Nafal Ossandón Hostens

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About Me

Hi! I'm an affiliated researcher at professor Nick Henry's Second Language Acquisition & Bilingualism (SLAB) Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, where I completed my PhD in Germanic Studies in May 2025. My research centers on the role of attention and (metalinguistic) awareness in the acquisition of syntax by beginner learners of Germanic languages. My dissertation project was partially funded by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant (2024) and a Duolingo Dissertation grant (2023).

I have an MA in Computational Psycholinguistics from the University of Antwerp, where I worked under the supervision of professor Sarah Bernolet and professor Orphée De Clercq, from Ghent University, on the automatic assessment of the syntactic complexity of texts written by learners of Dutch as a second language. Before that, I studied German, English and Spanish Linguistics and Literature at Ghent University.

My favorite acronyms are SLA – Second Language Acquisition, and NLP – Natural Language Processing. I'm interested in the psycholinguistics of SLA, especially Input Processing and the mechanisms driving comprehension and sentence processing, both in the case of proficient, balanced bilinguals and beginner learners. I am also very interested in Computer-Assisted Language Learning, more specifically AI for accessible language education and proficiency assessment. In addition to its pedagogical applications, I am deeply interested in the possible cognitive insights we can gain from analyzing computational language models and the generalizations that we can and cannot draw from them.

As a language instructor, I center my classes around communication and encourage self-compassion throughout the learning process, and I integrate authentic materials and pop culture as much as possible in my classes.

I was also a Research Assistant in the UT Neurolinguistics Lab under the supervision of professor Fernando Llanos, and in professor Zenzi Griffin's Cognition and Communication Lab.

I have more hobbies than time allows, but among them I count reading fiction, running & dance fitness, language learning, (trying to) longboard, reading, watercolor painting, gaming and improving my coding skills. I also spend a significant amount of time with my cat Luke and my ferret Chewie.

Avatar drawing of Nafal

Publications

  • Hostens, N. O., & Schoedler, E. J. (2026). What do the students say? Integrating student input into participation assessment. Second Language Research & Practice, 6(1), 92–105. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/69897

Presentations

  • Hostens, N.O. (2025) “Do I Wanna Know? Explicit Information, Structure Awareness and the Acquisition of Structures of Low Communicative Value”. 34th Conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA) 2025. Tromsø, Norway. [poster]
  • Hostens, N.O. (2025) “The Interplay of Attention and Awareness in Acquiring Low Communicative Value Syntactic Structures in SLA”. Psycholinguistics in Flanders (PiF) 2025. Lille, France.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2025) “Attention, Awareness and the Acquisition of Syntax by Naïve L2 German Learners”. Cognition & Second Language Acquisition Lab, University of Illinois, Chicago. Chicago, IL.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2025) “The Effect of Metalinguistic Awareness on the Production of Subject-Verb Inversion by Naïve Learners of German”. 31st Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference. Denton, TX.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2025) “Attention, Awareness and the Acquisition of L2 German Word Order”. Annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Denver, CO. [roundtable presentation]
  • Hostens, N.O. (2024) “Do I Have Your Attention? Learners’ Attention to Verb Placement and Its Relationship to Grammar Acquisition”. Duolingo Research Day 2024, Duolingo, Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2024) Looking for the first time: Attentional allocation to syntactic structures by naïve learners of German [Conference presentation]. UIC Bilingualism Forum 2024, University of Illinois, Chicago. Chicago, IL, USA.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2024) Exploring Attentional Allocation and Structure Awareness in Beginner L2 German Learners [Research Group Talk]. Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab, University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA, USA. [recording]
  • Jones, E. & Hostens, N.O. (2024, March 7). What Does the Student Say? Incorporating Student Input into Participation Assessment [Conference presentation]. 55th NeMLA Annual Convention. Boston, MA, USA.
  • Hostens, N.O. (2024) Attention, Awareness & Acquisition. A Closer Look Behind the Scenes of Implicit Learning [Research Group Talk]. Second Language Studies Series, The University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX.
  • Ossandón Hostens, N. & Jones, E. (2023). Accusative Case Comprehension Among Early L2 German Learners [Conference presentation]. Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC 2023), University of Calgary, Banff, AB, Canada.
  • Ossandón Hostens, N. & Vanroy, B. (2022). A Transformer-Based Approach to Predicting German as a Foreign Language Proficiency [Research Group Talk]. Second Language Studies Series, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA [recording]
  • Ossandón Hostens, N. (2022, May 14-15). Dutch on the Soccer Field – Language Policy and Practice in a West Flemish Professional Soccer Team [Conference presentation]. Congress 2022, Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies (CAANS 22), Virtual.
  • Ossandón Hostens, N., Bernolet, S. & De Clercq, O. (2021, July 9). Assessing Dutch as a Second Language Learners’ Writing Through Syntactic Complexity [Poster presentation]. 31st Meeting of Computational Linguistics in The Netherlands (CLIN 31), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. [poster]