Dr Yolanda Cerdá

Profile

As Executive Director of the Language Centre (School of Languages, Cultures and Societies), I am responsible for the strategic direction of the Language Centre (LC) and its contribution to inclusive student education and internationalisation. The LC at Leeds is a thriving and sector-leading academic community which facilitates the transition of international students in particular at the University, as well as on the removal of linguistic barriers through language teaching and scholarship at School level and university-wide. It contributes significantly to LITE Projects (Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence) and the Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching (CELT), with significant expertise amongst staff in internationalisation, EAP (English for Academic Purposes), ESP (English for Specific Purposes), interculturality and language pedagogy.

2010-2019  Deputy Director (Modern Languages) and Senior Teaching Fellow (Associate Professor) at Sussex Centre for Language Studies (SCLS), University of Sussex. This involved leading and teaching on Modern Language degrees and intercultural communication and intercultural awareness training, as well as university-wide modules on intercultural communication. I  also directed and taught modules and programmes in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Pre-sessional and In-sessional support, bespoke Teacher Training courses and an MA in English Language Teaching (ELT).  I had several leadership responsibilities within SCLS as Convenor of Open Languages Courses, Convenor of the Pre-sessional courses and Convenor of Business Communication Skills and Intercultural Business Communication modules in collaboration with the Sussex Business School.

2008-2010 University of London Lecturer in ELT: I lectured on BA TEFL, BA Translation and MA TESOL courses at including modules on Empirical Investigations of Language, Language Analysis for TESOL, Pedagogical Grammar, Methodology across the TESOL Curriculum, English for Academic Purposes, Teaching Practicum and General Translation.

Before entering Higher Education, I was involved in academic management and in-service teacher development, as well as teaching and developing English courses for adults, Young Learners, Business, IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge Exam suite and GMAT. I spent 10 years working overseas in Spain and Egypt (British Council).

My scholarship interests include EAP and language pedagogy, feminist linguistics, internationalisation, intercultural communication, teacher education and identity, (critical) discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, linguistics and identity, as well as Spanish cultural studies. I have a PhD in Linguistics exploring the representations of gender in the UK press, through corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis.

Responsibilities

• Executive Director, Language Centre

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

• PhD Linguistics (University of Sussex)
• MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT (King's College), 2002
• MA Translation (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain) 2000
• BA Hons in English and Spanish (University of Leeds)
• CELTA, DELTA, PGCertHEA

Professional memberships

• BALEAP; British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes
• Association of University Language Centres (AULC)
• University Council of Modern Languages (UCML)

Student education

Language Centre – linguistic and academic literacies work

Intercultural Communication

Teaching English for Academic Purposes

Language Teacher Education

 

 

Research groups and institutes

• Language Centre