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Paula Villablanca

Paula Villablanca

PhD candidate

  • Graduate Teaching Assistant

Biography

Paula Villablanca Agurto is a PhD Candidate at King’s College London, in the School of Education, Communication and Society. She holds a BA in English Language Teaching from the University of Santiago of Chile (2013), and an MA in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching from King’s College London (2017).

Alongside her doctoral studies, Paula has worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at King's since 2019, leading the seminars 'Language and Communication' and 'Describing English Language'. She is currently teaching 'Analysing English 1' on the BA English Language & Linguistics programme.

Prior to joining King’s in 2017, Paula’s career highlights include working as a seminar facilitator for the ELT teacher training programme at the University of Santiago of Chile and as an English teacher for seven years, where she taught in different contexts, including primary and secondary education levels. This diverse teaching experience aroused her interest in developing the field of teacher education from a more practical and global perspective.

Paula’s research interests include pronunciation teaching, teacher cognition, teacher education and English as a Lingua Franca. Her PhD examines Chilean English teachers’ cognitions and practices for pronunciation instruction. This research explores how teachers' beliefs and knowledge about pronunciation teaching develop, the contributing factors behind these cognitions and how they are materialled in teachers’ practices when facing the classroom.

Paula's thesis title is: Investigating changes of Chilean pre-service and in-service teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation teaching.

Principal supervisor: Dr Martin Dewey

View Martin's research profile

Secondary supervisor: Professor Beatrice Szczepek Reed

View Beatrice's research profile

Research

books-1204029_1920
Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (LDC)

The Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication is a major centre for descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics and language in education.

Research

books-1204029_1920
Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (LDC)

The Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication is a major centre for descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics and language in education.