Andrew McCandless

Andrew McCandless is a PhD candidate in our department, where he specializes in Hispanic Linguistics, and in particular, in Spanish phonology (pronunciation of sounds). He has always been very interested in language learning, and in particular, in second language pronunciation / speech learning.

From his early childhood until today, Andrew's family, teachers, professors and student peers were instrumental in allowing and encouraging these interests to grow into an enjoyable, fulfilling, and rewarding long-term career path. He studied French in elementary and high school, in Toronto, and he also studied Latin and Ancient Greek in high school. Andrew completed an Honours B.A. at University of Toronto, Victoria College, during which he studied languages broadly, including Spanish, Celtic Studies, and French as a Second Language.

During his high school and his undergraduate years, Andrew pursued several volunteer research/data organization, teaching, and planning/service opportunities, at public and high schools, libraries, medical centres and community centres in Toronto. In particular, regarding teaching, he assisted in peer tutoring / teaching students with special needs and supporting families new to Canada. These academic and volunteer research, teaching, and service experiences  strengthened Andrew's interest in languages, and particularly, in second language pronunciation.

Andrew's M.A. program in Spanish in our department provided him with a strong foundation in the fields of linguistics, Hispanic Linguistics, and second language pronunciation training. During the summer of 2016 and 2017, he was part of the research team for a project funded by SSHRC, "Complexity and Recursion Project: Development of Noun Phrase Complexity in Children," which involved analyzing Spanish noun phrases in corpus data from different varieties of Latin American and Peninsular Spanish.

Andrew's dissertation focuses on the effects of perception and production training on the perception and production of second language Spanish rhotics (r-sounds) in learners with Canadian English or Canadian French as a first language. He held a Doctoral Completion Award (2020-2021 and 2021-2022), as well as a Joseph Gulsoy Dissertation Scholarship in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (both 2019-2020). He published in the proceedings of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 Canadian Linguistic Association conferences. Andrew aspires to pursue a career in second language speech learning, language documentation, computational linguistics and/or lexicography (dictionary compilation) as well as to use his knowledge of Spanish, French, Portuguese, Irish and Scottish Gaelic for career opportunities and travel interests.