TTW Website
THE TRANSFORMING WORD
Grundtvig Workshop - 2013-1-ES1-GRU13-74126
SPEAKERS.
INMACULADA REGUERO
Inmaculada graduated in Romance Languages and in English Philology at UVA (University of Valladolid) and continued her postgraduate studies on teaching languages and literature. French and English teacher for many years, in different contexts and to different ages, Inmaculada also has large experience in International and European programmes both as teacher involving students and as evaluator, advicer, and organiser working for different organisations including the National Spanish Agency (OAPEE). She currently works at DAT Este - Unidad de Programas (District Teaching Authority - Programmes Unit) advising education centres and professionals on European and bilingual programmes
Inmaculada declares a love for learning, for languages, for literature, for challenging herself, for travelling and for bringing all these passions into the classroom always with a great motivation to be of help.
Her talk Adult literacy in Lifelong Learning Programmes, Past and Future which she gave on Monday is available here.
LAURA SÁNCHEZ
Laura has a degree in English Philology (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares). After a brief period of time teaching English to Secondary School students, she focused on teaching adults. EOI English teacher for 14 years and EOI Alcalá de Henares Deputy Teacher since 2008, her goal is to make her students as passionate as she is about foreign languages and cultures so that they can be more open-minded and learn to think outside the box, an essentil tool for the 21st century world.
Her professional interests include learner autonomy, the role that emotions play in learning, new technologies, learning by doing and 'soft' skills. You can check what she does to get her students hooked on English on her blog, English Without End Visit her blog
The tools used for Laura Sanchez and Elena Lopez' joined workshop “Digital tools” on Tuesday are
available here.
Laura's interests also cover history, literature and the city of Madrid. She combined all three in the tour she created for our our participants. Her itineary is available here.
Laura is also the author of our TTW video. Click here to see it.
ELENA LÓPEZ
LUENGO
Elena is the coordinator of the The Transforming Word Workshop, TTW webmaster and English language teacher at Official Schools of Languages (EOI) since 2004. Elena graduated in English Philology at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and in Modern Languages at Essex University. She continued postgraduate studies in literary criticism in Spain and the USA with particular attention to theatre, poetry and Children's literature.
She loves being in contact with different cultures and learning new perspectives and languages. As a teacher, Elena has great interest in finding ways to motivate her students and in exploring the new possibilities new technologies offer in autonomous learning.
The presentation of the TTW workshop on Monday and the one done for Elena's workshop Techniques to Exploit the Literary Text are available here.
The links and tools used for Laura Sanchez' and Elena Lopez' joined workshop Digital tools on Tuesday are available here.
ARÁNZAZU RUIZ MARTÍN
Aránzazu Ruiz has a degree in English Philology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and a degree in English and American Literature (Essex University). She has spent the last 15 years teaching English and Spanish as a Foreign Language to a variety of ages and levels in different institutions. She has been an English teacher at the Official School of Languages in Madrid since 2006.
Aránzazu enjoys sharing her experiences in the classroom with other teachers and has given many presentations, specializing in developing oral skills in the classroom, the use of poetry, learning strategies, creating didactic units and the affective component of language learning.
In her workshop Love Poetry! participants explored different techniques to create poems even with elementary students.
Aránzazu suggested the website Gigglepoetry as a useful resource for teachers wanting to use poetry in the classroom.
JENNIFER RAMSAY
Jennifer Ramsay, ‘The Story Girl’, is a Scottish storyteller and art therapist based in Spain. She has worked as a professional storyteller since 2004. Her work is mainly centred in the world of education where she has developed a method to make English more accessible to language students through stories with educational values. Jennifer offers a variety of teacher training courses.
Jennifer also applies storytelling to other arts. She is the author and illustrator of the kamishibai ‘How Maui Captured the Sun’. She paints stories in large formats and exhibits her art work in interactive exhibitions. Her creativity is inspired in the dawn of human consciousness, when stories were listened to around the fire to connect people with their inner worlds, their clan and with the universe.
Jennifer believes in the healing power of ancestral story wisdom and weaves stories into paths of self-discovery, transformation and healing which she nourishes with ancient Celtic rituals.
A detailed description of her workshop Forest of Stories is available here
ANTONIO MOTA COSANO
Antonio Mota Cosano has a degree in English Philology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and University College Dublin). He continued studies in EFL methodology (Certificate for Overseas Teachers of English, British Council Madrid) and film, drama and theatre production. He has been an English language teacher since 1998 and has taught both teenagers and adults. He is currently teaching at the Official School of Languages in Alcalá de Henares. At this school he has also been the coordinator of the Grundtvig Learning Partnership SEA (Stories of European Adults). Visit his website
Antonio's interests are varied. He enjoys exploring creativity in the English language classroom by exposing students to the power of storytelling, creative writing and the integration of ICT in language learning.
In his workshop Catching ideas, metaphors, images and more participants were exposed to freewriting and collaborative writing techniques as a way to release creativity and explore the power of the written word. Antonio's presentation is available here. The workshop also included creative writing references for further exploration by participants. You can access this here.
ROSANA ACQUARONI
Professor and poet Rosana Acquaroni has taught Spanish as a Foreign Language to international students in various universities and language schools in Spain, and abroad. She is currently a faculty member at Universidad Complutense teaching international students at the Centro Complutense para la Enseñanza del Español (CCEE), and instructing M.A. students in the field of Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language. She is also a collaborator for Instituto Cervantes. She holds Master and Doctoral degrees in Spanish Philology by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid – her dissertation was awarded two national awards and her research focuses on FL reading and writing and the role of literature in the FL classroom.
She is a prolific writer and has published didactic materials with important publishing houses, research articles in specialised journals, and poetry collections such as Del Mar bajo los puentes (1998), or Discordia de los dóciles (2001). Visit her website
Rosana's presentation Metaphorical Competence as well as an example of a teaching unit are available here in English and in Spanish.
Rosana shared with us two interesting links :
- Uma pedra no meio do caminho - Biografia de um Poema: the poem by the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade read in 12 languages.
- Banco de Recuerdos (Bank of Memories): a place to safeguard individual memories. An initiative created to raise awareness of Alzheimer's disease.
SANDRA JIMÉNEZ
Actress and English teacher, graduated at the Royal School of Dramatic Art in Madrid and Rose Bruford College in London. She did her PGD in “Theory, History and Practice of Theatre” at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain. She´s gone further in her theatre studies working with many international directors and practitioners around Europe, such as Anne Bogart, Marcello Magni or Jeremy James. In 2006 she started collaborating with Mary Ruth McGinn in what later would be called the “LOVA” programme (Creating an Original Opera), sponsored and founded by the Royal Theatre in Madrid and Fundación Saludarte. The aim of the programme was to integrate the curricular objectives in the process of creating an original opera in a classroom with primary school kids in Madrid and thus her teaching through theatre techniques began to be developed. In 2012 she travelled to the USA and worked with Mary Ruth McGinn at her school, in Maryland. What she discovered after this wonderful journey changed her life and altered her professional path. From then on she has gone deeper researching how theatre can be a very useful tool in education, offering innovative and creative ways to meet the needs any student might have in any learning process, particularly when learning a foreign language.
In 2014 she creates with Luis Miguel Lucas, actor, musician and composer, “TRASTEA-Experiencias Creativas”, with the aim of encouraging both teachers and students to use theatre, music and its artistic wealth in their everyday teaching environment as a way of motivating and as a great vehicle of authentic learning. Visit her website and watch a video in which Sandra presents her approach. The material and bibliography that she shared can be found here.