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Lola Ramos-Brown

  • Email: L.Ramos-Brown1@leeds.ac.uk
  • Thesis title: The effect of a conclusion-outcome debate on L2 Spanish learners’ oral fluency and the interactions between dysfluencies, motivation and task design
  • Supervisor: Dr Clare Wright

Profile

After graduating in English and German Studies with Italian at the University of Salamanca with a First, spending one year as an Erasmus student at the University of Southampton, I moved to England to pursue a career in teaching. I gained a PGCE and a Diploma in Professional Translation and taught Spanish Language in a variety of academic settings including for nearly 10 years at Leeds Beckett University. I also worked as an in-house and freelance translator.

I joined the University of Leeds in 2017 as a PhD student and continued teaching and assessment on core Spanish Language Skills modules. I am currently in the process of completing my PhD which I aim at gaining in the autumn. I plan to continue to pursue teaching and research projects in the future and become an accomplished author and build up a list of published work.

Research interests

My main research interest is centred around the development of oral fluency in Spanish as a second language, in particular in relation to how task design can be optimised to enhance fluency. I am also very much interested in the role that learner motivation plays on task engagement and learning and how this can be enhanced in the classroom to achieve increased fluency outcomes. I am on track to complete my thesis this summer which focuses on the fluency effects of reaching a conclusion at the end of a debate, the causes for incurring dysfluencies in speech and the role of motivation in task engagement.

In the future, I will be interested in further developing my research around fluency studies as well as other fields such as the impact of Studies Abroad in Spanish fluency, task design exclusively targeted at fluency development, the perception of Spanish learners regarding the difficulties of speaking in Spanish, translation and interpreting challenges for learners, the role of spoken Spanish in Cervantes’ works and how oral Spanish has since developed, the legacy of Spanish culture and customs in the works of classic and contemporary literature, etc.

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) University of Salamanca
  • PGCE Mid Essex S.C.I.T.T. Consortium
  • Diploma in Professional Translation Studies FIDESCU Distance Learning
  • PhD (expected autumn 2021)