Biography
Benjamin Brown holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and an M.A. in Teaching Spanish from Northern Arizona University, as well as a B.A. in Spanish Education with a TESOL minor from BYU–Idaho. His research and teaching center on heritage language learners, second language motivation, and classroom discourse, with a focus on applying linguistic theory to pedagogical practice.
Benjamin Brown has taught courses at both secondary and postsecondary levels. Before coming to BYU-Hawaii, he worked as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Northern Arizona University, where he developed and taught curricula focused on academic writing, research methods, and peer review. He has also taught intercultural communication and TESOL courses to university students in Shanghai, China, and previously taught high school Spanish in Alaska.
His scholarship explores heritage language pedagogy, learner motivation, corpus methods, and learner speech features. His dissertation examined how learner attitudes and speaking tasks influence prosodic features such as rhythm, stress, and speech rate among heritage Spanish speakers. He has presented at language conferences on topics related to learner motivation and corpus linguistics.
Ben is actively engaged in initiatives to support first-year students and create welcoming learning environments. He has served as a team lead for student retention efforts and collaborated with faculty and student partners to inform classroom practices. He has also volunteered at academic conferences and led programming projects to support colleagues’ research.