Alicia's Page

I was born in the Philippines and spent a considerable amount of time in Mexico and California growing up. I now live in Big Sky Country, i.e. Montana.

I teach mainly first and second year Spanish. I have taught advanced conversational Spanish in the past. I also supervise student teachers.

A few things you should know about me: My mother is from Guadalajara, Mexico and my father is from Missouri, USA. I grew up speaking Spanish and spoke Tagalog as a child. I love science and the idea of interdisciplinary studies and language studies coming together. In part, this interest drew me to the course on PBLL. I like the idea of creating learning situations that are meaningful and that reach beyond textbook learning.

Some ideas that have influenced my teaching have come from Bill VanPatten and his work on processing instruction and teaching language in context. If you would like a quick overview of his work, please see TESL-EJ 12/05, V.9:3 at http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej35/r5.pdf . I also have been influenced by an institute that I attended on including sense of place and environmental awareness in the classroom. I would like to see topics like these be more prevalent in language classes. PBLL may facilitate the ability to bring a range of interesting topics into the language curriculum.