Current Work
I am working as Assistant Professor in the Master of Arts in Foreign Language Teaching (MAFLT) program, part of the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA), at Michigan State University. I teach graduate-level courses such as Culture in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT 815), Literacy in a Foreign Language (FLT 841), Language Concepts for Foreign Language Teaching (FLT 845), Foreign Language Teaching Methods (FLT 807), and Experiential Modules in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT 885), in which students produce their Master’s capstone projects. I am also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures (LiLaC) and an affiliated faculty with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at MSU.
I love working with student-teachers of multiple languages and reflect with them about how to help students learn additional languages with texts. Read more about me on my MAFLT profile page.
Education
Ph.D. Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, University of Arizona (2020)
M.A. Language Studies, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2014)
B.A. Portuguese and English Teaching, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2011)
Background
I started my career as an English teacher for Portuguese speakers of all ages in Brazil in 2005. In 2010 I joined the Portuguese for Foreigners program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and soon after I started teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language for students of multiple nationalities and linguistic backgrounds. As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, I taught Portuguese at the University of Arizona in 2014-2015 and continued to work in the same program as a Teaching Assistant until 2020. While teaching Portuguese and pursuing my doctoral studies at the University of Arizona, I was involved with developing and evaluating language curricula, training teachers, and researching about second language writing, genre theory and pedagogy and learner corpus design. In addition, online course design and incorporation of writing tasks across foreign language courses were some of my major foci.
Personal Interests
I love all things about plants, psychology, poetry, multilingualism and, why not, astrology.
Cedar River in the background
