ISU Campus Vita
Academic Background
Ph.D. (with Honors) Applied Linguistics, Northern Arizona University, 2002
M.A. (with Distinction) TESL, California State University, Los Angeles, 1997
B.A., English and Technical English Teaching. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Instituto Nacional Superior de Profesorado Técnico, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987.
Professional Experience
Teaching Positions
| August 2002 – Present | Assistant Professor, TESOL/Applied Linguistic Program, English Department, Iowa State University. Grammatical Analysis, Introduction to Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, and ESL graduate writing classes. |
| July 2002- August 2002 | Instructor, TESOL/Applied Linguistic Program, Northern Arizona University (NAU). Grammatical Foundations |
| August 2001 – May 2002 | Teaching Assistant, TESL/Applied Linguistics Program, English Department, NAU. The Story of English and English Grammars. |
| August 2002 - July 2001 | Course Assistant, TESL/Applied Linguistics Program, English Department, NAU. Teaching Practicum and Curriculum Development and Program Administration |
| August 1998 - August 1999 | Teaching Assistant, English Composition, NAU. Critical reading and writing |
| 1996 - 1998 | Instructor. Instituto Cultural Argentino Norteamericano Escuela Superior (ICANAES), Teacher Training College, Buenos Aires,Argentina |
| 1994 - 1998 | Head of the English Department and English Instructor. Colegio de Asis, Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| 1984 - 1998 | English Instructor. Bi-national Center (ICANA), Buenos Aires, Argentina. |
b. Special Courses
March 2007 Visiting Instructor. Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, Villahermosa, Mexico. Introduction to corpus-based research. Course for faculty.
May 2005 Visiting instructor. Universidad de Castilla, La Mancha, Ciudad Real, España. A corpus-based text-analysis class. Course for Advanced students and faculty in the English philology program (20 hours).
c. Research Positions
August 2000 - May 2001 Research Assistant, Applied Linguistics Program, Northern Arizona University (NAU). Educational Testing Service TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language (ETS T2KSWAL) Project, Principal Investigator: Prof. Douglas Biber. Responsibilities: assisting in compiling corpus, analyzing findings and writing reports.
May 1999 - July 2000 Research Assistant, Applied Linguistics Program, NAU, ETS T2KSWAL Project. Head Researcher: Prof. Douglas Biber. Responsibilities: checking tagged corpus for accuracy with interactive software (fixtagger).
Publications
Books and Monographs
Biber, D., Conrad, S., Reppen, R., Byrd, P., Helt, M., Clark , V. Cortes, V., Csomay, E., & Urzua, A. (2004). Representing Language Use in the University: Analysis of the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Corpus. Princeton, NJ: ETS.
b. Articles in refereed journals and chapters in books
Cortes, V. (2006). Issues in the design and analysis of learner corpora. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Cortes, V. (2006). Teaching lexical bundles in the disciplines: An example from a writing intensive history class. Linguistics and Education 17.
Cortes, V. (2004). Lexical bundles in published and student writing in history and biology. English for Specific Purposes 23 , 397-423.
Biber, D., Conrad, S. & Cortes, V. (2004) If you look at…:Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25 (3), 371-405.
Biber, D., Conrad, S. & Cortes, V. (2003). Towards a taxonomy of lexical bundles in speech and writing. In A. Wilson, P. Rayson & T. McEnery (eds), Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.
Cortes, V. (2002) Lexical bundles in freshman composition. In R. Reppen, S. Fitzmaurice, and D. Biber (eds.), Using corpora to explore linguistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Snow, M.A., Cortes, V., & Pron, A. (1998). Content-based instruction in Argentina: EFL and educational reform. English Teaching Forum, 36(1), 48-52 January 1998.
Presentations
Using corpora in the disciplinary writing class. AAACL/ICAME Conference, Ann Arbor, Michgan. (May)
2004 Promoting autonomous learning in the English for academic writing class through corpus-assisted instruction. International Congress of TIC and Autonomy applied to language learning, Castellón, Spain. (May)
Key issues in corpus-based research for learner language. Paper Presented at the AAAL Conference, Portland, Oregon. (May)
2003 Computers and phraseology: Lexical bundles in disciplinary writing. EUROCALL Conference, Limerick, Ireland. (September)
2003 Lexical Bundles in academic prose. Paper presented at the AAAL Conference, Arlington, Virginia. (March)
2002 Lexical bundles in published and student academic writing. Paper presented at the International Symposium in Corpus Linguistics, Indianapolis, Indiana. (November)
2002 Lexical bundles in ESP reading and writing (with Fredricka Stoller and James Jones). Paper presented at TESOL International Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. (April)
Lexical bundles in academic discourse. Colloquium presentation at AAAL Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. (April)
Funded Grants and Awards
2004 Iowa State University. LASCAC grant. Project title: Enhancing EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing classes through Corpus-Assisted Instruction.
2003 Iowa State University. College of Liberal Arts and Science, LAS Small Grants. Project title: Spanish academic writing in history corpus collection.
2003 Iowa State University. Faculty Senate. Foreign Travel Grant.
2003 Iowa State University. College of Liberal Arts and Science. Research Support Grant. Project title: Teaching lexical bundles in disciplinary writing.