Biography

I come from Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil. My interest in languages stems from listening to my grandfather who taught himself Spanish and English. As a teacher of English in my community, I would scrutinise the language in search for patterns that could be explained and compared with my students’ native tongue, Portuguese. Due to the shortage of linguistic departments in my homeland and to the luck of finding a British benefactor, I undertook a degree in English Language and Linguistics at the University of York. The MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at Cambridge provided me with an opportunity to contribute to a better understanding of this intricate faculty that defines our species and permeates our social lives. My thesis investigated how psychophysiological states (i.e. emotions) get 'trapped' in the lexicon (our mental dictionary) during language acquisition. As a Gates Alumnus, my ambition is to help developing countries such as Brazil to cope with the pressure of an ever growing need for bilingualism. I'm currently working in conjunction with the public and privates sectors to build strategies that may reduce foreign language anxiety (i.e. an automatic fear response when the foreign language is activated).

Previous Education

University of York English Language and Linguistics 2013