do so.