“I back innovation, professionalism and motivation”

Experience

Innovation is something I try to encompass in all the projects that I carry out in all areas of my professional career.

I am really aware of the importance of researching and working with an added value to the teaching techniques I use. The goal is to offer a continuous improvement for my students.

Now, I would like to highlight my following personal projects:

Personal

I am constantly looking to provide continuous development of my method: how to face every question in the best possible way, and how to make corrections taking into account the different levels of every student. For me, motivation is a key point when teaching. My professional commitment is to fulfil all of the needs a student can have, by getting the positive points of every activity, analysing and improving my teaching method.

Information and communication technologies, as well as the present social network services, are useful instruments I use when teaching. Interactive boards, online spaces to share materials, and social network services like Facebook, are tools I am strengthening in my online courses.

Currently, I am developing an innovative project through Facebook, where I share experiences, help and motivate the members with the Italian language. It is a space created with the objective of having a place to be in contact with a group of people interested in the language I teach. A great bond has been established among all the members of the group, and they also participate and contribute with contents in Italian.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/quellichelitaliano/

Training for companies

I also develop adapted training for companies by coaching my students to obtain the linguistic skills, oral and written communication, used in their sector. This promotes good trading relations.

These are some of the companies I have worked with using Italiano in-company:

Teaching centres

Another project in my professional career is teaching in centres, which offer courses to a varied range of students such as: students, workers, and unemployed people, all of them, coming from different countries, cultures, and sectors.

These centres have provided important experience in my professional career. I would highlight the activities carried out in the Escuela Internacional de Lenguas (O Grove) where a Short Film Competition is held with the help and coordination of other colleagues. The short films are shot in L2/LS, and they are shown in an “Awards Ceremony”. The students also create a newspaper, where they write original articles in the second language (Italian in our case), as well as having small talks about a specific topic, among others.

Short films

In 2012, I carried out an audiovisual project where I used a new Italian teaching method: shooting a short film in Italian. It was performed by a group of Spanish students. They wrote, organised, recorded and edited it on their own. Its title is ‘Che cos’è l’Amore’, and it was the winner of a competition thanks to its philosophy, the effort put into it, and its final result.

Italian brought to the theatre

My last project is called “Ridere Fa Bene”. It’s an initiative for spreading the Italian language through creativity and theatre plays. It has been suggested to Italian schools, language centres, colleges, and companies with business in Italy.

Education

Professionalism is another core value of mine as a teacher. My professional career began in Girona, in the year course 2004-2005, while I was studying a Masters on Spanish teachers as a second language training course. I combined the linguistic knowledge I acquired at university with those related to teaching Italian as a second language, its methodology, as well as the creation of teaching materials.

In March 2013, I carried out a course called DILIT in Rome (Italian teachers training). Not only did this course prove helpful in getting in to contact with new students, but it also proved to be a great stimulus in making me reflect on grammar points in the classroom.

I believe in ongoing training. I like taking part in formative courses and exchanging all types of ideas, proposals, activities, materials, experiences, innovation and technology to improve my Italian lessons.

Methodology

As an Italian teacher, I focus on the communicative approach by motivating my students to use the language as a real tool in order to improve it. To achieve this goal, I try to work with meaningful information for my students, so they can acquire the structures in a more natural way.

I consider it essential to work with feelings in my lessons as it allows students being completely involved in real, spontaneous, and efficient communication. It is also very important to take the space available for the class into account, so the student feels comfortable and can face the lesson in a easy and natural way. Computing tools such as social network websites, blogs, interactive boards, Dropbox....etc help me interact with my students in an innovative, interactive, and ludic way.

The final objective is that the students learn the language in a satisfactory, comfortable, pleasant, and easy way. It is proven that our potential of achieving objectives is always easier when we feel really motivated.