Biography

• BA in TEFL at Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE), Chile 2009 – 2013
• MA in English Language and Literary Studies at Lancaster University from 2015 – 2016
• PhD in Applied Linguistics, The University of York, UK 2020- present

I am a TEFL teacher and I have had the opportunity to support students in their development of English as a foreign and second language skills in primary, secondary and tertiary education in Chile, and Spanish as a foreign language skills of KS3 and 4 in the UK. In the recent years, I have worked supporting pre-service teachers in their journeys to become TEFL teachers in my home country, Chile.

During my experience as a TEFL undergraduate, I grew passionate about British, American, and Latin American literature; hence, once graduated, I became a literature teacher of primary and secondary school students in bilingual and public schools in my home country. In my experience, I could observe the influences of the use of short stories, poems, and other media in reading motivation among my students. During those years, I also became interested in storytelling, as a pedagogical tool to enhance reading interest and awareness of phonetics and phonology of the English language.

I hold a MA in English Language and Literary Studies from Lancaster university, UK. During my time at Lancaster, I had the opportunity to delve into the areas of English literature, literature and other media, cognitive linguistics, cognitive grammar, and stylistics. In my research project, I decided to conduct a stylistic analysis of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s antipoetic language. I was hence supervised by Prof. Elena Semino.