Biodata

PhD in Communications and Humanities by the University Carlos III in Madrid, specialized in Literature and Languages. Her thesis is about university teachers training in the methodology CLIL.

Bachelor´s Degree in Anthropology and Bachelor´s Degree in Spanish by the University of Massachusetts (USA), validated as Bachelor´s Degree in Spanish Philology by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación.

She is currently the Academic Director of the Department of Education in the Faculty of Social Sciences At Universidad Europea de Madrid, Associate teacher in English and bilingual education, and trainer of university teachers in CLIL/AICLE. She has participated in several research projects about multilingual education and teachers training since 2012, including the winning team with the award David. A Wilson of 50.000$ in 2014.

Internationalization and Multilingual Learning

There is a trend sweeping Europe in recent years concerning achieving internationalization via English Medium Instruction (EMI) in countries where English is not the first language of instruction.  This comes, at least to a certain extent, as a response to the fact that English-dominant countries have traditionally held first ranks as far as favored destinations of international students. In order to compete for the education market on a global scale, higher education institutions (HEIs) in non-English speaking countries continuously search for ways of increasing enrollments by catering to this demand for English medium instruction (EMI). Unfortunately, in some (maybe even many) cases this happens without any minimum standards of quality in the students’ multilingual learning, often due to insufficient planning and a lack of investment.

Teaching in a second language (L2) has huge implications on learning, many times beyond those fathomed by university stakeholders.  In multilingual learning, there are two objectives, one covering the learning of content and a second, the acquisition of a language, and if not adequately provided, they lose both.   It is important that HEIs define comprehensive language policies within their strategic plans, in a responsible way, considering not only learning outcomes and language competency, but also multicultural diversity and global mindset.