Laura Marqués-Pascual

Laura Marqués-Pascual is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Spanish and Portuguese Languages Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She oversees all lower-division language courses, including elementary/intermediate Spanish and Portuguese, advanced grammar, and heritage speaker programs. Her academic leadership includes directing the Applied Linguistics Emphasis interdisciplinary program.

• Education: Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics (UC Davis), M.A. in TESOL (Bowling Green State University), B.A. in Hispanic Philology (Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid)

Her research focuses on curriculum development, second language acquisition in study abroad contexts, lexical development, and heritage language education. She teaches upper-division courses and graduate seminars on applied linguistics, language pedagogy, and Spanish in the U.S.

Her publications examine lexical development in study abroad settings, heritage speaker outcomes, and multilingual acquisition dynamics. She coordinates 18+ language courses spanning Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan instruction.

Marqués-Pascual’s teaching portfolio includes courses on conversation, linguistics, heritage language pedagogy, and business Spanish. Her graduate seminars address second language acquisition theories and foreign language teaching methodologies.