Miguel Garcia Tarifa joined King’s College London Language Centre in 2014. He completed a Licenciatura in Philosophy at the University of Granada, Spain (2008), a five-year degree that included two years of foundational studies in Physics. He obtained a Certificate in Language Teaching to Adults from Goldsmiths, University of London (2012), an MA in Pedagogy and Vocational Training from UNED, Madrid (2015), and an MSc in Language Sciences with a specialisation in Language Development from University College London (2018). His dissertation research examined the effects of cognitive load on high-variability phonetic training. He speaks Spanish, Italian, and English.

Miguel teaches and designs curricula across a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate language programmes, including the Language Modules programme, the Doctoral Training Programme, and modules delivered in collaboration with other departments, such as Spanish Ab Initio in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. He also teaches Spanish on the MBA programme through an external partnership with London Business School.

His teaching is grounded in research-informed approaches, with a particular focus on helping students become more independent and reflective in their learning. He also delivers workshops on “how to learn a language,” where learners are introduced to the cognitive processes underpinning foreign language acquisition and provided with strategies to optimise their study systems.

Research, Scholarly projects and Academic Awards

In addition to his teaching, Miguel collaborates with the Circle U. Multilingualism, Interculturality and Language Lab (CU.mil) on the CU.LTN project, supporting the development of communities of practice across European partner institutions.

Miguel’s teaching and contributions have been recognised on several occasions, including a Teaching Excellence Award (2019) for consistently outstanding student feedback, a College Recognition Award (2021) for pioneering and co-developing the postgraduate online course Foundations of Spanish for Global Communication in collaboration with King’s Online, and nominations for the King’s Academy Awards (2024).

Miguel is especially interested in the cognitive processes underpinning foreign language development and in the design of pedagogical interventions that support them. He is currently involved in the development of GALLA (GPT-Assisted Language Learning Aid), a scholarly project exploring the effective integration of custom GPTs to support different aspects of language learning, with a particular focus on vocabulary acquisition. Miguel is also investigating study systems among Ab Initio Spanish students, with the aim of designing pedagogical interventions to help develop their metacognitive skills and improve their ability to self-monitor their language learning.